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  • And what about that arm cannon? How does Samus get through life with only one hand?
    • Samus has two hands in perfect working order underneath her suit. Her suit's free hand has boosted abilities to help make up for being the only real hand on it (this is implied to be the point behind the Power Grip, an item which recently debuted in Zero Mission, allowing her to grab ledges and pull herself up.)
    • In the Prime Trilogy, there is an X-Ray Visor that allows us to clearly see the bones of Samus's right arm and hand under the cannon. It shows that Samus can select different beams by moving her right hand into different positions. The original Metroid Prime has the beam icons show the hand position required to activate that beam.
    • Plus, of course, even if she did only have one hand, many people get through life with this handicap. Some with specialised and advanced prostethics, some without, and some even with tools attached to stumps (I saw someone who may have been a war veteran who had pliers or something on his). Also, if you want further evidence that she has two hands, look no further than the Zero Suit (or any of the bonus endings where she removes the Power Suit).
  • How can Samus be 6'3 and weigh 198lbs with her Barbie Doll physique?
    • That's a possible weight for someone that height, some track runners are like that. Samus may not be drawn completely accurate but that can be attributed to the weird art style. NWA Women's champion Susan Green, for an athlete of a different sport, was only six foot one and not bulky but weighed in at 210 lbs. Assuming similar frames, a skinnier person two inches taller could easily be 198 lbs with a healthy diet and regular exercise.
    • 6'3" and 198lbs is a BMI of around 24.7, which is considered normal.
    • Moreover, the only place her height and weight are mentioned is in the Metroid II manual, which displays 190 cm, 90 kg (6'3, 198 lb) next to a picture of the suit while also describing its various functions. It's possible that the 190 cm/90 kg represents the armour alone, and Samus' own height and weight are a mystery. One person said she's 5'11, 148lbs but did not source it.
      • Nintendo's official strategy guide for Super Metroid also states she's 6'3 and 198lbs.
      • The Nintendo Power Player's Guide mis-typed, and this has been repeatedly confirmed by Nintendo itself. All specs given from the development teams have always been on the suit itself as 190 cm(6'3) and 90 kg(198-200 lbs), never Samus. Being that you have to account for internal foot lift of two to three inches at the pad, another inch and a half to two inches for the armour boot heel, and then an inch to inch and a half armour thickness, and you get a needed five to six inches required allowance that she has to be smaller than the suit for a snug fit. So Samus herself is no more than 5'9, 5'10 pushing it, which is still a respectably tall height for a woman of implied Irish descent.
      • What is the "pad" in this context? How is it different from the boot heel? And the final part, I guess that also accounts for the "height" of the lid of the helmet over the top of her head?
      • So the suit is 6'3, made of metal and weighs 198 pounds? Makes sense, if it's especially thin, if its cybernetic elements and armaments are impossibly light. But those are bigger assumptions than just going with 6'3 198 matching up with expected human BMI and Super Metroid Samus not being a thin waif meaning she very well could weigh as much at that height. Of course that would also put armoured Samus between 6'5 and 6'7. Either way, Samus taller than the average man anyway you try to slice it. Even if you think "without the power suit" and "personal data" are both typos, the suit only allows for about four inches of extra height. Samus outside of the power suit is 5'11 at minimum, 6'3 at maximum unless the illustration is a typo as well.
    • Here's another headscratcher regarding her height; if Samus is 6'3", how freaking TALL must Anthony Higgs be, considering he's about a head or so taller? The Metroid Wiki even lists his height as "at least 7 to 8" feet...are GF Troopers on steroids or something? Adam and the rest of the 07th also seem slightly taller than her, though I'm willing to write that off as an artifact of the perspective in some of the cutscenes.
      • Or the Galactic Federation could be doing something to get stronger marines. Maybe a supersoldier serum, maybe genetic engineering. We already know the Federation ain't exactly squeaky clean in the bioweapons department, so it wouldn't exactly be a shock if they were.
      • Maybe Sakamoto just wasn't comfortable with the idea of a woman being taller than the men in her company?
      • Sure, that's the reason.
    • In Metroid Prime 3 she's the same height or taller than most Galactic Federation personnel but shorter than the other bounty hunters. Since it's the future, maybe people are just taller on average than they are now?
      • Well, the other bounty hunters aren't human, so...
      • I seem to remember reading somewhere, a number of years ago, that the average height of a human being has been gradually increasing over the centuries.
    • At the very least, the armour adds to her height quite noticeably. In "Other M," when inside the armour Samus towers over Adam Malkovich, but without the armour, she's a few inches shorter than him.
      • Which contradicts Zero Mission and Prime 2 where it didn't add much height(but a lot of bulk), and the in suit illustration from the Super Metroid guide, which can at most give her four inches. Now four inches isn't insignificant, but it's not noticeably shorter to suddenly towering over. It is even more apparent because the M suit has high heels while in previous titles it did not.
    • Also, don't forget that Samus's physiology is quite different from a regular human’s. It's possible she's simply a lot more dense.
      • Or less dense, making her weight less despite (apparently) increased muscle mass and function. Muscle is typically denser than fat, so someone with more muscle may actually weigh more than someone of the same height with more body fat who's actually overall larger. Also, when discussing "weight" in a science fiction series, you have to ask "what planet?" as weight is a function of mass affected by gravity. Earth's moon has one-quarter the gravity of Earth, so a 200-pound person on the moon would only weight 50 pounds, while their mass is unchanged. Samus may be less dense, and thus have less mass in kilograms than her 6'3" height and extremely athletic (even superhuman) musculature would imply, since a lot of her physique is apparently informed by her inFusion of Chozo DNA. And the Chozo are a bird people...
      • Planets are irrelevant to calculating weight so long as enough gravity is present to move a scale. The grams, pounds, what have you, they will always come out the same regardless of gravity so long as the scale still functions. The mass doesn't change. Planetary gravity becomes a factor when comparing how much effort it takes to move any given number of your unit of choice compared to a planet with different gravity (I lifted 200 pounds on the moon, which was like lifting fifty on the Earth).
  • How in the world could Samus curl up into a tiny ball like that?
    • She's converted into energy, as seen in the Prime series- you can sometimes see inside the ball, and all you see in there is a glow.
    • Is the pure energy thing canon? A more elegant handwave would be folded space; same reason her missiles come out of nowhere and her suit's shoulder joints are further apart than her own.
    • In the 2D games, the Morph Ball is exactly half Samus' standing height, which is quite plausible - a reasonably flexible human in the fetal position can fold him/herself down even a bit smaller than that. (I did the research and discovered that a 5'4" female folds down to about 2'6", 2'4" if she really pushes it.) Thus, the Morph Ball mod just reforms portions of the armour into a sphere around curled-up Samus, who's basically doing somersaults inside it. As for the Prime games, the Morph Ball looks teeny-tiny due to camera angle. If you roll right up against a door or some other object of regular height and watch the fold/unfold animations, the ball is still right around half her standing height.
      • Just to nitpick, the Super Metroid Morph Ball is somewhat less than 1/2 her height, because Samus is roughly 2.5 blocks high in that game.
      • Further nitpick: The morph ball is about half of Samus's normal height in the 3D games too. Any apparent difference is actually caused by the camera. If you carefully compare Samus's height with an object in the background, both in and out of morph ball form, you will see that the morph ball is close to half of Samus's normal height. The sweeping camera angle and zoom change when going in and out of morph ball causes some perspective distortion that make the morph ball look smaller when it actually isn't.
      • We get a great view in Metroid Prime. When she unlocks it, she curls up in a completely reasonable way, starts to spin quickly and glow, and then the two halves come to cover her. No contortions or folded space required.
    • Of note? According to the Metroid II game manual, Samus comes in at about 6'1". Yikes!
      • Incidentally, this would be a few inches shy of two meters. The canon diameter for the Morph Ball is one meter, so it actually adds up and even accounts for an inch or two of armour plating.
    • Here a screenshot of the Metroid Prime 3:Corruption menu screen. The Morph Ball is as big - in diameter - as her lower legs, which makes it too small to be just her folding up, not to mention her Shoulders of Doom. Screenshot: [1]
      • That's not to scale though. In both model comparison, the Prime game play and the 2-D games the Morph Ball is about half her height and according to Samus' data on the form it's about a meter in diameter. As said before, for a flexible person, that's not too out there. Though, the art in the original game manual seemed to suggest a Morph Balling (Maru Mariing?) person would be somersaulting everywhere...
      • Which brings up the question of how Samus doesn't throw up or become unable to stand after a few minutes in morph ball mode, and can steer. The first could be explained by gastric suppressants and intravenous feeding, the second could be explained by extensive training in a 3-d rotational scaffold to the point where she uses visual cues rather than cochleal equilibrium (and both can be explained by a thin shell forming around her and rotating while she herself remains stationary). However, the only ways I can think of that she might possibly be able to steer are a camera mounted on an arm that's anchored on the axle, which is obviously not the case, or a controller/joystick and screen with stationary camera that works similarly to the x-ray visor, which begs the question of why she would need to find the x-ray visor if it's already usable in morph ball mode, and could probably be adapted for the main suit or, in some cases, find something with the morph ball camera then switch to suit mode.
      • Well, although I'm personally in favour of the ghost/energy/spatial folding explanations, it’s possible that instead of constantly flipping inside the ball, she could be in a stationary position and there could be an outer layer which does all the spinning, and she navigates via her external sensors.
      • A theory I'm fond of is the "ghost" theory. We know that souls exist in Metroid (Chozo Ghosts, the Metroid feeding mechanism). I figure that the Morph Ball turns Samus' body into energy, and at the same time anchors her soul to the suit. She'd essentially treat the suit like a football or an R/C car, moving it forward and following along. It even makes the 3rd person perspective while morphed technically 1st person, although granted that still doesn't explain the Screw Attack perspective shift. Baseless speculation? Absolutely. But I think it fits with the Bryyonian Lord of Science claim that the Chozo were technomancers.
      • I once read somewhere that the morph ball was originally a Chozo meditation technique, so it's possible Samus can give herself a limited out-of-body-experience. Handily explains the morph ball, screw attack, and 2-D perspective.
      • That explanation's from the Bob and George fancomic Metroid: Third Derivative, which is decidedly Fanon, even if the author did get a surprising amount of things right about Prime 3.
    • In Prime 1, when you are in the Chozo Ruins, the exact spot where you obtain the Charge Beam, you can scan the small tunnels. The scan says they have a diameter of 1 meter, and since the Morph Ball fits in with a little room to spare, it can't be much bigger than 90cm.
    • This is lampshaded in-universe when the Space Pirates try to copy the technology, and end up horribly twisting and crushing their test subjects. Presumably yes, her body is converted into energy, probably using the same technology that gives her a Hyperspace Arsenal.
    • Weirdly, I've been noticing more and more how it's generally done in cutscenes: Notably the Hunters opening cinematic (Where she Springballs up, chinning a Space Pirate, before uncurling at the apex of the jump) and the Item Get! for the Boost Ball in Corruption. Samus tucks herself up in a fetal position and the ball forms around her. Yes, there's always a conversion into energy present, but the ball appears to be a shell around her rather than the suit itself transforming into one.
      • Other M has Samus actually shift into green energies that materialise into the Morph Ball though. Now a scary thought is what happens if Samus has a panic-attack like she did when facing Ridley... while in Morph Ball mode.
    • It makes a lot of sense that the shift into energy means she isn’t subjected to sickness due to rotating, as she would be if she were actually curled up (unless she’s held stationary while the ball around her rotates, but still, energy means she wouldn’t even feel shocks from bumping and bouncing around).
  • The shoulders. Particularly bad in Prime 3 because there are GF troopers to compare with... and the male troopers, also wearing powered armour, are much narrower across the shoulders than Samus' suit. The rendition of the Fusion Suit in SSBB is also particularly bad, since it doesn't have the usual giant shoulder pads and other bits of decoration which help distract from the width of the shoulder joints.
    • Agreed. The original Power Suit isn't bad in any of its appearances, and even if you look at the sprite change from Zero to Power/Varia in Zero Mission, the shoulder spacing remains approximately equal if you account for the extra armour at the shoulders (pay attention to the angle of her upper arms, it's just about the same). On the other hand, the Fusion Suit's shoulders are so broad as to be ridiculous, and unlike the other suits, the Fusion model can't claim that the spread is due to shoulder pads, armour layers or anything else. Apparently the X parasite doomed Samus to a lifetime of crippling musculoskeletal issues.
    • See this picture from the Metroid Wiki for a nice x-ray view of the suit that actually makes sense when it comes to shoulders. The sleeker Prime look, though? No idea.
      • There exists a cross section of the Prime suit, and I recall it showing that Samus' armpits are actually a good deal above the joint of the upper arm armour and flank.
  • How can the Galactic Federation seem so helpless to the Space Pirates in a good portion of the Metroid games, but somehow stepped up and kick ass as much as Samus in the third Prime game? I wouldn't say that since they could use Phazon as a weapon that they suddenly gained courage to fight harder because I saw many non-Phazon troopers fight just as much.
    • It might be because most of the games take place in cramped tunnels over a wide variety of environmental conditions with obstacles requiring massive and diverse firepower to overcome, not to mention extreme vertical mobility and the ability to turn into a 1-foot diameter sphere. If I remember correctly, the troopers in MP3 were nowhere to be found when it came to jumping around on platforms over an endless abyss or wading through pools of fuel gel.
    • Maybe this will shed some light.
    • Another, more general reason might be due to the fact that the GF is tied down to defending their own settled planets, while the Space Pirates, being nomadic, are able to move with impunity through the rest of uncharted space. This would allow bands of Space Pirates to strike from virtually anywhere without having to worry overmuch about covering their own bases.
      • This was cited in the manual for the original Metroid as the reason for the Federation establishing bounty hunting in the first place.
      • Or perhaps sanctioning it?
    • GF Troopers are war machines, plain and simple. They are designed, trained and equipped to fight medium and large scale battles and be victorious through superior tactics and numbers, if not technology. When Samus encounters them (and watches them die a lot), they're usually isolated or pinned down, which is always a bad situation. Samus is called in for missions where a) the situation is unknown, b) a large scale attack would be catastrophic, or c) her expertise in a particular field is well-known (Space Pirates, Metroids, Phazon). In short, GF Troopers are dedicated to straight-up action. Samus is dedicated to straight-up infiltration and sabotage, as well as recon.
    • You're not giving the Galactic Federation enough credit. They're unfortunately victim to the Worf Effect, but most of the circumstances you've found the troopers in are incredibly bad situations. But consider the few circumstances where you did see GF Troopers fight: the recording of their last stand against the Ing had very sound tactics and were taking out of a good deal of Ing, but were eventually overwhelmed. Even a fully-upgraded Samus would've been screwed against that much Ing at once. And there's one circumstance where you find a Galactic Trooper corpse, and that's right before Kraid, which means they were capable of getting that far. And... of course, their showing in Corruption.
    • That being (the corpse before Kraid’s lair in Super Metroid) may or may not have been a GF Trooper. It exists pretty much purely as a warning to Samus and the player, and for speculation as to its identity (we really don’t even know its gender, or species beyond it appearing to be bipedal and humanoid).
      • "Even a fully-upgraded Samus would've been screwed against that much Ing at once." You're not giving Samus enough credit. Maybe if they were all of Warrior and/or Hunter class and Samus was intentionally putting as little effort into fighting them as possible. The ones that wiped out the marines on Aether were Dark Splinters, and Samus was able to wipe out a good deal of them at once near the beginning of the game after having been robbed of many of her abilities.
  • If they have an Anti-Phazon vaccine capable of reviving the Aurora Units, BIOLOGICAL supercomputers, why not use it on the Hunters, or at least Samus, once it's clear that the Phazon inside her leads to Corruption ?
    • Because Phazon is the only way to beat Dark Samus. I think they even say that that's the only reason that they kept the suit on, because the risk of corruption was worth it to beat the Big Bad.
    • The vaccine I believe is not the same kind you would use to cure a person. Think of the vaccine for the AUs like using an antivirus on your computer. Also, remember that the medic tells Samus that the Phazon in the hunters' bodies didn't pose any threat at first, so they could use it to go into hyper mode at any time. They only realised the dangers later after Samus first experiences Phazon overload on Bryyo and concluded that the same thing probably happened to the other hunters. On top of that, the Phazon in Samus and the others came directly from Dark Samus, so it's safe to assume that she (Dark Samus) would try to control the hunters once they were weakened by too much Phazon use.
      • The briefing with AU 242 mentions that the Federation's own security protocols brought down the network to limit the damage from the virus.
    • Different poisons work differently on different species. A virus that kills mold probably won't hurt jellyfish. The virus was made to take down Aurora units, not augmented humans in adaptive exoskeleton power suits. The Federation had plenty of time to come up with a cure for their computers, they didn't have time for Samus, plus Samus's condition, while dangerous to her own health, was still beneficial to a Federation in crisis.
  • Speaking of the Aurora Units, just how in the hey does 217 and 242 have impenetrable glass shields from Samus's weaponry? I know [from reading the manga] that Mother Brain had protection from the Zebetite shields (their vulnerability appeared to be explosives). And what about when the pirate team salvaged 313? Did they use high-yield explosives to pull him out?
    • Since they took out a battle ship, yes. Samus wouldn't be able to damage to Aurora's tank anyway. It was important to gameplay. Games with a story typically don't let your character kill innocent people, especially if they are important to beating the game.
  • And for that matter, why does Samus just lose all upgrades whilst somehow escaping from the exploding Phaaze OFFSCREEN, most of them lost technology to begin with? Her Power Suit may be the epitome of adaptable technology and protection, but it loses all upgrades when a bee just touches it. Maybe that's why the Chozo scattered 20 million upgrades all over any and all galaxies.
    • I've always thought that all loss of technology (when the suit isn't damaged) was down to Samus having to turn her equipment over to the Galactic Federation (they would be important artifacts from a lost civilisation after all). The differences in what equipment she keeps could be down to how well negotiations to keep equipment go. In addition to this, given that she's a bounty hunter maybe she needs to sell some of her equipment once in a while for beer money.
    • There's an easier explanation, at least as long as you don't succumb to Fridge Logic: Samus's suit is modular, therefore she doesn't equip the modules that she doesn't need. Of course, you'll run into "why doesn't she keep the gravity suit" etc, but that can also be explained as the suit having limited expansion ports. So, she doesn't equip the gravity suit in MP2 because her planet scans don't find any water to traverse. Then, if you really want to stretch it, since she has in the past run into the unfortunate circumstance of having her equipment stolen/destroyed, maybe she just doesn't want to run into that again.
    • That specific example doesn’t really work though, because there was definitely water in Aether. Instead, she ended up using the Gravity Booster.
    • Along the same lines, some of her upgrades might not be legal in more settled parts of the universe. Carrying a gun in public is one thing, but running around with a flamethrower, several hundred missiles and a dozen or so tactical nuclear devices would probably cause a stink. She might be abandoning or selling the heavier stuff to avoid trouble with the authorities.
    • The wanting to avoid it getting stolen part makes the most sense. Remember how hard the Boost Guardian and Spider Guardian were in Prime 2? That's the kind of thing a sufficiently advanced race can do with Chozo tech, and she's genre savvy enough to know that she tends to get things stolen or lost when in a new place. She gets rid of as much as possible, so that she doesn't have to deal with, say, reverse-engineered-and-upgraded plasma beam-equipped enemies when her stuff gets nicked. The downside of modular design, after all, is that it can be easily detached as well as attached.
    • For Prime 3, most of the upgrades she got were used in conjunction with the PED. Because destroying Phaaze destroyed all of the Phazon in the universe, these upgrades were worthless as they ran on Phazon. Maybe she kept the stuff like Ice Missiles and Grapple Beam, and the inevitable next game will explain how she loses them in time for Metroid II. As for the Varia Suit, that and the Morph Ball/Bombs are typically her "standard" equipment. She loses the Varia suit only in Prime 1, and that's because of a malfunction. You see her in the Varia suit at the end of Prime 3.
      • And yet, she promptly loses it in time for Metroid II.
    • In Metroid Prime the Chozo Lore describes Samus's equipment as ancient weapons. Acquiring a plasma wave is the equivalent of digging through some ancient ruins and finding a knife. The Chozo giving the screw attack to the Reptilicus would be like you showing someone a wheel. The Chozo have advanced for better things and most of the creatures they left behind aren't smart enough to make use of what they left behind. That old knife you find? It'll probably break because its so old, so her ancient powerups likely tend to wear out.
    • Maybe she sells them to Chozo-dedicated museums or something?
    • She leaves it all back at the Samus Cave and just travels with what she needs? If she does need anything that got left behind... well, the Chozo left their spare Power Suit parts EVERYWHERE for just such an event (I doubt Samus would sell any of it, don't want any of that stuff in the wrong hands if you can help it).
  • How do the Luminoth walk through their own doors? They're clearly twice as tall as Samus.
    • Mad Limbo skills.
    • Since U-Mos floats, they don't need to walk through.
      • Wait, what? "He's too big to walk through the door!" "Oh, that's easy. He flies through instead." That said, having seen him kneel before Samus, he is bendy.
      • Actually, the "he flies through" it does make sense. It's just poorly explained. The issue is that he's too tall to fit through the door, not too big. If he can fly, he can likely fly parallel to the ground so that he can now fit through.
  • Similarly, why do the Space Pirates have doors in their bases which they have no way of opening?
    • Samus opens doors by shooting them which, I'm assuming, isn't the normal, proper way of operating a security door. The pirates presumably have swipe cards or retina scans or RFID tags or something to let the doors know when someone authorised is trying to get through. Shooting them simply serves as a manual override, and as Metroid Prime indicates, the material of the door determines what kind of stimulus will cause a short in the "door go open now" circuit.
      • So that explains why they take so long to open.
      • Actually that's really just load-times, but let's go with that. The doors do need clearance in Fusion though so it is not entirely without precedent.
      • Actually, Prime makes it pretty clear that there's a force-field blocking the doors, that's vulnerable to only one type of energy, and shooting it with exactly that type of energy will cause the force-field to deactivate. It's pretty safe to assume, at least in more technologically advanced areas, that there's a sensor that detects when the force-field deactivates, and unless done properly, "thinks" there's an emergency, in the room, and opens the door so anyone inside can get to safety. It's not unthinkable. The force-field also explains why shots that aren't effective bounce off.
  • Why does the Morph Ball attract small flying bugs?
    • Why not?
    • Probably because it glows. What would be really cool is if they flew through the gap between the two armour halves, and the ball of energy in the center fried them like a bug zapper.
    • Because bugs in dark places seek any source of light there is. In most areas with small, harmless bugs, there's not too much light, so the Morph Ball becomes the brightest light in the room.
  • Anyone else notice that Samus' armour isn't radiopaque? In both Prime and Prime 3, you can clearly see the bones in her hands and arms through her armour with the X-ray visor. How she hasn't died of radiation poisoning multiple times over, I cannot begin to guess - a material that can't stop low-energy X-rays certainly won't be stopping anything higher-energy, such as neutrons, high-energy X-rays or gamma rays, and might not even be able to deal with beta particles. Oops.
    • "X-Ray Visor" is probably a misnomer, and it likely uses something much more advanced.
    • Okay, I'll bite. 1) What form of radiation is the visor detecting that can penetrate armour plate but not bone? 2) Why doesn't it penetrate any other metal in the environment? 3) Why doesn't it penetrate the Pirates' armour? Bonus points for not using Applied Phlebotinum.
    • The Pirates don't have endo-skeletons, just the enhanced exo-skeletons. No bones to see in them.
    • It's a very advanced MRI, mmkay?
    • Theres no "probably" about it. Quite simply X-Rays do not work that way. Think about every time you've ever had an X-Ray. The doctor wasn't able to see an image of you in some kind of monitor on the machine. Instead, X-Rays capable of passing through flesh but not bone are projected through you and onto a photographic film. A major property of X-Rays is that they develop photographic film, which is how they get an image of the skeletal structure. The reason they are shown like that in fiction is because people associate X-Rays with being able to see through things. MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) does allow one to see through things, and is used for procedures where X-Rays would be unfeasible or dangerous (such as scanning the brain for tumours or aneurysms). It’s either that, or some fictional kind of radiation with properties that allow it to see through armour but not bone (maybe the electron structure of calcium ions or something), as well as being highly reflective, so that it will come back to the visor after being emitted.
      • Though amusingly, Super got it right: the X-Ray Scope in that game is apparently a backscatter X-ray device, as it shines X-rays in a given direction (you control where the beam goes) and shows back a grayscale reflection from whatever you're scanning.
    • Parodied here
    • The issues with the X-Ray visor seeing through armour but not bone can probably be answered fairly simply by her genetic modifications. Samus was infused with Chozo DNA. Her bones might have some traces of heavy metals in them that reinforce their structure while adding a small amount of weight, while also making them more reflective to x-rays. It would also explain how she survives the superfast elevators in Echoes.
    • What's bothering me is this: Who says that it has to use X-Rays to be called an X-Ray Visor. Its not like all those X-Ray goggles you hear so much about shoot out X-Rays. Why can't it be a highly advanced scanning system, allowing it to penetrate substances it is familiar with? Considering they have space stations and ships all over the galaxy that they can somehow get to at a moment’s notice, this seems plausible.
    • A Buddy of mine mentioned she would kill any organism she looked at it with...
    • How about this; It is indeed an advanced scanning system, and there's plenty of evidence for that as established in universe "X-Ray" is simply a slang term for a device that can see through things in that way.
    • The X-ray visor comes with a snapchat filter to show her bones?
  • I never understood why on earth they're called "Space Pirates." I mean, obviously they're pirates in space, but that seems to be the actual name of their species. I suppose this is understandable in the Federation's case, as their first contact with this species was probably an act of piracy, in space, but the Pirates themselves refer to themselves as such, meaning they either a) Named themselves the Space Pirates in the beginning in the hopes of one day venturing into space robbing stuff, or b) They had another name for themselves, but changed it when they heard about the Federation's new name for them, apparently thinking "Oh, our mortal enemies have come up with a moderately derogatory, if accurate name for us. Let us use that name from now on."
    • Maybe the GF marines are racist bastards.
    • It's to distinguish themselves from their rivals, the Space Ninjas.
      • You got your Space Trucker Cooking Opera in my Action-Adventure Platformer!
      • Their proper name is the Chozo, and you shall address them as such.
      • Or perhaps the Chozo are the Space Tengu, who taught Samus their style of Space Ninjutsu to better defeat Space Pirates.
    • They appear to be insectoid and aren't heard using dialogue in canon. Maybe their language, including their true name, isn't all that pronounceable?
      • They aren't insectoid, their armour just looks like that. When you see them without it they're clearly reptilian.
      • Yeah, I'm going with this. Perhaps "Space Pirate" is just what her translator says, and perhaps what other translators would say.
      • There is a creature scan in Corruption for "Urtragian Shriekbat", so they're Urtragians.
      • Ronald Urtrag, Gentleman Taxonomist, would like a word with you.
    • As a side note, I'm fond of the theory that, after they lost Pirate Homeworld (best planet name ever) to the Galactic Federation, they needed help. The Kihunters offered it. This caused a great deal of confusion for the Federation, as the Kihunters were also space pirates. In order to clear things up, they hastily named the original race after their sole remaining base. Thus, Super Metroid and Metroid Fusion call them "Zebesians".
    • "Space Pirates" could just be their syndicate name, and Zebesians are only the Space Pirates that come from Zebes. Ridley is a Space Pirate, and he looks nothing like his underlings. Likewise, Pirate Commandos look nothing like Pirate grunts. Maybe Pirate Homeworld is just the capital of a multi-species galactic criminal syndicate.
      • The Space pirates aren't a single species; they're a criminal empire made up of several different species. The Space Pirate mooks in the Prime series are a different species than the ones in the 2D games, which is why the former are reptilian while the latter are more insectile=crustacean. The 2D game Space Pirates are canonically called Zebesians, but they aren't FROM Zebes. They just appropriated the name after conquering it, the same way that most people who call themselves "American" are actually 100% European in all but place of birth.
      • Africa would like a word with you.
      • Most.
      • I'm pretty sure it's indeed confirmed that Space Pirates aren't one single species. They're one big crime organisation that calls itself the Space Pirates. So far there are three major Space Pirate types featured in the series. 1) Insectoid, better known as the Zebesians, appear in all the 2D games, Prime 2 and Other M. 2) Reptilian, featured in Prime 1. 3) Insect/Reptile hybrid, featured in Prime 3, though they may be the same as the regular reptilian variant, except less bulky. If they are a different species then it would explain why Elite Pirates and Berserker Knights look so different. Ridley is also of a completely different species than most other Space Pirates, same goes for Kraid. It's safe to assume that the Space Pirates are a syndicate of amoral species that work together.
      • It has already been confirmed in developer interviews that the Space Pirates "are" a single species. It's just that they are quite diverse (like dogs or humans, albeit far more exaggerated). It's also worth noting that they do perform genetic experiments on themselves in order to increase their combat ability, which might also further explain their visual diversity.
      • Uh, no, that just proves the pirates of Tallon IV are a single species. And even then, "designation geo form 187" suggest Ridley is a different species than the rest of them. Even assuming the Zebes, Aether and Tallon IV troopers, grunts and commandos are all the same species looking different due to genetic tampering, the KI Hunters and Draygon are still confirmed to be different species than them...although the latter two don't debut until Super Metroid further down the timeline, but the point stills stands.
    • Let's borrow a plot device from the Halo franchise. It's explained in Halo that the Forerunners had such advanced translation software, that it would actively learn the language of the individual reading a document, and translate the document accordingly, often using best-fit words in the event that a word for a specific thing isn't present (IE, referring to the specific Forerunners whose job it is to manage the gene sequences of all living creatures they'd discovered, "Life Workers,"). Maybe when Samus's scan visor is downloading Space Pirate lore in the Prime series, it's actively translating it, and it just inserts "Space Pirates" for lack of a better name for a space-faring conglomerate of thieves.

  • Also, is there a chance that Samus will regain her traditional armour in the next move forward in the series? The Fusion armour looked neat and all in the promotionals, but it looked kind of silly in the 3d rendering that Retro put in Prime.
    • Of course. The Fusion suit only looked like that because it was a regular suit that had been stripped down- she was in such a rush to get into action after her X-ectomy that she didn't have time to replace the removed parts which later became the SA-X, and during the game itself she was a bit preoccupied with weapons, ammo, and functional armour boosts (gravity suit, for example) to get bits that presumably add only extra defence and/or comfort. Presumably at some point before the next chronological game, she'll get new shoulder pads and an outer armour layer. The Chozo certainly seem to have left enough junk behind for her to replace pretty much anything, at any rate, if Prime 3 gives a reasonable sample of planets.
      • Prime 3 even outright suggests that there are still Chozo out there. Well, first off, in Prime 1, one of the last bits of Chozo lore you find is addressed directly to Samus, which implies that there was still at least one Chozo around to write it. But Prime 3 goes Sequel Hook-crazy with several logs implying that some survivors escaped from Tallon after most of the others got corrupted and died, though no one knows where they went.
      • The Tallon lore struck me more as prophecy. As in, "shit, we're going to die. But we can see the future, and we know that the Hatchling will be here one day. We even know the most likely circumstances. Let's leave her a message. Or twelve." Also, I'm going to have to scour read the Sky-Town lore again, because I don't remember anything implying that the Chozo survived.
      • Chozo survive, just not as Samus would know them. Lore specifically states they go beyond their old limits and leave. They come back when Phazon hits Tallon IV, but then end up leaving again when it starts making them go crazy.
      • If the Fusion suit is just her stripped-down Varia suit, then where did the arm serrations come from?
      • The arm spikes are supposed to be reminiscent of Metroid teeth and the three-eyed....thing is supposed to be reminiscent of the three "energy store" organs you can see inside the Metroids. Remember, her suit is at least partially biological, and was fused to her during the healing process. Both her and her suit have been heavily changed by the Metroid vaccine.
      • This Metroid-esque concept is further developed in Metroid Dread where, indeed, her suit changes from the Fusion design (and it is set after that game).
  • First off, how can Samus even fire that cannon, and then, better yet, why is it that it has a seemingly unlimited supply of ammunition?
    • I can answer the first one - as the X-Ray Visor in Prime shows, the trigger and ammo-choosing mechanisms are inside the cannon, nearby where Samus puts her hand.
    • Fanon says the right-side shoulder sphere contains a suspension and recoil-control mechanism. The left is just there for balance.
      • True energy weapons (that is, weapons that fire pure energy instead of kinetic energy with light energy properties) don't have any recoil. Samus's arm cannon seems to be a hybrid, firing a mix of light energy (the power cannon shots are certainly bright) and kinetic energy (given how the enemies recoil violently when dying and how Samus's arm cannon "bounces back" when fired in the Prime games), but there's no way of knowing just how much kinetic energy is involved in the actual shots. So...don't worry about it.
      • What do we know about her regular beam? The projectiles are very slow, very bright, and they cause her nozzle to smoke. Looks like some kind of hot fluid to me (fuel gel?).
      • Look carefully: that wavy effect isn't smoke, it's a mirage caused by excess heat coming off the barrel. Of course, that shouldn't happen in depressurised environments (Frigate Orpheon, GFS Valhalla) since there's no atmosphere to set up the convection effect, but oh well...
    • As for ammo, one theory is that the cannon uses the same matter/energy conversion tech as the Morph Ball. She converts ambient particles (in the atmosphere, for example) into the relevant energy for the beam (kinetic for the Power Beam, electric for Prime's wave beam, heat as a part of the Plasma Beam, etc.) and shoots that. It takes a very small amount of matter to create a comparatively huge amount of energy, so it seems as though she's got infinite ammo.
    • This also raises the question: What's stopping Samus from regenerating her shielding if she's got an infinite battery under the hood?
  • In Metroid Fusion, Samus is attacked by the X and, as she claims, some parts of her armour are surgically removed, radically altering her physical appearance. This is a way to explain how the Samus from Fusion is different from her Prime version... but how is possible that she turn from THIS to THIS?
    • Helpful hint: women can and do change their hairstyles. They have been known to change clothing, too. On the other hand, if you're referring to the rather plastic-looking rendering that's cropped up in the latter two Prime games and Super Smash Bros. Brawl, I'd chalk that up to Art De-evolution.
      • Also, if you examine some of the art closely, especially from Zero Mission, which has a similar art style to Fusion but uses the version of Samus you see in the Prime games, you'll notice she doesn't actually have bangs. What appears to be bangs is actually the hair over her face swept back into her ponytail. So if she let her hair out of the ponytail, it would probably fall straight down like in the Fusion artwork. I'll also note that most of the Fusion ending artwork was lifted straight from the supplementary manga which was only released in Japan so far, which accounts for some of the differences in art style. As for the surgery in Fusion "disfiguring" her, that was just a bad translation choice, since it was only meant in reference to the suit. Samus herself, as you can clearly see, is fine.
      • I always read the "disfiguring" comment as making the point that Samus, to quite a large extent, is her suit. It's as much a part of her self-image as her actual body.
      • Also, as it was a life-threatening operation, slicing off the parts with organic-interface components likely was disfiguring.
    • Also note that there are (supposedly) several intervening years between Zero Mission and Fusion. She's not even 20 in the former, and she could easily be 23 or older in the latter.
      • That's another part of the issue. Fusion is after the Prime series, and Melee and Brawl are supposed to use her character from Prime and Prime 3 (I think), whereas she looks potentially around nineteen in Fusion and... I'm not good with estimating ages, but at least mid-twenties in Prime 3 and Brawl.
      • Considering that canonically, Fusion is still the most recent game, I'd say Samus is probably at least approaching her thirties by the time of Fusion. I doubt it really matters considering it's the future and Samus is rather superhuman, I bet she'd still look fine into her fifties. But then again it's Japanese fiction, being 30 means you're a senior citizen.
      • The problem wasn't really that she seemed too young, it's that she seems to be aging in reverse, and pretty drastically. Her character models from the more recent games (including Prime, which doesn't have the problems the later-released games tend to have) all seem significantly older than both what should be her canonical age, and her art from Fusion.
  • On that subject, I’m long-haired and would like to know how she manages to fit all of that hair into her helmet and how it all falls out again without tangling or catching on something. Most people would shave their head under such circumstances.
    • Agreed. The ponytail isn't a bad option, but you'd think she would at least consider cutting it shorter. Or putting it in a bun, if she's that set on leaving it long.
      • The incredibly advanced technology of the suit is capable of preventing helmet hair.
      • Agreed. Think about it, considering HOW MUCH R&D dollars we already spend on penis pills, bust enhancement, and hair care products, there's no doubt much of modern-day hygienic troubles have been solved in the future! And then you add Chozo tech into the mix (at least for members of the military) and you have bodily maintenance that is quite possibly even easier than The Jetsons, even when in the midst of battle. See also Warhammer 40,000 or at least the Sisters anyway (since most of the men have standard military cuts.)
      • Also, even if the Federation didn't have the technology, the Chozo likely would have. Think about how uncomfortable it is to wear tight clothing over hair (swim cap, tights, corset, etc.). The Chozo were avian, and had FEATHERS EVERYWHERE. They would have found some way to make those suits comfy, or no-one would have worn them.
    • Also agreed. I've always thought the long blond hair didn't really go so well the 'this is not glamour-girl, this is a real warrior' vibe she had going on. The newer game does something about this.
  • I know I read in some game description or guide book that Samus had a living suit. This was supported in that the X of Metroid Fusion, who copy the DNA of their victims, could replicate the Power Suit down to the visor in under 5 seconds. But besides maybe the Ing being living things using her weapons, this really isn't shown as evidence anywhere else. Is it is or is it not?
    • Every piece of in-game exposition I've ever seen (scans, manuals) indicates that the Power Suit is a highly advanced cybernetic device with a few organic components; it is the latter that become infected in the beginning of Fusion.
      • Umm... I think that her suit thing was told by Sakamoto's FAQ (you can read it in Metroid Database) not the manga (and it would make sense why it always disappears when she dies)...
      • It doesn't disappear when she dies, she dies because it breaks, usually with mildly explosive results. Once the power shield breaks down or is overloaded, the physical part of the suit falls to pieces. At least in Fusion (the only one in which I have recently died, apart from the Gamecube port of the original), you can see the pieces flying apart as she convulses.
    • The X didn't replicate her entire suit, the pieces of her suit that got chopped off were shipped to BSL, and the X just replicated the organic portions. This is how the X got onboard BSL in the first place.
      • Yes they did, they replicated it ten times. A core X forms itself into a fully armoured Samus right before her eyes before taking on Omega Metroid.
      • Keeping in mind that in this series, Phazon can corrupt machines, and Ing can possess machines.. so might as well let X replicate machines too. Chozo statues anyone?
  • Doesn't anybody wonder how the "ice beam" can suspend an animal in midair? This goes way beyond Harmless Freezing in terms of physics violations.
    • Cartoon Physics? Rule of Cool (literally)?
    • My guess is that the ice beam can freeze enemies in midair by the use of anti-grav particles in the shot. Of course, this may get shot down rather quickly.
    • According to Hunters, the Judicator is near Absolute Zero (as in the lowest temperature theoretically possible in physics). Since the Ice Beam is better in every way, it presumably just broke physics rather spectacularly. Absolute freakin' Zero.
    • Alternatively, they mistranslated it from Chozo, and "Ice Beam" was actually supposed to be translated as "Freeze Ray"
    • For what it's worth, in Other M flying enemies hit with the freeze beem now freeze and clatter to the floor instead of staying aloft. Some shatter, some don't.
    • Rundas had the ability to generate ice and control the movement of the ice he generated. Metroid Fusion showed that several biological creatures had abilities similar to the power suits, such as Serris to the speed booster. The ice beam was likely based on Rundas's species, or at least off the same in story principle, and likely could have further upgrades to go beyond merely suspending things in air (and it does if you use the power bomb ice beam combo in Super Metroid).
    • Better yet, how is it possible that the Ice Beam works at all in Norfair's lava rooms? The rooms are so hot that Samus has to have a special suit just to survive the heat, but the heat doesn't melt the ice? And yet, enemies can stay frozen just as long as the other areas.
      • See, that's not true. I'm not sure about other games’ heated areas, but in Super Metroid, the Ice Beam actually does freeze enemies for a shorter time in Norfair than other areas.
      • So, the Ice Beam can beat physics as postulated above, but in superheated environments, the effect is lessened.
  • And what about THE BOMB in her Morph Ball mode... does she crap them? Of course, this is Badass, but still...
    • Let me just interject here and add that the idea of Samus rolling around and pooping out explosives is the funniest thing I've heard of in a long time.
    • Samus becomes energy in the morph ball. The bombs are made of energy. Samus is blowing you up with a piece of herself, and it's infinite; she's just that badass.
      • "You want a piece of me? Well, here you go!" (Personal theory: A small sample of charged explosive is dropped through the morph ball shell. Only a very small amount of the actual material is needed, and it's possible that it can be regenerated over time- for example, plant or protista matter [fungus is too Squick to suggest]. This or the limitation on charges is what keeps Samus from using more than three morph ball bombs in quick succession.)
      • Bombs in the Prime games look like they're actual electrical charges, maybe something like ball lightning. She might just have the Chozo version of a Tesla coil in there, again powered from suit energy stores; the three-bomb limit represents the maximum output before the system's capacitors have to recharge. As for Power Bombs, I've got no idea. I'm apt to think those would have to be actual explosives though, since they're clearly stored and refilled the same way as missiles.
      • Perhaps regular bombs are as you say, whereas Power Bombs are stored in a different battery which cannot recharge from ambient energy but rather specialised discrete stores which look like ammunition (or more accurately, additional battery packs), and manifest as extremely localised nuclear explosions (which of course her suit protects her from).
  • Okay; Samus was genetically modified to survive living on Zebes, mainly due to the atmosphere and the harsh acid rain that's common in the Craterian acid rain storms. Even Space Pirates are never seen in the Zebesian acid rain, though Samus can actually survive the acid rain in just her Zero Suit and without an umbrella. So. Space Pirate Homeworld: How in the chrome-handled, double-barreled, fuel-injected, special limited edition hell does the acid rain seriously harm Samus? Logic dictates that the Space Pirates should have some tolerance to the atmospheric acidity in the air (otherwise they wouldn't have survived long enough on the planet to develop Hazard Shields), but the rain there cuts through Samus like Occam's Razor through a poorly constructed metaphor.
    • Not true: in Zero Mission, Pirates will follow you out into the rain if they're already chasing you. Best place to see it is in the glass tube connecting the two halves of the Mothership, once you've Power Bombed it open.
    • Pirate Homeworld (let's call it "pH" for short) may be considerably more acidic than Zebes, to the point where even Samus's Zebes-honed resistance cannot compensate for it. In fact, it's possible that when the Pirates discovered Zebes, they found its rain to be equally dangerous to an unprotected soldier, but oddly because it was more of a base than the rain they were used to. Hmmm... did someone say "base"?
    • Did someone say Pun? ...No, really: the whole business of "acid" in the series works a lot better if you read "acid" as "corrosive chemical solution, makeup unknown." If you're insistent on using the Bronsted-Lowry acid definition, there are tons of those to choose from. Hydrofluoric acid, for example, is arguably much more corrosive than sulfuric acid, despite being chemically much weaker. HF in pretty much any concentration will readily dissolve glass, many plastics, and every metal except iridium, whereas even concentrated H2SO4 does nothing to glass, the higher-strength plastics, lead or tungsten. About the only commonly available materials HF won't dissolve are polyethylene and teflon. To that end, if HF is what's raining down on Urtragia, Samus isn't going to be going for a stroll in it, super armour or no (that explanation also makes sense in-game, since you can see the exterior metal of the Pirate base is actually smoking where it gets rained on).
    • There's a reason the Pirate Homeworld is an Eternal Engine except for the Leviathan- everything else gets melted away. It's possible that the acid rain has corrosive Phazon content too, given how deeply it's infected the planet.
    • Where does it say Zebes had acid rain? And also, the Space Pirates may have evolved, industralised, and then polluted their own planet to the point of having to protect themselves from the very rain.
  • Why does Samus constantly refer to herself as a bounty hunter, when she acts far more like a mercenary?
    • Because Star Wars.
    • Actually, it's simple - we don't play through the day-to-day life of Samus bounty hunting because it would consist of her easily smacking around thugs and ne'er-do-wells with pistols while she's wearing powered armour and carrying the arsenal of a small European country on her. We only play through the portions of her life where she's not bounty hunting because nothing else could challenge her.
    • Please, we all know if they wanted to make a Metroid game about bounty hunting they would just throw in yet another contrived reason for Samus losing all of her upgrades (probably after an easy introductory mission where she has all her weapons to help her apprehend the thug). When she starts out the games without equipment, the local equivalents of porcupines and bats are a threat to her. I think a bunch of criminals prominent enough to get bounties on their heads would be competent enough to put up a fight against her in that state. Especially if they hide out in wild areas (so Samus can do her usual dealing-with-the-local-flora-and-fauna thing) or if they are members of criminal organisation with a lot of mooks to throw at her.
    • From a gameplay standpoint, perhaps, but in the canon story of Metroid the above described scenario makes absolutely no sense. Zoomers have never been a threat to Samus, no matter what upgrades she has at the time. Even the power beam is stronger than what most other factions have to offer as an anti infantry weapon. Samus is supposed to be the best of the best at what she does, and no criminal, not even one at Sylux's level, has ever been presented as a dire threat.
    • Also, you can simply depict her bounties as having similar levels of armament to her (albeit presumably not Chozo-derived) and that would still provide plenty of conflict, with or without her arsenal getting stripped.
    • I always just assumed the Federation has an open bounty on any and all Space Pirates.
    • I think it's just because Captain Falcon gets to all the good bounties first.
    • While you’re probably kidding, that’s unlikely, because Metroid is set in “20X5” and most of F-Zero is set in the 26th century. “20X5” is a nebulous date, but it’s presumably either late-21st century or X is meant to be a two-or-more-digit-number, making it very far in the future in the latter case (far past the 26th century).
  • Speaking of contract terms, we got to see some other characters in the manga. Any chance we could see them in Other M? (I'm talking about Samus's former employer who looked like a chef, and her two associates earlier in her career.)
    • You mean Chief Hardy, Kreatz/Kuritsu, and Mauk/Mok? They were (and probably still are) Federation Police, not Bounty Hunters or Mercenaries. Since Adam got in, though, they do have a chance, but not a very good one. Adam is a game character first, and a manga character second. However, Old Bird and possibly Gray Voice, have appeared in games as well as the manga. I'd say it's possible, but unlikely.
  • Kraid is a bipedal reptilian creature. The Bryyo Reptilians are, well, bipedal reptilian creatures. And they build many moving (and in some cases seemingly living) reptilian Golems. And the Guardian of the Bryyo Leviathan, Mogenar, is a huge three-eyed reptilian Golem. So... is Kraid a Reptilian? A living Golem made by the Reptilians?
    • Going by super Metroid, no, Kraid seems to be a member of a different species. The similarity to Reptilicus? Could have just evolved to fit similar niches on different planets. Kraid and Reptilicus have different morphology, most noticeable in the arms and the belly and the golems are made of living rock. Kraid has scales.
  • There's a bit of a Double Standard going on about Always Chaotic Evil. For the first game and the Prime trilogy, the working viewpoint is that Metroids are Always Chaotic Evil, to the point that when Samus is hired to exterminate them all in Metroid II, she goes along with it. Then she spares a young Metroid, the Federation studies it, and they decide that there is potential for good coming from it. Super Metroid and the opening of Fusion support this greatly, and now it's known to manual readers that the Chozo created the Metroids in the first place. Interesting to know. Would've been nice to know that sooner. So now we're in the same situation in Fusion, and the Federation has interest in capturing some X samples for analysis, and Samus decides differently and does badass things to kill them all. Why? Because she thinks X are Always Chaotic Evil, of course! She might be right, but... no one even considered that Metroids might be capable of good things until the Federation studied one, did they?
    • By "harnessed for the good of galactic civilisation" it most likely meant "turned into living batteries", like what the Pirates intended for them as their secondary purpose (after they sucked the life energy from enemies and victims). The Metroids are also more-or-less animals, while the X-parasite is a cunning and relentless thing seeking to escape SR388 and infest the galaxy (Adam states this during the game).
    • That's true, the only plans for Metroids were their energy production. Of course, we all know that Metroids drain life energy from their prey. In order to harvest the energy, the Metroids must be fed with living things. That's an entirely different can of worms, though. Anyway, both Metroids and X are ridiculously dangerous and any help they could provide is outweighed by the risks by an enormous amount. Adam specifically mentioned the Federation's interest in the X-Parasite's endless military applications, as well.
    • The Metroids are likely to be incredibly interesting biological studies as well, what with their ability to mutate into all kinds of forms and downright impossible anatomy. And they're much, much easier to contain than the X (read: it’s possible to contain them).
    • That and Samus has been fighting Metroids long enough that she no longer really fears them- she knows what to expect from them and what they can do. Metroids are dangerous but predictable (even in their variations shown across the games) and well studied. X-parasites are newly discovered, suddenly lacking their natural predator and seem to be learning and evolving at a ridiculously rapid rate- the best thing to do was to make them extinct ASAP. If any survive, Samus is probably going to change vocation from Metroid hunter to X hunter.
    • And since she's in trouble with the authorities... she'll be an X hunter maverick!
    • It's less Always Chaotic Evil and more "too dangerous to exist".
  • The original NES Metroid back story explicitly states that Federation researchers came up with the name "Metroid." That's cool. But Fusion's manual has a passage in it which says Metroid can be roughly translated to "ultimate warrior." Ugh. I can accept that being a massive coincidence... but it seems far more likely the writers forgot that the Chozo didn't name their creation "Metroid."
    • Or a Retcon. Though, according to the Manga, the Chozo still around when the Metroids were discovered, so they may have named it. Or, another possibility, the Federation chose the named Metroid because they thought it was the ultimate warrior and just used the Chozo word.
    • The manga actually had the Chozo naming the Metroids themselves and it is Samus who informed it name to the Federation. So, yeah, Retcon.
  • Why does Samus' visor fizzle like an old TV? The Chozo never upgraded to digital?
    • You prefer the distorted images of Hunters?
      • Why does it have to fizzle/distort at all? It's glass (or whatever the universe's Unobtanium equivalent of glass is). Granted, electrical interference might cause the HUD elements to flicker or distort, but there's nothing realistic about electronic interference preventing Samus seeing through a fully transparent material.
      • It's clearly not just glass. The fact that it has all that electronic interface stuff directly on it shows that it's a screen.
    • It's a clear material that also has a HUD built into it, so Samus can see out of it normally and also the status of her weapons, shield and other systems. Imagine if the cockpit of a plane had the HUD integrated into the canopy. Also, the clear material is two-way, but the HUD can only be viewed from inside. As for the snow and static, it's the HUD elements being interfered with.
    • Maybe it uses some sort of technology which is similar to an LCD or LED screen, but each R/G/B lamp becomes transparent when it's "off", thus allowing for a transparent visor (possibly with something tougher over it on the outside). The static is caused by electromagnetic waves inducing a current and causing the individual LCDs (we'll just pretend that's what they are) to flicker in and off. Or perhaps the image data is transferred by some sort of localised radio frequency (similar to the connection between the coils of a transformer) and thus subject to static from particularly strong interference.
    • Another thing about the visor is that the world should be seen in a tinted colour. Green, blue, that slick orange that the best sunglasses have.
    • The headscratching caused by Samus's visor can ultimately be tracked back to Retro's decision to make it transparent. Had they not let us see her face through it, it would have been easier to buy as a screen, much like the headscratching over proportions when they made the suit less bulky. However, in Prime 3, her face isn't visible through the visor when it is scanning. Presumably, normal sight is blocked completely by the HUD elements when using the X-Ray, Dark and Echo visors as well, which could be why she only sees static when those are overloaded. The combat visor showing full colour instead of a tint could be a design feature, it would explain why it can be distorted or fuzzy when tampered with but never outright blinding.
    • My theory is that the HUD is projected in a similar way to the HUD used for Iron Man's armour in the Marvel movies, with a holographic projector. The reason that the combat visor can get interference is simple. The HUD is being projected and the whole projection area gets clouded with static.
  • Why does the Gravity Suit no longer get any love? Samus is almost always depicted in the Varia Suit nowadays. Why do the folks at Nintendo forget that the Gravity Suit is, by definition, more awesome than the Varia? I can understand not always having her in the Varia Suit, but her SSB incarnations all have the Varia as the default, and even worse, Other M's intro (which is a cutscene depicting Super Metroid's final battle with Mother Brain, at which time Samus had the Gravity Suit and about a million other expansions) has her wearing the Varia, now, as well. It's like Nintendo is trying to Retcon the Gravity Suit out of existence...
    • Just because it's iconic. It's like asking why Ocarina of Time Link didn't make the Zora or Goron Tunic his default clothes after getting them just because they work better or why Mario's default colours aren't Fire Mario instead. SSB Samus defaults to Varia for that reason, and it probably explains Other M's intro as well (even if it doesn't make sense). As for the retcon comment, that seems to be going a bit far. There's nothing to say that they're trying to get rid of the Gravity Suit.
    • Technically, one could complete Super Metroid (and possibly other games) without the Gravity Suit, but that would be ill-advised as it incurs a lot more difficulty. Unless of course one is kinky like that.
      • Later on in Other M, once she reactivates it, Samus never receives a colour change from activating the Gravity Suit, instead sporting a shiny purple aura when the Gravity Suit is warping gravity for her.
      • My fears regarding the issue have not been laid to rest in light of recent information.
  • Why in the world did they place Samus in a regular infantry unit during her stint in the military? Even in her suit's most rudimentary form she can kill with two shots from the power beam what takes a GF trooper a whole magazine. With all her upgrades, she has, off the top of my head: a sustained running speed that would get her a speeding ticket on any road in the United States, more armour than some nuclear hardened bunkers, more missiles than a B-2 has bombs, not just the ability to fly but also to kill nearly anything she touches instantly while doing so, and an infinite ammo beam weapon capable of melting animals the size of elephants in seconds. She's closer to a main battle tank in terms of capabilities, if a main battle tank could fly. And they put her in... an infantry unit. Not even special forces, where she'd be far too visually distinct for covert ops but at least would have a chance of needing even a fraction of her abilities. This is a person that can take on an entire fortified planet and win, and they stick her in with the grunts. Pearls before swine.
    • Maybe because she didn't have all those upgrades? She couldn't even use the Plasma Beam, Gravity Suit, Space Jump and Power Bombs until a certain point in Zero Mission and she starts that game with: the Short Beam (that is to say, a Power beam that can travel a couple meters before fizzling out of existence,) and the Power Suit. Now, admittedly, Hunters, Prime 2, Prime 3, and Fusion show missiles to be pretty common tech, (the Super Missiles seem to be mostly Chozo until the Federation finally figures them out in Fusion, the Ice Missiles were the product of either a corrupted Rundas or late Federation science, the Diffusion Missiles only showed once, and while Fusion did have the Feds finally delivering Bombs and Power Bombs, it's kind of useless without the Morph Ball, no?) but standard missiles hardly makes a difference against most situations. That, and I don't get why you think she was ever standard infantry in the first place, she says she was "Federation Army" but such an organisation would be subdivided with many specialties. Adam's unit, for example, seems very much like a "Special Forces" unit with it's small size, and distinct skillsets and personalities.
    • I suppose you may have a point, depending on where the flashbacks fall in the chronology. While the short beam was only default in the first game and the remake thereof, and Other M is set after Super, it's possible the flashbacks are from before the first game. I was mostly judging based on what I've seen from trailers, as it's not out here yet, but I suppose we'll know for sure in a few days.
    • Nope, in the flashback, she has the characteristic spherical shoulders, which was acquired at the end of Zero Mission.
    • Same reason she allowed Adam to restrict her access to equipment that would have allowed her to storm through the Bottle Ship with ease, and the reason why Adam decided to take full advantage of that fact and only let her use equipment whenever he got bored, even when the arbitrary restrictions made no sense at all: the writers didn't really care that much about what would actually make sense for the character in question.
    • ^^ This is from the same people who forgot what colour the Gravity Suit is, and you're gonna complain about what upgrades she did or didn't have because of the shape of her shoulders? That, and all of the flashbacks have the shoulders, regardless of when they're supposed to be in the timeline. It's much more likely that she was stuck with the short beam, maybe missiles during her Army days before she found everything else. (^ Though you're right that Samus in the game has no excuse.)
    • Actually, if you look closely in one of the flashbacks, Samus is wearing her pre-Chozodia, non-spherical-shoulders, Power Suit.
  • Fusion is chronologically the last game in the series (before Metroid Dread was released). This means that Prime 3 took place at least a year or two beforehand. What happened to the design for the Ice Missiles in that time which prevented them from digging them up immediately when the Federation realised Samus couldn't use the Ice Beam?
    • The Prime 3 missiles were adapted from Rundas's powers, and work differently than the Federation variant in Fusion.
    • In which case, why could Samus use them?
    • Side affect of mutual Phazon corruption and adaptive Power Suit.
  • Ok, I don't know why you would remove the one weakness of something so dangerous you'd be willing to contract a bounty hunter to genocide them, and so uncontrollable that no one has successfully harnessed their power (except the Chozo, who created them) but in principle I can understand that. What bugs me is the fact that, if they have Metroids that are resistant to cold, why did they use Metroid DNA that wasn't resistant at the start of Fusion? Other M's Adam tells Samus that they have them, so she would know about it. In principle I suppose I could see how they would want an exploitable weakness on their Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds in case she ever goes rogue, but then it doesn't make sense that Fusion's Adam would make recovery of the Varia suit such a priority. Besides, since Samus knows about it, why wouldn't she say anything to them about it?
    • Presumably, they simply lost all of the modified DNA when Adam destroyed the sector. All they had left was the control group, which they likely didn't have time or resources to modify before Samus died of X infestation. In addition, it was stated that what the Federation was doing there was illegal, and that it was only a small group within the Federation as a whole, as the rest of them heeded Adam's report on the dangers of Metroids. It's quite possible that the scientists that weren't part of that group had no knowledge of or access to the modification techniques.
    • Actually, this isn't the problem with the Metroids that the Feds have. The problem is that in Fusion, the Omega Metroid shouldn't even be vulnerable to cold! Those who played Metroid II: Return of Samus should know that once Metroids grow past their larval stage, they must be destroyed with Missiles. The Federation shouldn't have even needed to remove the cold vulnerability to Metroids because they naturally outgrow it! We need to blame Fusion for screwing this up, because it seems to have retconned Metroid II by making all Metroids vulnerable to cold, regardless of their growth stage.
    • Maybe after the events of Other M, the ones at BSL were specially modified to retain the vulnerability to cold throughout the life cycle just in case?
    • Also worth remembering is that in II, Samus could only use one weapon at a time. In Fusion, she has multiple beams combined into a single weapon, which probably had the power to penetrate the Omega Metroid's casing.
    • She's only able to damage the Omega Metroid after she regains her Ice Beam from the SA-X, though. It was invulnerable to her missiles and other beams, even the one that can pass through most everything else.
    • It might be that penetrating isn't enough (internal energy-damage resistance), and cold isn't enough (that strain having external cold resistance), but in combination, it can deliver the cold to the cold-vulnerable innards, bypassing the resistant exterior.
    • As of the second game's remake the Metroids now retain their vulnerability to cold throughout their various forms (except maybe the Queen).
  • Where does Samus LIVE exactly? The comics seem to show that Samus actually lives somewhere when not piloting the ship, but there hasn't been any confirmation of it's relevance in the series. Is it a condo? An apartment? A dorm room on the GFHQ campus? The integrity of the comics is debatable at best but it's been driving me insane.
    • Chuck Berry slept in his car, why can't Samus sleep in her ship? She is seen sleeping in her ship at the start of Prime 3. Alternatively, she lives in her garage and alternates between which ship she wants to sleep in. She could lack a house by spending all her money on books for research, maintenance for missions, new equipment, nightclubs or bars.
    • Same with any spacefaring traveller in fiction, really. She can also sleep in rental accomodations in any developed worlds she visits. Also, perhaps she sleeps in the save stations to recover stamina along with the actual energy which they replenish (in some games anyway). They may even provide rations.
  • So the Space Pirates steal stuff from other people, right? Yet they punish their own if they steal from other Space Pirates... hypocrite much?
    • You mean to say...the villains are wrong!? They're pirates, this sort of Moral Myopia comes with the territory. The phrase "honour among thieves" exists for a reason.
  • How the hell do the Space Pirates maintain Kraid?
    • Regular diet and maybe watering, I suppose. As for mobility, there's a good reason why he has never been seen on a planet other than Zebes, even when Prime fans agree he would have been awesome.
    • That is until Metroid Dread.
  • Considering all the nuclear tech she picks up and/ or is shot with (Battlehammer, X-Ray Visor, Omega Cannon, and I'm convinced; Power Bombs), how is she not dead from radiation poisoning?
    • Samus' suit is incredibly high-tech and resilient, it presumably has some kind of radiation shields.
    • Radiation clearly penetrates her armour, as seen when looking at her hands with the X-ray visor.
    • Samus's suit has radiation shielding, made apparent in the first two Prime games. The X-Ray Visor is in part an Easter egg so you can see Samus's trigger finger as a novelty, along with it’s gameplay functions. Also, as said earlier, X-Ray goggles don't actually shoot X-Rays, the X-Ray visor needs to use actual X-Rays about as much as Apache hellfire missiles need real hellfire. Prime 3 gives her ship a medical bay too, the futuristic high medicine could be very effective if you don't buy high technology providing shielding and using substitutes.
    • Samus is part Chozo, and since Samus obtains the X-Ray visor as a Chozo artifact once, one can conclude that Chozo are immune to radiation. Otherwise, the Chozo had made a piece of equipment that's lethal to the user. If Chozo, and thereby Samus, are immune to radiation there's no need for armour that protects against radiation. Alternatively, Samus's suit can't keep radiation out, but its life support system fixes up any damage to Samus's DNA and cellular structure. Phazon might be too powerful a substance for the suit to handle, so it can't fix Samus up in MP3.
    • That first argument you put forth is nullified if the hypothesis, that the X-Ray visor doesn’t actually use X-Rays as we know that phenomenon from current science, is correct. Most likely the suit has protection against it. Notice we’ve never seen her come up against radiation in her Zero Suit, when it would surely be lethal.
  • Why are Metroids called parasites when they're clearly predators?
    • Someone probably thought that predators are things that eat you and parasites are things that suck the life out of you.
    • Both, they're predators with a parasitic feeding method, kinda like a spider'snote . They could also be mere parasites to creatures on their home planet who've adapted to survive them but deadly predators to most species. A leech annoys a human, it kills a fish.
    • They might be parasitoids; the key difference is that a parasite feeds on its host without killing it. A parasitoid always kills its host.
  • Chozo biology somewhat confuses me. They're very clearly based on birds... but virtually all official art, both in and out of game, shows them to be covered partially or entirely with what appear to be exoskeletal plates. Which birds quite distinctly don't have.
    • Bizarre Alien Biology.
    • They're not birds or arthropods. They're aliens.
    • Right. They may look like birds in some respects, but have other alien features which birds don’t have.
  • Samus's concentration based suit. The way it shuts down in Other M clearly contradicts how it works in Metroid Prime 3 and Metroid Fusion. Why did no one at Nintendo bring that to the M team's attention? More importantly, how are they to explain the discrepancy in future titles? Storywise the new system may not be anymore implausible than the old one but the old one is embedded in the franchise and has had much more time for fans to get used to.
    • Heck, it contradicts how it works within Other M itself. Just how did Glasses Man scrape alien goo off Samus' suit if it was deactivated...?
    • Samus's suit is not concentration based. It requires concentration to activate and recharge, but not to maintain. The suit shuts down when the energy tanks are depleted, when the suit receives extensive damage. After the suit shuts down, it would presumably need concentration to reactivate, but the shutting down has nothing to do with concentration or the lack thereof. Only the damage sustained.
    • So then, Adam, who can't beat Ridley, has a weapon powerful enough to kill the one who can beat Ridley in two shots? The one with a basic beam better than the special forces’ anti infantry? If the scene wasn't implying she lost her suit because of some mental issue because of a sense of betrayal then we get a plot hole either way.
    • I've seen it referenced somewhere that part of what makes her suit so extraordinarily durable is the use of some form of active defence, somehow preparing for blows before they land, and that when an attack takes her by surprise it can do much more damage than attacks normally would. Plus, Adam could easily have a deeper knowledge of the weaknesses of her suit than Ridley has.
    • Problem here, if that is indeed the explanation for one infamous shut down scene, it still does not explain the other, as it started fizzling out even though Ridley was not damaging Samus. She's been grabbed by him numerous times without losing the suit and if he was squeezing her hard enough to damage it then the unarmoured Samus should have been crushed when the armour faded away.
  • Why do you pretty much never see non-humans in the Galactic Federation? Apparently it was founded by many species, but the ships you run into seem to be crewed entirely by humans.
    • The Galactic Federation of Metroid might not have progressed quite as far as the Galactic Federation of Star Trek. They are certainly aware of other species, but it could be that there hasn't been enough cross-species interactions in general for a mixed military group to be something that people are comfortable with, and there's a separate branch of the GF for every race. It could also be that there's just that many more humans than other species. Perhaps humans were far more technologically advanced, and the other races are still trying to catch up, with only a handful of specialists from each who were able to adapt quickly enough (the other hunters from Prime Hunters and Prime 3). There might be some bits of lore that could shed some light on this, but there are plenty of potential explanations.
  • Why does Samus have such a drastic change in her stance towards trying to control and experiment on Metroids? In Fusion and Other M she seems to view the Federation experimenting on Metroids to be about as dangerous and stupid as [[Franchise/Alien Weyland-Yutani trying to benefit from xenomorphs]]. But earlier, she herself spared the last Metroid on SR338 and delivered it specifically to be used for research! While the research station was destroyed shortly thereafter, it was not because of anything the Metroid itself did. Plus, the Space Pirates had previously domesticated Metroids very successfully. While Mother Brain's psychic powers were a major factor in that, this does not necessarily mean all attempts to control Metroids with other means are doomed to fail. The Federation was at least cautious enough to keep their Metroids contained in a space habitat, not on a populated planet.
    • That was all before Samus found out that the Federation had apparently started acting like the Space Pirates and we all know how she feels about the Space Pirates. When she brought the infant Metroid to the Ceres station, it was literally the only Metroid left in the universe and it was an infant, having only hatched mere hours previously so it was relatively harmless. Plus, Samus had assumed that the Federation would try to study and replicate the Metroids mysterious energy abilities for the betterment of the galaxy since, you know, they're supposed to be the good guys. Come Other M and Fusion, we find out that not only are they not doing that, but are in fact breeding them for military applications (which the Pirates tried and failed to do) but were also planning to use the even more dangerous X Parasites similarly. And even if the Pirates managed to keep the Metroids relatively secure and controlled, the Federation doing the same isn't the point. The point is the blatant hypocrisy of sending Samus on a genocide mission in order to prevent the Pirates from using the Metroids, and then turning around and pulling such an incredibly vapour-brained stunt, basically going "duh, we changed our minds, fuck you, Samus".
    • There's a difference between captivity and domestication. Space Pirates successfully held Metroid in captivity, they did not domesticate them. Mother Brain's psychic powers amounted to a Metroid snaking on her grey matter. Every game that has both Metroids and Space Pirates tend to have Space Pirates being eaten by out of control Metroids. Of course she would think the Federation trying to weaponise and strengthen such predators a bad idea. Simply studying how they work and potentially harnessing their for energy production was risky enough.
  • So, the Metroid amiibo, that was released alongside Samus Returns, is compatible with Federation Force. This presumably means that Samus Returns was already in the works during the making of Federation Force. Why then, did they not announce the game alongside Federation Force, which would have done a lot to mitigate the game's PR issues and maybe made it more successful?
    • Because Metroid fans desperate for content wouldn't buy FF if there's something else concrete on the horizon. Or less cynically, Nintendo wanted to give AM2R as much time as possible to come out, even if they were planning to shut it down for legal reasons, and they didn't want confusion between the Fan Game and SR.
  • Do the Space Pirates do any actual piracy? Most of their goals (and the actions they take to pursue them) are much more political or militant, aimed and destabilising or outright overthrowing the Galactic Federation, rather than robbing people for profit. This would seem to make them terrorists or insurgents or rebels or invaders or something else along those lines.
    • They attack ships and installations and steal shit. That seems pretty darn piratey.
    • They don't seem ideologically motivated, nor do they ever broadcast ideological based demands that we hear of. That rules out terrorists. And they seem to have their own uncontested territory in addition to that which they take, so insurgents probably isn't it either. Space Pirates simply seem to be a society hostile to the Galactic Federation, albeit that still puts them a little outside simple pirates, even if they do steal things.
    • It's possible the Federation first became aware of them due to piracy, and the Non-Indicative Name stuck even after it became clear they're closer to a hostile empire or crime ring.

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