Picture it: A medium sized conference room well lit and filled with a sea of plastic chairs. Looking down the center aisle, you spy a long table at the back of the room, and sitting quietly are seven men. To the left are Nintendo's famous Metroid designers: Kensuke Tanabe, Akira Otani, and the super cool and confident Super Metroid director Yoshio Sakamoto. To their left is their translator, and next to him are the three key members to Nintendo's Retro Studios team: Michael Kellbaugh, Mark Pacini, and Bryan Walker. They're surrounded by giant projection screens, and playing on them is Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, in all its gorgeous glory. This is the showcase of the immortals, the conference that every Metroid fan dreams of sneaking into. Nervous, you slip into a green chair in the front row and stare at the men who are responsible for ensuring the quality of one of gaming's most beloved series. The MC just asked if anyone has any questions and you slowly raise your arm. The mic's in your hand. What do you do?

Nintendo's Metroid round table was an adrenaline-charged event where we all got a chance to bask in the glory of these six men, as well as find out some sneaky details about one of Nintendo's most secretive games. Echoes looks fabulous no question, but we all had questions about the game because the E3 demo was rather short.

The roundtable began with introductions in both Japanese and English, and then the E3 demo was shown in its entirety. The background story was explained to us, but the meat of the demo revolved around the game's weaponry. In addition to Samus' conventional devices, you're given light and dark weapons that must be used to solve the game's puzzles. The designers explained that the light weapons damage dark enemies, while the dark weapons decimate light creatures. They also have various fire types. New to the series is the Light Beam buckshot effect (Shotgun.) as well as a dark effect that shoots liquid that freezes things, and the light and dark weapons take ammunition, but the team said that it is plentiful.

While Echoes looks very much like Metroid Prime, the team assured us that the sequel features higher poly counts and new graphical techniques. I couldn't tell if it looked better, but the title screen is awesome. Its slick hi-tech look is complimented by dark clips of a nasty creature moving about. Actually, the title screen is a great example of how complimentary the game truly is. Echoes is all about balance, so where there's light, there's dark, and where there's good Samus, there's the evil one.

Unfortunately, and unsurprisingly, much of the Q&A period was filled with "No comments." The team disclosed that a second visor will be available, but that it would be a "surprise," and when I asked how many multi-player maps there'd be, Retro simply replied, "More than 2!" However, they did disclose some cool info on the multi-player mode, the most interesting of which being the Hacker upgrade, a power-up that allows you to scan other players via the visor (Which isn't available without this upgrade.) and inject them with viruses that cause havoc with their equipment. It definitely changes death matching, because often times, I'll go into a fire fight guns blazing, but the Hacker feature adds a new element of strategy to the gameplay. It makes even the weakest of foes a threat.

When asked whether Echoes will feature connectivity with the GBA, Tanabe-san replied with, "Do you want connectivity?" The decision is very open to suggestion.

Much to the chagrin of cheaters, the team will ensure that you can't lock the game up by skipping to later levels using the bomb upgrade. You also won't be able to play via LAN, which upset me just a little because this game would be even better with more than four players. However, it pleased me to know that the game's 65-70% complete, and the dev team is just rolling into production on its last world. This as opposed to the E3 demo of the first Metroid Prime two year's ago, where that was all there was.

Finally, and I found this very amusing, when someone asked Tanabe-san why Nintendo didn't include dual stick control like its competitors, the famous designer replied with something to the effect of, "Because this is Metroid." Touche!

After the roundtable concluded, we introduced ourselves to Retro, as well as posed for pictures with Sakamoto-san. It was truly a phenomenal event, far surpassing any game on the show floor, for you see, this is what E3 is all about. Anyone can go and play a game, but it's golden moments like these that make the event what it is. There's nothing like walking down a hallway and passing a famous developer, and it's even better when you can grab a mic and ask the guys who design Metroid questions about the beloved series. It looks great, and after listening to the designers, I have full confidence that the final product will exceed all of our expectations.