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Samus vs. The Galaxy
1up has a look back at the Metroid series during the 20th anniversary of Metroid for the NES. From the article: "Metroid's gameplay isn't beloved exclusively. Fans love the series' heroine, Samus Aran. Samus is hard to define as a character, which adds to her appeal. In the scrolls of the Chozo, the avian race that raised her after she was orphaned, she's recorded as The Newborn, and the hope of their depleted race. To the Galactic Federation, she's the protector of the galaxy. To Space Pirates, she's the Huntress, or a handful of vulgar alien words. To gamers, Samus is mostly an enigma. Unlike other game heroines, she hasn't spread herself and her secrets everywhere like a high school senior of ill repute. Samus' motivations still command respect and a certain degree of awe."
Samus is a girl!?
unless of course you beat the game in less than 8 hours :)
Yes, the fact that she appears to be motivated to take off more clothes the faster you finish the game certainly commands a great deal of respect.
"Who says nothing is impossible? Some people do it every day!" - Alfred E. Neuman
Friend of mine got Super Metroid on the SNES when it first came out. He was a big Metroid fan, having played both the NES and Gameboy versions to death. Anyway, on the SNES version, when you died, Samus' suit disintegrated and Samus herself emerged wearing some kind of underwear getup. Nothing too risque thankfully. There was also a high pitched scream as you died.
My friend's first reaction: "Why is there a girl in Samus Aran's suit?".
The fact that Samus Aran is female has absolutely no bearing on the gameplay of Metroid. Anyone who plays the game for long enough will cease to care. At best, its a marketing novelty factor, like the flashy suit or spaceship. When you really, truely play a game for dozens of hours, superflous things like that fade into obscurity.
My friend wasn't alone. I'll bet there were many fans of Metroid who has let this fact completly escape them. If asked the question: "Are there any female lead characters in some of your favourite games?" I'd wager many, many Metroid fans would be streched to answer "Metroid" quickly. This is because, a true gamer will simply not care, and these facts will slip their minds.
It's like if you were asked to name a game with a black lead character. You might be harded pressed to do it, because you simply didn't care. And no, it's not the game you were thinking of.
If you want to make the characters "ethnicity" part of the game, the only way to do that is to make such things user customisable. A la MMORPGs, Oblivion, etc, . Other than that, the specifics of the characters themselves, outside of their in game abilities, are irrelevant, as any avid gamer will tell you. Who ever picked Blaze because she was a woman? I mean come on?
The game is the gameplay. It isn't the graphics, or the hype, or the characters, or the style, or the studio, or the music. These are only minor parts of the core that is the game. People need to stop getting distracted by things that concern other entertainment industries, because they only loosely apply to video games. The game is the gameplay. No amount of marketing can change that.
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a crappy strategy guide from the late 80s that referred to her as a cyborg man the whole way through. Funny how things haven't changed - nobody beat games then before reviewing them, either.
...like a high school senior of ill repute.
Who in the hell comes up with this crap?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Sadly, none of the recent GBA or Gamecube games have sold well in Japan. See: http://vgcharts.org/worldtotals.php
Metroid Prime: 120,000 units
Metroid Fusion: 180,000 units
Metroid Prime 2: 70,000 units
I can understand why the Prime games haven't sold, because the Japanese market has the whole "FPS games are scary and confusing" thing going on. But Metroid Fusion and Metroid: Zero Mission were very much in the style of the old 2D games.
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The fact that so little has been actually revealed about Samus really helps get fans interested in her. Without much of a backstory, people can't get wrapped up disliking it, and may even subconsciously fill in the gaps with whatever cool details they want. It's also the mysterious knight-in-armor aspect, like how Boba Fett had developed such a cult following after the original "Star Wars" trilogy. Fett looked really cool, he acted badass, we only saw him for a few fleeting scenes, and the main characters seemed to know just enough about him to be afraid. How could he possibly not be the pinnacle of awesome?
If they ever do up a Metroid RPG with hours of dialogue and flashbacks to Samus' past, watching her parents get killed outside a theater which inspires her to fight crime or some damn thing, interest in her would wane just as Boba Fett lost a big chunk of his cult following when the prequels tried to heavily feature him and his origins.
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"Maybe it was either 'hunt space monsters' or 'stay at home and pop out some kids,'" muses Allison. "Obviously, she chose the less horrifying option."
Yeah, because since she's been fused with Chozo DNA, who knows what would actually pop out. Some half bird, half human thing...
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Samus is one the most interesting game characters, and is probably the most intriguing of Nintendo's main heroes.
It may have been just a side effect of the fact that Metroid was never popular in Japan, but Samus has a lot of mystery factor that I think actually helps the player try to get inside of the the character for themselves.
In Super Metroid, the player starts to get a hint about the motivations Samus may have. In fact, the backstory that was developed for Samus (Her colony was destroyed by space pirates, she was raised by Chozo and given Chozo blood, etc.) appeared around the time of Super Metroid. The eManga released around Metroid Fusion and Metroid Prime is just an updated version of that story. It may be a better revision of that story than what they had originally, but that backstory did exist since 1994 or earlier. Even so, much of Samus' personality, motivations, etc. still needed to be inferred by the player.
I very much enjoyed the depiction of Samus in Metroid Prime. It is obvious that the character is female, you can see the reflection of Samus' face and hear her voice once in a while (though like Link, she doesn't speak words), but they don't make a huge deal of it aside from that. By scanning the Pirate data, you can basically see how large a threat Samus is now considered by the Pirates, so you know the character you have control over is powerful. You can ultimately imply that Samus is fairly silent and solitary. Samus' pursuit of the pirates, in my opinion, is not simply revenge oriented. Many developers would have had Samus yell, "Hey, Ridley, this is for my mom!" while blowing him up. Sure, Samus may have a grudge for what the Pirates did, but I think her primary motivation is to stop them from causing any further harm.
This is the version of Samus I like the best.
While the bonus endings often reveal Samus in swimsuit-like attire, I like the fact that Samus shows up with the appropriate equipment to get the job done. Whereas many game heroines dress in next to nothing, or something totally impractical for what they are doing, Samus wears a heavy combat suit.
I'm not sure I like the Zero Suit Samus that will be in the new Super Smash Bros. game. It would really destroy the series to try to make Samus into more of a Lara Croft / DOA Girl type character.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
For starters, my record on Super Metroid is 1hr:53m.
Contrary to popular opinion, beating the game in this amount of time, to me anyway, was not based on the promise of seeing some space lingerie in all of its 16bit glory, nor the bounty of a "naked" Samus; but the fact that the maps were designed in a way for the player to create a line that allowed you to kill all enemies, open all doors, and dig out the hidden stuff in 1 fluid motion. That being said, I feel that Samus represents a unisex appeal that has yet to be re-created with any other female game avatar in the past 10 years. People didn't stop playing when they found out "OMFG SAMUS IS A CHICK!!!I MUST BE GAY!!!", nor was there any discussion of bust sizes or unique events that allowed you to see "aspects of her femininity". She was a hero, plain and simple. These days you can't even define a female protagonist in a game without complimenting their physique in some way shape or form./ Bizarre thing was, not many girls got into Metroid; imagine that, a female protagonist in a game that wasn't exploitive of women whatsoever *that* women summarily stayed away from like the moon stays away from stars.
Does anyone see the irony in that..:/
That damn Bush administration!
Once again, just when I'm about to complain the next story is actually interesting.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/issue/57/16 Cry Havok, much better article, on Havok Engine and Immersion.
So thank you again for my Escapist reminder. I do commend you on linking to the print version though.
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The plot follows the gender-lines to a small extent, however. When a baby metroid emerges at the end of the old gameboy version, the first thing it seems it Samus and thus it assumes she is its mother. Rather than killing the critter, Samus allows it to life, eventually turning it over to some (supposedly benevolent) scientists... which leads to the SNES version in which the metroid sacrifices itself for her.
Yes, it could have been done with a male lead, but the 'mother' subplot does more easily track with a female lead character. Metroid is probably one of those games that could make a decent movie. Decent base plot, but nothing too deep in any particular direction that it could be too easily ruined. Tomb Raider wasn't all that bad for a VG movie (and it was fairly popular), so I wonder how one about a female bounty hunter who is savior of a lost race would do...
There's a fantastic little video spot that assembles all the best bits of the metroid games in order of the story 'arc' that has developed on imeem - it's accompanied by some funny commentary about how she just can't hold onto her power ups and her relationship with the metroids.
Definitly worth a watch even if you've played all the games and know all the bits.
Some characters are just more interesting/better designed than others, and Samus would be one of them. It is not the absence of information that makes her special because there are way too many video characters that lack an interesting background.
...and no mention of "Justin Bailey"? For those who do not know, entering "JUSTIN BAILEY" as the password in the original NES game (with all blank spaces on the second line) let you start the game as Samus wearing a bathing suit. My friends and I knew that Samus was a girl back in 1987.
Did anyone else have "inappropriate" thoughts reading that?
Red Scarlet, the holder of the fastest 100% completion Super Metroid (non-tool assisted) speed run, is female.
Dude name Andrew Jones did the concept art work for the two Prime games.
w _jones/index.phpg es/
I got a chance to see some of his early work for the series before Prime2 came out and Jones depcited Samus in a really interesting way. Some shots had her in human form with the suit super-imposed over. He depcited her as battle torn, with short dirty hair, carbon residue from countless battles caked on but with fierce eyes. Cool stuff.
Can't seem to find any links, although, here are some to Jones' other stuff.
Theres a pic of concept cover art for Prime2 in the second link
http://www.ballisticpublishing.com/articles/andre
http://www.conceptart.org/artist/andrew-jones/ima
FUNK!
Umm, what absence of information? There's a e-manga that fills in most of her back story. (Translations of which can be found here.) Then the manuals are actually filled with a great deal of information. Some of the Chozo lore scans from MP1 give you the Chozo viewpoint of Samus and her role. And, there are also the flashbacks in Zero Mission which give a small detail to what here childhood was like. There's a whole bunch of information on Samus for those that actually want it. It just comes down to whether or not you really care to get into the story of the Metroid series.
Personally, throw a Metroid onto a system and I'll buy it. I can't wait to see how the Prime trilogy ends.