During an interview with Kotaku, Yoshio Sakamoto, the co-creator of the Metroid series, shared some good news for Metroid fans. Sakamoto’s biggest and probably most important claims about Metroid: Other M is that even though Team Ninja (known for sexing up games to the point that you don’t care about the plot as long as you see more blood and boobies) is developing the game, they’re keeping the game canon with the rest of the series.

So not only is Metroid: Other M going to be completely canon with the aid of Sakamoto, but that Other M will tie together several loose ends from past Metroid titles.

For those who’ve been big fans of the series, you’ll know that there are actually a lot of unexplained events in the games. This was caused mostly by the earlier titles being very technologically limited so there were no cutscenes or dialog. The Prime series tried to fix this by adding LOTS of in-game lore (the Chozo Lore, specifically), and some real dialog that explained quite a bit in Metroid Prime 3: Corruption.

Acording to Sakamoto, “You are going to see a lot further development all of which is connected to this progression you see in the Samus character in the past … so you get to learn what kind of person she is and how she is connected to the events in her past and how they have made her the person she is in the present moment.”

We also learn during this interview that Sakamoto didn’t have a lot of input in the Prime series at all. As such, he implies that the Samus that Retro Studios created might be difficult to work with in the sense of keeping everything canon.

Sakamoto explains this a little further. “I didn’t have a lot of input on the Prime series, I still don’t know much about the future of the Prime series as well, I haven’t been involved in that either. As to whether our Samus is going to be used in the Prime series going forward. You really have to defer to the wishes of the creator in this regard. Maybe think of it as the same universe but a different world view. There are different emphases in the two series of games. The Samus that we present here is very much our own, but the creators of the Prime series might have different goals and different areas that they want to stress as they go forward.”

It sounds like Sakamoto has a  lot on his plate if he wants this to truly be the lose-end-tying game he wants it to be. However, it’s still great to see that he cares so much about the series to put this much dedication into the game.

Metroid: Other M is slated for a June 27, 2010 release date (this is the US release date; Europe is scheduled for Q3 2010, while Japan will get the title in the summer some time), so we’ve still got to wait a few more months before we get to see what looks to be a truly amazing addition to my favorite series.

Given the scheduled release dates, it’s unlikely that we’ll be hearing any new information about this game at this year’s E3 convention.