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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!?
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.
May the Maths Be with you!
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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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!