Samus Aran

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Samus Aran is a video game character created by Nintendo, and is the main protagonist in the Metroid series. She is a bounty hunter who wears a full-body power suit with a number of advanced technologies built into it, including an arm cannon and the ability to morph into a ball. The original Metroid intentionally led players to believe she was a male cyborg until the very end of the game, making a statement about gender roles in video games at a time when heroes were predominantly male. Although Samus wears the Power Suit throughout most of the Metroid series, it has become tradition to depict her in more revealing attire at the end of each game, often as a reward for completing the game quickly or with a high percentage of the game’s items collected. Her main mission is to aid the Galactic Federation in defeating the Space Pirates. She also battles Metroids throughout the series, and a vaccine made with Metroid DNA is eventually integrated into her body to cure her of an X Parasite infection at the beginning of the game Metroid Fusion.

The character was probably originally named after Samsu-Iluna, the son of Hammurabi and second king of Babylon, whose first name is identical to Samus's when written in Japanese (サムス).

Contents 1 Stats 2 Equipment 3 Challenge of gender roles 4 Name pronunciation 5 Biography 5.1 Her Zero mission 5.2 Hunting down the Pirates 5.3 Battle of the Hunters 5.4 Echoes 5.5 Mission: Eradicate the Metroid species 5.6 A return to the past 5.7 The new threat 6 Appearances in games 7 Samus in the Super Smash Bros. series 8 Other appearances 9 References 10 External links

Stats

• Species: Human; was infused with Chozo blood as a child, later with Metroid DNA as an adult.
• Occupation: Space-faring bounty hunter, often employed by the Galactic Federation.
• Sex: Female
• Age: Unknown (appears to be a young adult. However, in the e-manga, Samus is 3 in the year 2000 of the Cosmos Calendar; the original Metroid is set in the year 20X5).
• Homeworld: Presumably born on Earth colony K-2L, raised on Zebes.
• Hair color: Officially blonde, sometimes depicted as green, violet, or auburn in older materials.
• Eye color: Officially blue, sometimes depicted as green.
• Height: 1.90m (6'3")
• Weight: 90kg (198lbs, 6oz)

Samus’s height and weight statistics are stated as such in the Metroid II instruction booklet and Super Metroid strategy guide, but whether these figures apply to Samus with (or without) her suit is unspecified.

Equipment

Whenever Samus goes on missions or anywhere that could be considered dangerous, she wears her Power Suit. It acts as a personal armor, and a built-in arm cannon allows her to fire powerful blasts of energy at her foes. The suit can also be fitted with various modular upgrades which augment Samus’s natural abilities. All the Metroid games involve searching for those power-ups for Samus, which include a variety of beams, more enhanced power suits, energy tanks, bombs, hi-jump boots, visors, etc.

For her transportation, Samus uses her gunship, a custom starship that made its debut in Metroid II: Return of Samus. Metroid: Zero Mission revealed that her original ship, a similar model colored red, had crashed on Zebes when she wiped out the Pirate base there. In the prologue to Metroid Fusion, Samus’s custom gunship was destroyed, and the Federation gave her a new ship – albeit with some conditions. Colored purple and sporting retractable feet for landing, this ship is governed by a sentient A.I., Adam, from which Samus is supposed to take orders. Within the games, the ships serve as a base where Samus can recharge her health and ammo, and save. One exception is in Metroid Prime Pinball, where up to three Samus can be locked and released as multi-balls.

Challenge of gender roles

Image:ZM-ending-7.gif Samus was one of the first active heroines in a video game, appearing at a time when other popular heroes, such as Mario and Link, were predominantly male and striving to rescue helpless princesses. Some games, such as Super Mario Bros. 2, added female playable characters, but these continued to exhibit exaggerated feminine characteristics. One female lead character contemporary to Samus, albeit less widely known, was Alis Landale of the first Phantasy Star role-playing game. For a time, there were few other active heroines, although the 1990s introduced the first fighting-game female, Chun-Li, and Terra Branford, the hero of Final Fantasy VI, and the first female protagonist in the series' English releases, until the release of Final Fantasy I & II: Dawn of Souls, which included the character Maria in Final Fantasy II. Then, in the late '90s, Lara Croft of Tomb Raider made a huge impression on the video game industry. Many feminists, however, found Croft’s extreme sexualization and unrealistic attire in a harsh environment appalling. While there are many female heroes today, a large majority of them have emulated Lara Croft’s exaggerated sexuality to appeal to a predominantly male gaming community.

Her defiance of this stereotype is part of what makes Samus such a highly regarded character. However, several of the Metroid games portray her in somewhat revealing attire if one completes the game under certain time restrictions (see JUSTIN BAILEY) or during Samus’s death animation (Super Metroid, Metroid Fusion), and the Metroid Prime series has given her an occasionally visible face resembling that of a model. Also, in recent games, Samus has been appearing in a blue jump suit. Although the suit is skintight, it is less revealing overall. In Super Smash Bros., hitting her with an energy attack, such as the laser gun or Ness’s lightning attack, shows her without her suit, but one can only see a blue body for a brief second. In Metroid Prime, she is never actually seen outside of her armor, but in Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, Samus is shown in the jumpsuit. In Metroid Prime: Hunters, she once again appears in the jumpsuit, but it is better rendered. Nevertheless, she continues to earn praise as one of the most self-sufficient and realistic female role models in video games. Rather than entering harsh environments scantilly clad in implausable attire, she dons an armored suit for protection. Her fighting style and mannerisms are neither overly feminine nor blatantly masculine, but neutral. It is her very aura of mystery, and gender-neutral skill that has made her so memorable to so many.

Name pronunciation

Samus' name has only been spoken aloud in two Nintendo games: Super Smash Bros. Melee, the Japanese and European versions of Metroid Prime, and now the Flash website for Nintendo's most recent Metroid game, Metroid Prime: Hunters. SSBM seems to have a different pronunciation than Metroid Prime and Hunters, but Hunters confirms that the true pronunciation is that of Metroid Prime and Hunters, Template:IPA (IPA pronunciation). For an audio example, visit http://www.metroidhunters.com and access the Flash site.

Biography

Samus Aran is the legendary bounty hunter who is well-known for defeating the Space Pirates and wiping out the dangerous Metroids. Nintendo first referred to Samus as a "he;" Samus revealed her true identity after she defeated the Space Pirates on Zebes for the first time. Her reputation grew as her reliability almost always guaranteed success in her hired jobs.

Her Zero mission

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The events of this section are from Metroid and Zero Mission

Samus was the daughter of two colonists (sometimes known as Rodney and Virginia Aran) on the Galactic Federation colony world K-2L. When she was 3 years old, the species known only as the Space Pirates, led by Ridley, destroyed the colony, leaving Samus (with her pet, Ponchi) as the sole survivor. A pair of Chozo (Old Bird and Grey Voice) picked up the distress signal from the colony, and took Samus with them to their home on planet Zebes. They selflessly raised and loved her as their own, infusing her with their blood for her to gain their natural powers and resistance to the planet’s enviroments. In Metroid: Zero Mission, Samus has flashbacks to her childhood with the Chozo when she sees a mural depicting a chozo warrior, and also as a sequence of pictures in a connectivity bonus between Metroid Fusion and Metroid: Zero Mission.

Eventually, she had left Zebes of her own accord with the power suit, seeking full military training in the Galactic Federation. However, her military career didn’t last after the death of her commanding officer, Adam Malkovich, and she soon left to become a bounty hunter. As she sought to make a name for herself, the Space Pirates attacked Zebes seeking more information about the Metroids they had recently taken from Federation custody, captured and reprogrammed the planetary control, Mother Brain, and killed the entire Chozo population from the planet.

Samus heard of this and was sent in by the Federation as a last resort to finish off the Pirates and stop their production of Metroids. Samus succeeded, but as she escaped the time bomb detonated by the Mother Brain in her final throes, she was shot down by a fleet of Pirates led by their rebuilt general, a robotic version of Ridley known as Mecha Ridley. In the struggle she lost her Power Suit and was forced to fight her way to her old home in Chozodia. There, Samus was tested by an ancient Chozo shrine, and given the type II suit upgrade with the recognizable shoulder pads. She then defeated Mecha Ridley and escaped the Pirates’ Mothership using one of their small fighters.

Hunting down the Pirates

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The events of this section are from Metroid Prime

After her success in defeating the Space Pirates on Zebes, knowledge of the Metroids’ power spread through the galaxy. Leaving Zebes behind, Samus traveled the galaxy to seek another job, coming across the distress signal of a wrecked frigate. Upon investigation, she had discovered it was being used as a storage and research station by the Space Pirates to study a new material known as Phazon. However, it was on the verge of destruction due to an accident with one of the stored creatures.

Samus continued to explore the failing vessel, encountering heavily injured and dead Pirates. Dead Pirates that were observed were discovered to be partially eaten, or had been ripped apart by the escaped creatures. Samus made her way to the power core, where she killed the cause of the ship’s demise, the Parasite Queen. After the Queen’s death, the frigate’s power core became critically unstable, prompting the ship’s computer to order immediate evacuation as the vessel broke apart and fell from orbit.

Samus entered one of the frigate’s larger test labs, and was greeted with a shriek from a beast on the ceiling, which promptly destroyed the roof section of the lab, and took off. Samus scanned the nearby data panels, and discovered that the name of this creature was Meta Ridley, a cybernetically augmented version of the Space Pirate General.

Samus escaped the frigate to the planet Tallon IV in pursuit of Meta Ridley, discovering the ruins of a Chozo civilization, destroyed by the poisonous phazon that came from a mysterious meteor that crashed into the planet an undetermined time ago. The Space Pirates, lead by Meta Ridley, built a base above and below the surface of the planet, testing phazon not only on their own, but also on Metroids. The Chozo foresaw Samus’s arrival, and knowing they would perish before she arrived, left behind the tools she would need to heal the planet and let their souls rest.

Samus, having found all 12 Chozo artifacts, made her way to the Chozo temple, where she was confronted by Meta Ridley, who supposedly was there to kill Samus and gain access to the Phazon in the meteor beneath the temple. After his defeat by Samus, the wounded Ridley was destroyed by the Chozo statues, who then opened the way for Samus to enter the core of the meteor that held the source of all Phazon and the beast that had either wiped out or mutated all life on Tallon IV: Metroid Prime. Prime had the ability to create Phazon, but its purpose was unknown. After an epic battle in which Samus defeated Metroid Prime, it became apparent that the meteor core was collapsing.

With the defeat of the Space Pirates and the destruction of Metroid Prime, Samus escaped the meteor and left the planet so that it could recover. However, Prime did not go quietly, having absorbed the Phazon Suit upgrade from Samus (which Samus acquired by killing a Phazon-altered Omega Pirate) before its death.

Battle of the Hunters

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The events of this section are from Metroid Prime: Hunters

Soon afterwards, a telepathic message was intercepted by Federation empaths. The mysterious voice called itself a creature known as an Alimbic. The message read, "The Ultimate Power lies within the Alimbic Cluster." The Federation was worried that it would fall into the wrong hands, so they contracted Samus to recover this "Ultimate Power," or if it was uncontrollable, destroy it. However, this message was also heard by six of the best bounty hunters in the galaxy, Kanden, the genetically engineered supersoldier, Spire, the rock creature searching for clues to the death of his race, Weavel, the crippled Space Pirate with a cybernetic suit, Sylux, the secretive hunter that greatly despises the Galactic Federation, Noxus, the spiritual being that brings justice to evildoers, and Trace, the evil Kriken that will do anything to find a world to conquer.

All of these hunters traveled to the Alimbic Cluster to search for eight Octoliths, the key to the Ultimate Power. The Octoliths were spread out across two planets and two space stations; Alinos, the fiery planet with many remains of ancient Alimbic ruins, Arcterra, the frozen planet, Celestial Archives, a station partially destroyed by a giant impact, and Vesper Defense Outpost, a weapons storage and development facility frozen over by a toxic spill. The Octoliths were sealed in another dimension, in rooms known as Stronghold Voids. It required three artifacts to access each Stronghold Void. The two strongest Alimbic machines guarded the Octoliths, known as Cretaphid and Slench. Once Samus defeated the creatures, their Octolith was hers. However, it would also activate the Alimbic defense system, and she had to escape within a certain time limit, defeating Alimbic Guardians along the way, or risk being instantly destroyed. There was also the risk of other hunters stealing Samus' Octoliths and having to track the hunters down to retrieve them.

Once Samus retrieved all eight Octoliths and upgraded her arm cannon fully, she returned to Alinos to get her reward, the Ultimate Power - but things were not as simple as they seemed. She activated the Alimbic Cannon, but instead of helping her, it freed the prison ship Oubliette from the Infinity Void, holding an immensely evil creature, Gorea. Gorea was the one who truly sent the telepathic message - it was a trick. Samus traveled to the Oubliette to stop this great evil.

When Samus first encountered Gorea, to her surprise, the six other hunters were all there shooting every last bit of firepower they had, in hopes of freeing what they thought was the Ultimate Power from a shell-like prison, but it did nothing to Gorea. The "shell" turned out the be the Seal Sphere, which Gorea then retrieved. The creature lashed out six tentacles, stealing the hunters' weaponry, then left them for dead. Samus defeated Gorea after a tough battle, but after shooting some symbols on a wall in a specific order, Gorea was revived and Samus was transported to another battlefield, for one last battle with Gorea. Samus used the powerful Alimbic weapon called the Omega Cannon to defeat it once and for all, its subsequent explosion destroying Oubliette. Samus escaped in her gunship, along with another six ships - the other hunters appeared to have survived. The Alimbics appeared, telepathically thanking Samus for what she did, and Samus warped away in her gunship.

Hunters

Samus Aran

  Alt form: Morph Ball
  Weapon of Choice: Missile Launcher

Trace

  Alt form: Triskelion
  Weapon of Choice: Imperialist

Weavel

  Alt form: Half Turret
  Weapon of Choice: Battlehammer

Sylux

  Alt form: Lockjaw
  Weapon of Choice: Shock Coil

Spire

  Alt form: Dialanche
  Weapon of Choice: Magmaul

Noxus

  Alt form: Vhoscythe
  Weapon of Choice: Judicator

Kanden

  Alt form: Stinglarva
  Weapon of Choice: Volt Driver

Echoes

The events of this section are from Metroid Prime 2: Echoes

Some time later the Galactic Federation contacted Samus, hiring her for a search and rescue mission. Federation troops pursuing a pirate vessel had gone missing on an alien world and Samus was to seek out any survivors. Tracking their last known signal, she came across the strange planet covered by a dark cloud called Aether. Upon entering the atmosphere, Samus’s gunship was struck by a powerful burst of lightning, disabling it and forcing her to crash land in a small cave somewhere on the planet. Exploration of the alien world revealed that the crashed marines had created a base, that was apparently short-lived, their forces decimated by never before seen creatures. As she worked through the remains of the makeshift base, she was attacked by the animated remains of a squad of federation soldiers. Soon, she came across a few stores of Phazon, and a creature in blue draining the phazon, nearly identical to her in appearance. This creature was Dark Samus, a being constructed from Samus’s lost Phazon suit, the remains of the defeated Metroid Prime, and even some of Samus’s own DNA.

This dark doppelgänger led her on a chase through a gate to a darker world, where she was attacked by strange creatures and had some of the equipment from her Varia Suit stolen and was forced back into Light Aether immediately afterward. When Samus escaped to the surface, she found the wrecked Federation ship, as well as the remains of the soldiers. The Ing revealed themselves to her and attacked. When she defeated them and acquired a missile launcher from the Federation’s equipment, she made her way to a structure much like a temple in the center.

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This was when she met the Luminoth, a species of beings that originally called the planet home, but now hid away in stasis pods until the day the Ing and Dark Aether would be no more. From their leader, she learned that because of a meteorite carrying Phazon crashing into the planet, strange creatures had formed called the Ing. A dark half of the planet was also formed, creating dimensional rifts that threatened to tear the planet in half, while poisoning anything organic that ventured in. They enlisted Samus’s aid to save their world, by pushing back the Ing and recovering the stolen light energy from Dark Aether. However, this would not be an easy task.

She traveled the lands of Aether, often warping to its dark twin, while the Ing continued to lead attacks against her and Dark Samus continued to hinder her path in any way it could. Samus would gather weapons and tools used by the Luminoth, compatible with her suit due to trade of technology with the Chozo, to fight the Ing, in the process encountering the Space Pirates and their failing Phazon mining expedition and eventually regaining her stolen equipment from certain Ing that had learned to use them.

When she managed to restore the 3 temples of light in Aether, the Luminoth gave her their ultimate creation, infusing her Power Armor with pure light, giving her the protection she would need to face Emperor Ing. After Samus defeated the Emperor Ing and recovered the last of Dark Aether’s planetary energy, Dark Aether started to collapse. However, Dark Samus refused to let her leave and, powered-up to the point of being unstable, attempted to destroy Samus. The real Samus prevailed by using her charge beam to redirect Dark Samus’s phazon attacks and quickly escaped from Dark Aether before it disappeared entirely.

With their world safe, the Luminoth were released from their stasis pods and gave their thanks to Samus as she returned their light power to them. Her ship finished its self-repair cycle, and she soon departed. However, the Metroid Prime life form proved to be resilient as ever, as while Samus was departing, blue particles resembling Phazon began assembling in the atmosphere of Aether, eventually retaking the form of Dark Samus.

Mission: Eradicate the Metroid species

The events of this section are from Metroid II: Return of Samus

With the Federation now aware of what Metroids were capable of, they hired Samus yet again. This time, they directed her to the uninhabited planet SR-388. It was this planet where it was believed the Chozo created the Metroids, though the knowledge of doing so and why was unknown at the time. Samus had to fight through the natural beasts and life that had become aggressive as of late due to the activity of the Metroid queen, as well as alter the environment to continue on her quest.

As she gathered more tools and weapons, she began to fight her way through the swarms of Metroids to face the queen, and in a difficult fight, eventually destroyed her. As she began to leave, she came across one last Metroid egg that hatched just as she arrived. The newborn Metroid mistook Samus for its mother and swarmed around her affectionately. Samus couldn’t bring herself to destroy the confused Metroid hatchling, despite it being the very last one on the planet. She ultimately decided to take it with her to the scientific research space colony Ceres to have it researched.

A return to the past

The events of this section are from Super Metroid

Very shortly after Samus left, the space colony was attacked. When she returned, she found the researchers dead at their stations and most of the systems down. As she searched the colony, she found the hatchling, and Ridley. There was a brief confrontation, during which Samus discovered she was underpowered to defeat this new Ridley. It escaped before she could recover the hatchling Metroid, and the self-destruct systems were set off.

In the aftermath of the station’s destruction, Ridley escaped to the closest planet, leading Samus right behind him. It was the former homeworld of Samus Aran and the Chozo that raised her: Zebes. Samus wandered the ruins of the planet, still charred and decaying from the time bomb the Mother Brain had detonated years before, discovering the ruins of the old Space Pirate base that she had explored on her last visit to Zebes. For some reason, it still had power. With the recovery of her old Morph Ball ability, full power was mysteriously restored to the facility. She discovered then that the Space Pirates had returned to salvage the remains of their base and begin their work again in secret.

Once more, Samus traveled the planet above and below the surface, searching through areas that were newly formed in the passing years for the Metroid hatchling, as well as the wreckage of the pirate Mothership from Samus’s last visit to the planet. Ancient weapons remained buried, protected by the guardians of the Space Pirates, but one by one, they fell, until only the Space Pirates’ revived leader remained: Mother Brain.

On the way through their planetside HQ, she found dried out remains of monsters and Space Pirates alike, completely drained of their life force. She was then attacked by a massive Metroid which started to drain of her life. It stopped before killing her and released her from its hold, floating a bit confused as if it recognized her, before running off. It was in fact the Metroid hatchling Samus had previously saved. Samus managed to get to a recharge station, taking the time to recover before seeking out Mother Brain’s chamber. The laser and lava trap having been restored, Samus fought her way through and shattered Mother Brain’s case, laying waste to the leader to destroy her once and for all.

Or so she thought. The containment case was destroyed as Mother Brain rose with a new exo-skeleton. Gigantic and fierce, Samus’s weapons had little effect on her. Mother Brain poured its mental power into a beam, which might have destroyed Samus completely had it not been for the interference of that massive Metroid, who attacked Mother Brain and drained her energy. Using the energy stolen from Mother Brain, the Metroid clung to Samus and began to transfer the energy into her body wanting to save its “mother”. Mother Brain refused to be put down though, and when she had regenerated, she began her attack, this time on the Metroid. With Samus’s health restored, the Metroid prepared to attack Mother Brain again, but one powerful blow struck the weakened Metroid down, destroying it completely. Infused with powerful energy from the deceased Metroid, Samus focused the new energy into her cannon, unleashing a powerful blast that Mother Brain could not defend against.

The final blow was struck, and Mother Brain was reduced to ash. Her death set off the self-destruct system, leaving Samus with only a few minutes to escape. With seconds to spare, saving the animals that had helped her along the way, she made it back to her ship and launched into space once more. This time, the destruction erupted straight from the core, and the entire planet was completely destroyed, leaving nothing but dust in the wake of the explosion as Samus took off into space with a chance to finally rest.

The new threat

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The events of this section are from Metroid Fusion

Time passed, and the Federation once more called upon Samus’s services. A seemingly simple assignment; escort researchers through SR-388. With the Metroids eradicated, there was nothing left to control the powerful, and previously unknown X Parasite. They attacked, with Samus doing her best to fend them off. Samus was defenseless against the parasite and, unbeknownst to her, Samus was infected. An evacuation of the planet was made, but Samus lost consciousness. Luckily an escape pod jettisoned Samus before her ship crashed into an asteroid. She was quickly taken to a nearby Federation research station.

Before becoming infected, Samus did not have time to remove her Power Suit, which was still physically fused with her body. Doctors could only surgically remove portions of it. The parasite was gaining control little by little. In desperation, the doctors found that an infusion of Metroid DNA could not only resist the parasite, but kill it off completely.

Samus made a rapid recovery, but was left permanently infused with the cell structure of the Metroid, the very species she had hunted to extinction. The Federation gave her a new space ship, provided that she followed the orders of her new commanding officer, an artificial intelligence built into the ship’s computer. She nicknamed the computer “Adam”, in remembrance of a previous CO she served under during her time in the Federation.

Samus was immediately given a new mission: to investigate the cause of a mysterious explosion back on the space station. When she arrived, a strange power surge prevented her from leaving. Samus still had a job to do, and began to explore the dead space station under the guidance of Adam. Then came the frightening discovery: The X Parasite that had infected her Power Suit was now controlling the remains of her suit, containing all of the strength she had when she last left SR388. The X Parasite had set off a Power Bomb in the lab containing the X parasites, freeing them. She was trapped on the station with a rapidly reproducing parasite that controlled all of the systems as well as her most powerful armor.

However, she was not without hope. It was discovered that the Metroid cells infused within Samus could absorb X-Parasites to heal her or increase her abilities (much like the Chozo upgrades for her Power Suit). With a new hope, and the careful guidance of Adam, Samus sought to halt the spread of the parasite.

With strength comes weaknesses. Infused with the Metroid cells, which made her vulnerable to ice, the Parasite mimicking her, now dubbed the SA-X, sought to destroy her at every possible turn. Shortly, however, the tables began to turn as Samus slowly reclaimed many of her former abilities and even attained some new ones such as the Diffusion missile. As Samus becomes more powerful however, Adam begins to act suspiciously critical of Samus’s progress. After seeking out the SA-X, Samus stumbled upon a terrible secret: The Federation had been running a Metroid cloning and breeding program. On the way out, the SA-X had sought out its natural predator, and Samus escaped from this small research lab, jettisoning it from the station along with the Metroids and SA-X inside. It was then she found out the SA-X had replicated itself, and there were as many as ten throughout the station. And then, she found out the Federation was coming to capture the SA-X and the rest of its brethren. Samus decided it would be best to destroy the station entirely. On her way to the bridge, she is suddenlly trapped in a room by Adam, whom as Samus suspected was following orders to keep Samus in line and make sure the Federation’s Metroid research remained secret. Adam tells her that she had progressed far beyond the point she was supposed to go, as Samus wasn’t supposed to attain the Plasma Beam and other powerful abilities as she would be nearly powerful enough destroy the X. Samus then receives a chilling message from a shadowy figure, a representative of the Federation who warns Samus not to take matters into her own hands by destroying the station. Samus knows that the coming Federation crews will be no match for the X and will only be used by the parasites to spread throughout the galaxy. Her warnings to the Federation authorities falling on deaf ears, Samus vows to somehow destroy the station in defiance. Afterwards, Adam apoligizes to Samus for trapping her. Enraged, Samus responds by saying that the AI is nothing more than a souless machine incapable of living up to the real Adam. Shortly after this, Adam releases the locks and tells Samus to hurry to the control room much to her surprise. After a moment, she realizes Adam’s AI is in fact the real Adam Malkovich’s personality and memories.

Samus and Adam discover a way to totally destroy the station: by setting its course to plow into SR-388’s atmosphere and self-destruct, the planet and station would be vaporized ending the X threat once and for all. Once she had enough strength, she proceeded to the control room in order to do this, but before she could, she was ambushed by the SA-X for one last battle. Even with all of Samus’s new abilities, the two are nearly dead even in capability. After a desperate battle, Samus manages to come out the victor, but the Core-X of the SA-X manages to escape before she can fuse with it. Finally in the control room, Samus sets a collision course for SR-388 and makes her escape to her ship before the destruction of the station.

When she finally reaches the port however, the ship is nowhere to be seen. Suddenly, one of the Metroids which had escaped the lab attacked her. With nowhere to run, Samus is forced to fight the powerful Omega Metroid. Unable to defeat it in her present form, the X Parasite that inhabited her Power Suit came and once again formed the SA-X. Although the SA-X manages to hurt its natural enemy with its Ice Beam, it too is incapable of killing it and is defeated promptly. The SA-X’s core is exposed upon its defeat, and Samus merges with it finally reclaiming her former power in the form of the Omega Suit. Reunited with the Ice Beam, Samus is finally able to destroy the Omega Metroid. With the Metroid destroyed, Adam and the ship promptly arrive on scene and rescue Samus just in time before the destruction of the station. Explaining that the ship had no choice but to lift off because of the Omega Metroid, Samus sees that she owes her survival to her old friends the Etecoons and Dachoras.

From here, Samus’s fate is uncertain. It is possible that the Federation may now view Samus as one of their greatest assets or as a major threat. As for Samus, she is unlikely to forget the Federation’s numerous transgressions such as experimenting with Metroids and other risky bio-weaponry or their apparent betrayal. So far, no further installments in the series have taken place, although it is not unlikely that this post-Fusion Samus will make another appearance.

The rumored Metroid Dread is said to be a direct sequel, but little official evidence of the title’s existence has appeared and some believe it to have been cancelled, although some claim it to be in development.

Appearances in games

Image:Samus Aran Sprites (small).gif The following Metroid games have featured Samus Aran as the main character (Not including re-releases or demos, and also presented in apparent chronological order where applicable):

1. Metroid (1986, NES, FDS)
2. Metroid: Zero Mission (2004, Game Boy Advance) (Expanded remake of Metroid, counted canon while retconning the original version)
3. Metroid Prime (2002, GameCube)
4. Metroid Prime Pinball (2005, Nintendo DS) (Metroid Prime in pinball form)
5. Metroid Prime: Hunters (2006, Nintendo DS) set in-between Prime 1 and 2.)
6. Metroid Prime 2: Echoes (2004, GameCube)
7. Metroid II: Return of Samus ( 1991, Game Boy)
8. Super Metroid (1994, SNES)
9. Metroid Fusion (2002, Game Boy Advance) (released simultaneously with Prime)

Image:Motherbrain.JPG Samus has also made appearances in other Nintendo games (listed in order of North American release):

1. Famicom Wars (1988) (Unreleased outside Japan) [1]
2. Nintendo’s Tetris (1989, NES) (Cameo, appears playing the cello after the player wins a B-type game of level at least 9 and height at least 2.) [2]
3. F-1 Race [3]
4. Galactic Pinball (Virtual Boy) (Cameo, her ship appears in a minigame) [4]
5. Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars (1996, SNES) (Cameo, appears sleeping in Mushroom Kingdom and says “I’m resting up for Mother Brain,” and a Samus action figure can be found in a toybox [5])
6. Kirby Super Star (1996, SNES) (Cameo, when Kirby uses his rock defense he can become a Samus statue) [6]
7. Kirby’s Dream Land 3 (1997, SNES) (Cameo, appears after a world filled with Metroids) [7] [8]
8. Super Smash Bros. (1999, N64) (Playable character)
9. Super Smash Bros. Melee (2001, GameCube) (Playable character)
10. WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgame$ (2003, GameCube) (Contains a microgame based on NES Metroid)
11. WarioWare: Touched! (2005, Nintendo DS) (Contains a microgame based on NES Metroid)
12. WarioWare: Twisted! (2005, Game Boy Advance) (Contains two microgames based on NES Metroid)
13. Animal Crossing: Wild World (2005, Nintendo DS) (Gulliver, the seagull, references Samus when he says, “Tell me, have you ever heard of the bounty hunter that can turn into a ball?”)
14. Geist (2005) (Samus’s helmet is seen in a women’s locker room[9]).
15. Tetris DS (2006, Nintendo DS)

Samus in the Super Smash Bros. series

Image:Samus Aran SSBM.jpg In the game Super Smash Bros., Samus is a heavy aerial fighter, her weight being exceeded only by heavyweights like Donkey Kong. Her flying kicks are among the most powerful in the game. In addition, she can use an array of projectiles inspired by her weapons from the Metroid series, including the Power Beam, Screw Attack, and Morph Ball Bombs. In Super Smash Bros. Melee, Samus is designed for defensive play and setting traps. Her powerful projectile weapons and simple but brutal melee moves help her excel at this, and her trademark Screw Attack and Bomb abilities allow her to escape many predicaments. New attacks include her standard missile and a less powerful homing missile. Continuing the tradition of Metroid games, she has no spoken dialogue lines.

Because of the extreme power and range of her charged beam, in addition to her incapacitating bombs and missiles, Samus is one of the most powerful characters in Smash Bros. She is a favorite of rookie players because her charged shot allows her to remain away from frays long enough to charge a shot and simply fire it into a mass of opponents and hope for the best.

Other appearances

Samus was also a semi-regular character in the Captain N: The Game Master comic books from Valiant Comics, published as part of the Nintendo Comics System. In these comics, Samus, who did not appear in the animated series the comic was based on (even though Mother Brain was the show’s primary villain; Jeffrey Scott claimed in an interview that he didn’t feature Samus in the cartoon because he didn’t know who she was), filled in the void left by Simon Belmont and Mega Man, who did not appear in the comic due to the characters being owned by Konami and Capcom, respectively. In these stories, Samus has romantic feelings for Kevin Keene, despite his own affections for Princess Lana. However, as she states in the story “Breakout”, she’d prefer to win Kevin’s affections fairly.

Samus also starred in her own comic story, apparently set in the same continuity, titled “Deceit du Jour”; it was the only ten-page story to have the Metroid umbrella title. In this story, Samus duels with another bounty hunter, “Big Time” Brannigan, whom Mother Brain has hired to capture her, and who claims to be just as efficient as Samus. In the end, Samus proves her superiority by sabotaging her own Arm cannon before handing it over to Big Time. When Big Time attempts to kill her with it later on, it explodes, covering Samus’s escape.

Samus also starred in two Metroid adaptations featured in Nintendo Power:a 60-page one for Super Metroid[10] and a 24-page one for Metroid Prime[11]. In the Super Metroid comic, Samus had purple hair instead of blonde, and for years Samus’s true hair color was disputed, particularly since it had been brown in the original game when she fought without a suit, but was green when she had the Varia Suit while armorless. She appeared to have blonde hair in later games.

References

• Rag, Koran (2004). “Metroid Prime Chozo Lore FAQ”. Accessed July 4, 2005.

External links

• Samus cameos

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