Samus vs. The Galaxy 92
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."
I think I speak for everyone when I say... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:I think I speak for everyone when I say... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:I think I speak for everyone when I say... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I think I speak for everyone when I say... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I think I speak for everyone when I say... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I think I speak for everyone when I say... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I think I speak for everyone when I say... (Score:1, Flamebait)
Re:I think I speak for everyone when I say... (Score:2)
Re:I think I speak for everyone when I say... (Score:2)
Re:I think I speak for everyone when I say... (Score:2)
You could also play her in the swimsuit. There was a code starting with JUSTIN BAILEY that would start you at the beginning of the purple fire area without the spacesuit.
Re:I think I speak for everyone when I say... (Score:2)
Re:I think I speak for everyone when I say... (Score:2)
Re:I think I speak for everyone when I say... (Score:1)
See... 20 years ago when kids were beating the original Metroid for the first time, the "good" ending of the game showed Samus removing her helmet - displaying an 8-bit female face. And people were surprised. Hence the comment. Yeah.
Re:I think I speak for everyone when I say... (Score:2)
Re:I think I speak for everyone when I say... (Score:2)
Re:I think I speak for everyone when I say... (Score:2)
Re:I think I speak for everyone when I say... (Score:1)
Re:I think I speak for everyone when I say... (Score:2, Interesting)
bathing suit ? (Score:1)
Re:bathing suit ? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:bathing suit ? (Score:1)
Re:bathing suit ? (Score:1)
Re:bathing suit ? (Score:2)
Re:bathing suit ? (Score:1)
Re:bathing suit ? (Score:2)
Motivations that command respect (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Motivations that command respect (Score:1)
Samus Aran is a Girl?! (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [wikipedia.org].
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.
Re:Samus Aran is a Girl?! (Score:1)
Actually CJ from GTA San Andreas popped into mind because I only played the game for the ghetto fabulous lifestyle, drive-bying on BMX bikes and the like. Once they had you going on 20 minute fetch quests on the countryside I quit playing, and you better believe had he been white I would have dropped it earlier.
Alright I probably wouldn't have but it was pretty sweet
Re:Samus Aran is a Girl?! (Score:5, Interesting)
I dig what you're saying, but how can the original Metroid be faulted for marketing novelty when the fact that Samus is female is only revealed if you were a super-player? Nintendo didn't make a big deal about her gender in early marketing; she looks like a pixellized robot on the box cover. Most players simply had no idea because they never finished the game. Back then we had no internet to ruin things within .5 hours of a game's release.
Samus's reveal was more of a bonus surprise for dedicated players than anything else. And, motivational underwear aside, she still remains an early and inspiring example of a female video game heroic avatar. Which is cool, having diversity of leads in video games (male, female, alien, young, old, heroic, evil etc). I hope you're not arguing against that.
And not too long ago, there was an article about how often male players choose a female character, even in games that are not customizable or online. So, window dressing does matter. Yeah, gameplay is important, but story and characters and immersion are also important. Calling it "irrelevant" is an unfair whitewash.
Of course, turning Samus into an obviously mega-hot Lara Croft / Witchblade / Lady Death style of female "role model" is pure marketing... but that's more of a latter day invention. And I still would say Nintendo hasn't milked that in the way that Tomb Raider or Bloodrayne a hundred other games have.
I'd wager many, many Metroid fans would be streched to answer "Metroid" quickly.
And I would wager you're totally wrong on that one. Fans are on that.
Re:Samus Aran is a Girl?! (Score:1, Redundant)
In under 2 hours, which was the limit to get Samus to remove her suit.
Re:Samus Aran is a Girl?! (Score:2)
If by "dedicated players" you mean the 1987 definition, which was "kids who knew enough other gamers that one of them eventually found out about the JUSTIN BAILEY code", then yes.
I'd wager more people learned Samus's gender from entering that password than from completing the game quickly.
Re:Samus Aran is a Girl?! (Score:1, Troll)
Yea, because it dosen't exist.
Oh wait...Crazy Taxi had that obnoxious black-sterotype driver. You know, the "yo yo yo yo!" guy. So I guess there is one.
Re:Samus Aran is a Girl?! (Score:1)
Are you trying to be funny, or are you not really a gamer? Eddie Gordo is one of my favorite game characters in the last 10 some-odd years. There are plenty of other (albiet not neccessarily main)black game characters that immediately come to mind, such as the coach from Mike Tyson's Punch out, or Jax from Mortal Kombat, or Balrog from Street Fighter 2.
Re:Samus Aran is a Girl?! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Samus Aran is a Girl?! (Score:1)
Gameplay is very important, but many games with sucky gameplay, weird cameras or sucky controls still get by just by having a compeling story or amazing characters.
Games are a visual media, not just the interactiveness.
Re:Samus Aran is a Girl?! (Score:2)
Re:Samus Aran is a Girl?! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Samus Aran is a Girl?! (Score:2)
Re:Samus Aran is a Girl?! (Score:2)
Really? I'm pretty sure that the story, characters, music, and yes even the games graphics are integral to the game.
Not to say that the actual gameplay isn't important, but these other parts are what differentiate one game of button mashing from another. All video games, when stripped to the lowest level, are reaction tests, m
Plot follows (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, it could have been done with a male lead, but the 'mother' subplot does more easily track wit
Re:Samus Aran is a Girl?! (Score:1)
http://www.jazz2online.com/ [jazz2online.com]
Re:I definitely remember (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I definitely remember (Score:2)
ill reputed high school seniors... (Score:1, Troll)
Who in the hell comes up with this crap?
Re:ill reputed high school seniors... (Score:2)
Who in the hell comes up with this crap?
A high school senior of nerd repute.
Metroid's popularity died in Japan (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Metroid's popularity died in Japan (Score:1)
Re:Metroid's popularity died in Japan (Score:2)
Your website doesn't list the sales of Metroid Prime: Hunters, do you know them?
Re:Metroid's popularity died in Japan (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Metroid's popularity died in Japan (Score:1, Troll)
Re:Metroid's popularity died in Japan (Score:2)
Fortunately, they broke the cycle of hate with Zero Mission. Wonderful game.
Mysterious = cool. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Samus is awesome. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Samus is awesome. (Score:2)
Playing the first game, I thought Samus was a bounty hunter exploring a mysterious dark lost world, and the statues bearing "gifts" in royal chambers were almost as strange to Samus as to me. (This was kind of reinforced in later Metroids where some of those statues would come to life and attack) So, Metroid itself pointed out I was wrong about her gender... but it wasn't til Prime that I realized I was wrong ab
Re:Samus is awesome. (Score:2)
Fully agree on that one, its one of the things that extremly dissapointed me in the 3D Metroids, while most of the 2D one weren't much better in that regart, its a lot easier to suspend disbelieve in 2D then it is in 3D. Prime always felt like Theme Park ride, not like an alien world, it
Re:Samus is awesome. (Score:2)
Then I suggest you can't see the forest through the trees. The point of view of the original Metroid story is that of an outside observer, one that doesn't know Samus on a personal level, and from what can be gleaned from MP2: Echoes, that's the point of view of most of the denizens of the galaxy, even the federation troops (among whom there is apparently doubt that Samus even exists).
And with Metroid Prime,
Re:Samus is awesome. (Score:2)
I still see it, especially the Chozo statues in the original, as a bad kind of "shrinking universe" syndrome, the same thing
Re: (Score:1)
Not only that, but the Zero Suit and its ilk (see also Metroid Prime 2's ending scenes) completely neglect what I believe is one of Samus' major strong points: she is not a teenager.
When games include female characters at all, the vast majority of those characters will be between the ages of 13 and 20, and imp
She means a lot:D (Score:5, Insightful)
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!
Re:She means a lot:D (Score:1)
Re:She means a lot:D (Score:1)
Just FYI (Score:1)
Re:Just FYI (Score:1)
In Super Metroid the best 100% is 55m(I am off by an hour...curses...CURSES!!!)
Re:Just FYI (Score:1)
The 100% prime record is 1:28 by Paul 'Bartendorsparky' Evans.
Re:She means a lot:D (Score:2)
While not a main character she's a spartain and wears the same armor as the Master Chief. Using her in DOA4 it's odd to see what LOOKS like the Master Chief but with a distinctivly female voice. Considering the spartains can be any gender... there's no reason the Master Chief couldn't have been a woman as well.
Re:She means a lot:D (Score:2)
Except that you can tell he's male the same way you can tell Nicole is female. He does have a spoken line or two between the two games.
Re:She means a lot:D (Score:2)
Re:She means a lot:D (Score:2)
Thanks for the escapist reminder. (Score:1, Offtopic)
Once again, just when I'm about to complain the next story is actually interesting.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/issue/57/16 [escapistmagazine.com] 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 th
History Of Metroid Mini-Video Documentary (Score:1, Informative)
Definitly worth a watch even if you've played all the games and know all the bits.
you can replace Samus with Mario (Score:2, Insightful)
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 back
Absence of information?!?! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Absence of information?!?! (Score:1)
All these posts about Samus Aran (Score:1)
Oh Dear... (Score:2)
Did anyone else have "inappropriate" thoughts reading that?
Re:Oh Dear... (Score:2)
Andrew Jones (Score:2)
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 c
Re:Andrew Jones (Score:2)
http://www.conceptart.org/artist/andrew-jones/ima
Re:Andrew Jones (Score:2)
You can also see the same concept art in Metroid Prime and Prime2 image galleries. They're unlocked when you scan tons of stuff in the game. Thanks for the links though, that's a whole lot more than there's in the in-game galleries =)