Based on sales information collated from Amazon’s sites for North America, Japan and Europe – where the game is released today – Samus sits pretty atop both lists, with only three third party titles in both lists combined. WayForward’s A Boy and His Blob makes a surprise reappearance in fifth place in the States, perhaps fuelled by interest in the company’s upcoming Batman: The Brave and the Bold, which uses the same engine and handdrawn animation.

Nintendo Wii
North America: 1. Metroid: Other M (Nintendo), 2. Gold’s Gym Dance Workout (Ubisoft), 3. New Super Mario Bros. Wii (Nintendo), 4. Super Mario Galaxy 2 (Nintendo), 5. A Boy and His Blob (Majesco).

Japan: 1. Metroid: Other M (Nintendo), 2. Wii Party (Nintendo), 3. Super Mario Galaxy 2 (Nintendo), 4. Wii Fit Plus with Balance Board (Nintendo), 5. Dragon Quest Monsters: Battle Road Victory (Square Enix).

We’ll soon see how Samus fares across Europe. If you haven’t picked it up yet, read through our Metroid: Other M review to find out what you’re missing.

Eurogamer recently interviewed Maguire about the Move and the importance of players picking the controller up before they put their money down.

Exactly as with EyeToy in the PS2 days, it’s a product that needs to be sampled. You need to get your hands on it. You need to understand it. You need to try it.

Am I expecting a massive day one? Not particularly. We didn’t with EyeToy, either. It went on to be massively successful. As people saw the value when they tried it they told their friends. Their friends bought it. They told their friends. Word of mouth grew the marketplace. That’s what I expect from Move as well.

With just two weeks to go until the Move is available, we’ll soon find out if the peripheral meets Maguire’s sales expectations. Nintendo’s Wii was a huge word of mouth success, and Sony is clearly hoping that once players sample the increased fidelity of Move that the motion tide will flow in Move’s favour.

Will you buy into Move without sampling it first?

Speaking to British magazine EDGE, Studio Director Mark Betteridge revealed the team’s initial trepidation when approached by Nintendo to develop the 007 shooter.

It wasn’t something we were really doing – we were trying to build our own IP, and film tie-ins meant a lot of ownership by the film company. But Nintendo was very keen.

Rare’s hesitation seemed justified as the project faltered, with internal confidence low following a poor response to its unveiling at E3 with Rare believing Banjo Kazooie would be the studio’s flagship title on the N64.

The real hammer blow came when Nintendo wrote to Rare suggesting it cancelled the project after significant delays. Betteridge, faced with a decision the benefit of hindsight has told us is hugely important, decided not to inform the development team, letting them put the finishing touches on the game and ship it.

The rest, as they say, is history, but it could have been so very different.

There’ll be 16 demonstration pods devoted to 8 vs. 8 multiplayer and seven individual machines, three of which will be fully 3D-enabled, though it appears the demos will be playable only with Dualshock controllers, disappointing those wanting to get their Move on.

The game’s producer Aryeh Loeb also took the opportunity to emphasise that Move and 3D support are not just single player features but will both be available in multiplayer mode as well.

Move will be supported throughout the game, so in MP [multiplayer] as well. And so will 3D by the way. Everything you get in the SP [singleplayer] campaign, Move, 3D, Visuals, will be in MP as well. We refuse to compromise on those things, going from SP to MP.

It’ll certainly be interesting to see whether players with Move come out on top more regularly than those using the traditional dual analogue setup.

Transforming your Move into a sword, shield, table tennis bat or archery bow, the accessories will set you back a moderate $29.99. Those intending to use their Moves to blow stuff up may want to look at the Special Ops Shooter instead, a plastic gun-like shell for the controller that aims to add extra realism to first-person shooters due to retail for around $24.99.

The floodgates for plastic Move enhancements have been opened.

Making the game look far easier than it really is, it gives a far better idea of how the game is played, navigating a thin white line through a series of contorting caverns to a dubstep soundtrack from 16bit. There’s no official release date yet, but keep your eyes glued to Nintendo Life for updates on Lilt Line and BIT.TRIP FATE in the near future.

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Showing King Dedede in woolly form for the first time as well as brand new levels featuring everything from dinosaurs to huge crushing balls, it also explains a little bit more about how Kirby became so threadbare. It’s all in Japanese, but you don’t need to speak the language fluently to understand he tried to eat a tomato that was actually an evil wizard masquerading as a fruit.

Kirby’s Epic Yarn is released in North America on October 17th and Europe in 2011.

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