Metroid (universe)
Metroid is a series of games, manga, and other products and a pioneer of the Metroidvania genre of video game created by Nintendo. I first experienced the series when I played the original Metroid game somewhere around 1990. I have only ever played the 2D Metroid games, none of the Prime series.
While I admire the game designers for making the main character of the Metroid series a women, I don't like how they've objectified Samus through the years. In the first game, players just assumed the main character was male until they beat the game with decent time and Samus Aran removes her helmet to show her long brown hair. Beating the game even faster results in a her removing her power suit to show her in a skin-tight leotard, and beating the game extremely fast reveals her in a bikini. It was rumored that beating the game even faster would make her entirely nude. This is a "women as reward" trope that sticks with the series for several games to come. In Super Metroid, Samus is ret-conned to be blonde, I presume to make her more attractive to Western players.
Samus's suit has undergone some design changes over the years. In the first game, she wears a power suit, and, in the second game she starts with the power suit, but, upon finding the varia, her suit changes to an increased armor level. This suit adds large orbs on her shoulders which I think are kind of stupid looking, and certainly impractical for a fighter since they would impair her vision. Super Metroid continues the large shoulder ball design, and they get even worse in Metroid Prime. The Fusion suit returns her to a less-ridiculous suit.
Contents
Games
Title | Release Date | Original Platform | Rank | Beaten |
---|---|---|---|---|
Metroid | 1986-08-06 | Famicom Disk System | 5 | Yes |
Metroid II: Return of Samus | 1991-11-?? | Game Boy | 4 | Yes |
Super Metroid | 1994-03-19 | SNES | 1 | Yes |
Metroid Fusion | 2002-11-18 | GBA | 2 | Yes |
Metroid Prime | 2002-11-18 | Game Cube | ||
Metroid: Zero Mission | 2004-02-09 | GBA | 3 | Yes |
Metroid Prime 2: Echoes | 2004-11-15 | Game Cube | ||
Metroid Prime: Hunters - First Hunt | 2004-11-21 | Nintendo DS | ||
Metroid Prime Pinball | 2005-10-24 | Nintendo DS | ||
Metroid Prime: Hunters | 2006-03-20 | Nintendo DS | ||
Metroid Prime 3: Corruption | 2007-08-28 | Wii | ||
Metroid: Other M | 2010-08-31 | Wii | ||
Metroid Prime: Federation Force | 2016-08-19 | Nintendo 3DS | ||
Metroid: Samus Returns | 2017-09-15 | Nintendo 3DS |
Books / Manga
Film
Media
Links
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metroid - Wikipedia.
- mobygames.com/game-group/metroid-series - MobyGames.