Troperville
Editing Help
Tools
Toys
|
alt title(s): Super Metroid 
For the page on the Metroid Prime sub-series, click here.
Samus Aran is not having a good day.
Metroid is the story of Bounty Hunter Samus Aran, who, armed with modular cybernetic Powered Armor from an ancient civilization, repeatedly crosses paths with a species of energy-absorbing animals known as "Metroids," usually foiling the attempts of a band of Space Pirates to exploit the creatures as a weapon.
The Metroid franchise is somewhat unusual among platformers, especially Nintendo produced ones, for the substantial continuity which exists between the games. The first (NES) game deals with Samus's assault on the Space Pirate base on Zebes. After defeating the Mother Brain, Samus is dispatched in the ( Game Boy) sequel, The Return of Samus, to hunt down evolved Metroids on their home world. The end of this game segues directly into (Super Nintendo) Super Metroid, where the final larval Metroid is stolen by space pirates who return it to a rebuilt Zebes.
The series lay dormant for years, skipping the Nintendo 64 entirely. The last 2D game, and the "latest" title in the continuity, Metroid Fusion (Game Boy Advance) was finally released in 2002, wherein the Metroid homeworld has been overrun by a shape-shifting parasite which the Metroids kept in check. Both an orbiting lab and Samus herself fall to the new threat, so Samus is infused with Metroid DNA to save her life and sent in to investigate. Concurrently, Nintendo had made the controversial decision to move the series into 3D on the GameCube, with an American studio at the helm. The gamble paid off, and Metroid Prime emerged as an unusual FPS-adventure, set between the first and second games, which met with great critical acclaim.
The first game was remade for the Game Boy Advance a year later as Zero Mission. The 3D installments have become a franchise in their own right, with Metroid Prime 2: Echoes (GameCube), and Metroid Prime Hunters (Nintendo DS) continuing the in-between storyline, which was finally finished in 2007 with Metroid Prime 3: Corruption (Wii), completing the Phazon Arc.
The latest game, Other M (Wii), seems to combine elements from both series and is currently being worked on by the unusual combination of the inhouse team responsible for the Metroid series and none other than Team Ninja. Trailer can be seen here. It is set for release some time in 2010. It'll take place between Super Metroid and Metroid Fusion, making it the only game since Fusion to take place after Super.
Across the entire franchise, a number of characteristic elements have persisted, such as the continuous string of upgrades which Samus acquires over the course of the game (The Metroid Prime games open with a scene in which Samus has the advanced weapons of the previous game, then loses them. This also happens during the opening narration to Metroid Fusion), most notably the "Morph Ball" (or "Maru Mari," one of several translation oddities), which allows Samus to contort into the shape of a small ball, for better maneuverability in areas where this shape is more convenient.
This series is also known for being one of the two best known series of Metroidvania games, as implied by the name. (These are action adventure games with an emphasis on exploring a continuous and non-linear play world and finding powerups to advance.)
Technologically, the original Metroid is noteworthy as one of the first multi-way scrolling platformers. Its North American release was also the first game to use a password system to save progress. The original Japanese release of Metroid was for Nintendo's disc-based system, and allowed the players to save their progress. Since the cartridge-based US system lacked this ability, the player was presented with a 24-character password which encoded the state of the game, allowing the player to resume his or her progress later.
Metroid's password function is responsible for the Classic Cheat Code "Justin Bailey."
The ending of the original Metroid is also a Tomato Surprise: if the player did sufficiently well during the game, he is treated to a (then) stunning revelation: Samus Aran's armor is removed, revealing the bounty hunter as a shapely (by 8-bit standards) woman. This reveal is also in most, if not all, of the other games, at or near the ending, for those who didn't get the memo about Samus being one of the first strong gaming heroines. (Though the "surprise" aspect is less prominent in later games; in the Prime series, Samus's death is accompanied by an obviously feminine cry of alarm and it is occasionally possible to see the reflection of her face across the HUD, in Super Metroid, we see her unarmored during the death sequence, and the armor she wears in Metroid Fusion is much more feminine.)
Though Samus herself has never appeared on television (except in the live-action commercials for Metroid Prime and Metroid Fusion), the Mother Brain was featured as the Big Bad of the Nintendo-themed animated series Captain N The Game Master. (Reportedly, the production staff actually ''didn't know'' about her; the comic book adaptation introduced her as the Sixth Ranger / The Lancer.)
A live-action feature film based on the franchise was optioned after Metroid Prime was successful, but appears to have lapsed.
The Metroid series provides examples of:
- Abnormal Ammo (Samus has been shot at with explosive stingers, lava grenades, super cooled plasma, high density neutrinos and contaminated water.)
- Samus herself has fired plasma, super-cooled plasma, ice, lava grenades, electromagnetic blasts, standard electrical blasts, concentrated light energy, concentrated dark energy, a light-dark combination, sonic booms, miniature black holes, and various other things out of her own beam cannon. And that doesn't account for projectile weapons - missiles, super missiles, ice missiles...
- Acceptable Breaks From Reality (The Metroid universe and its mechanics make no logical sense when you stop and think about it, but they make for a damn fine game nonetheless.)
- Action Girl (Perhaps the earliest video game example.)
- Adaptation Expansion / Adaptation Decay: Metroid Manga is either one of those depending on who you ask.
- After Boss Recovery (Many bosses and mini bosses drop tons of health and ammo refills when you beat them.)
- Air Vent Escape (Applies to all kinds of ducts/tunnels, with the Morph Ball. Subverted in Zero Mission, when after losing her armor, Samus must crawl through said tunnels, and she's far from the only creature who can use them.)
- All There In The Manual (The games are easy to understand plotwise on their own, but there's quite a bit of canonical backstory for both Zero Mission and Fusion, as well as the entire franchise on the whole, to be found in the manuals and the manga)
- Ambidextrous Sprite (Averted in all 2-D games after the first game; Samus has different sprites for all directions.)
- Androcles Lion (the "last Metroid")
- Arm Cannon (might even qualify as a Hand Cannon)
- As You Wish (how Samus discovers the identity of her AI CO in Metroid Fusion)
- Many fans realized what the mysterious trailer for Other M was as soon as Adam said "Any objections, lady?" Prior to this, it was intentionally unclear what the game in question was.
- Attack Of The 50 Foot Whatever (Kraid in Super Metroid)
- Bad Ass (Samus. So very, very much.)
- Bag Of Spilling (Samus never manages to keep her fully powered-up suit between games, though more recent entries at least let her hang onto the Varia upgrade. Usually.)
- Played with in Metroid Fusion. Samus kept all of the weapon upgrades to her power armor. Unfortunately, her power armor was infected with a parasite and is now using all of those weapon upgrades to try to kill her.
- Battle Couple (Both Fusion and the manga imply that something was going on between Adam and Samus before Adam's death. Whether they were romantically involved or just very good friends is the subject of some speculation)
- Berserk Button: Bizarrely, the sub-boss Crocomire in Super Metroid hates having Power Bombs used on him. If you use one, he goes ballistically fast, shoving you into the spike wall on the other side of the arena.
- If Samus is pointing her arm cannon at you and you just happen to be a member of a race of intergalatic bloodthirsty aliens, don't beg for mercy.
- Big Boos Haunt (The Wrecked Ship, GFS Valhalla)
- Body Horror (The X Parasites in the main series; Phazon in Prime. Metroids themselves might count, given their habit of turning their victims into dessicated gray husks that turn to powder when touched.)
- Boss Arena Recovery
- Brain Uploading (Adam in Metroid Fusion)
- Breath Weapon (Ridley, being as he's a Space Dragon)
- Broken Bridge (sometimes intentional, to prevent Sequence Breaking)
- Building Swing (Grapple Beam)
- Canon Foreigner: Captain Nemo in the old Metroid Manga/Strategy Guide, and moveset wise, the Zero Laser from Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and the "Chozo Blood Rights" ability from Marvel: Ultimate Alliance (she was Dummied Out from the latter game, however).
- Canon Immigrant: Old Bird, one of Samus's Chozo mentors/adoptive parents, appears in the Japanese version only endings of Metroid Fusion (which you can thankfully unlock in any version of Zero Mission), and makes a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo appearance in Metroid Zero Mission in one of Samus's flashbacks. Old Bird first appeared in the Nintendo Power Super Metroid comic and was later imported to the manga (along with Chairman Keaton and Chief Hardy). Some speculate that the second Chozo in the engraving at the end of the game may be the other Chozo mentor, Gray Voice.
- While the character was first named and given a backstory in Fusion, Adam Malkovich's actual appearance wasn't revealed until the manga. This design is then used in the upcoming game Other M
- Cartography Sidequest (Completing maps contributes towards your completion percentage, which in turn determines the ending you get.)
- Charged Attack (Charge Beam, Shinespark)
- Chekhovs Skill (Every power-up becomes useful to go to unreachable areas/items.)
- Classic Cheat Code By accident: The famous Justin Bailey code is just a side-effect of the password calculation system. The far less famous NARPAS SWORD password actually is a special, unique password however.
- See also: ENGAGE RIDLEY MOTHER FUCKER
- Clipped Wing Angel (SA-X.)
- Colony Drop (BSL, at the end of Fusion.)
- Colossus Climb (Kraid, although you jump on improvised platforms instead of climbing)
- Color Coded For Your Convenience (Doors except Return because of monochrome, in which case they're Missile doors)
- Comic Book Adaptation (There are tons of them. Two of which are tongue-in-cheek semi-guide books, one is a Nintendo Power comic, one is loosely based upon the first Metroid Prime, a prequel manga and a manga based on pre-MP 2. Let's not even get started with Samus and Joey series...)
- Complete Monster (Ridley in the manga, which isn't all that far off all things considered.)
- Continuity Nod (the remixed music in the latest installments, and destroyed Tourian in Super Metroid)
- Convection Schmonvection (Averted, in a rare video game example. Without her Varia Suit, Samus can't even get near lava without being burned, and walking into superheated rooms will cause her to take continuous, non-trivial damage. In Fusion, she gains a vulnerability to extreme cold as well.)
- Most Metroid games make the lava dangerous to touch even when the Varia Suit provides resistance to convection. Only more powerful armors like the Gravity Suit allow her to walk in lava without getting hurt.
- Cool Starship (Samus' gunship, natch. The loaner ship she gets from the Federation after totaling her own in Fusion's opening may count as well.)
- Copy And Paste Environments (one of reasons that the original is hard as hell, specially for people who played the sequels; this was, however, crucial in making a fairly large world without running out of cart space.)
- Cowboy Cop (In the manga, Samus herself, as well as her partners Mauk and Kreatz.)
- Critical Annoyance (Dua-dua-dua-dua-dua-dua - few things are better motivation to search for energy.)
- Crosshair Aware (Space Pirates have an annoying tendency to twitch themselves just out of your firing path during the Unexpected Genre Change stealth sequence in Zero Mission.)
- Crowning Moment Of Awesome (The page for the trope lists most of them. Just about every Metroid has its own Crowning Moment.)
- Crowning Moment Of Heartwarming (At the end of Zero Mission, we get to see a carving that Samus made when she was just a little girl, depicting a smiling her and her Chozo "parents.")
- Cybernetics Eat Your Soul (For the most part averted, as most characters get along just fine with their cybernetically-enhanced Powered Armor)
- Damn You Muscle Memory (Most gamers familiar with platformers go from left to right out of habit, but the original Metroid forces you to go left in the first area to get the Morph Ball and continue.)
- Determinator: Nothing will stop Samus Aran.
- Destructive Savior: It seems Samus cannot escape the cold hand of destruction, whether it be a large base or the entire planet. So far, her "kill count" includes Dark Aether, Phaaze, Zebes and SR388, the third of which wasn't even her fault. Granted, the others were of her own doing, Phaaze because it kept popping out Phazon Leviathans to infect other planets, Dark Aether because it was just evil, and SR388 so she could wipe out the X Parasites, but still. Not even space stations are safe, since the Biologic Space Labs orbital station dies with SR388.
- Doom Magnet: In addition, very few characters with personal connections to Samus ever survive. Ridley doesn't count.
- Doomed Hometown (Samus lives through two of these, first on K-2L and then on Zebes.)
- Doppelganger Spin
- Down The Drain (Maridia, the crashed frigate, Sector 4 - AQA)
- Dumb Muscle (The original Japanese strategy guide was also a manga; Samus was depicted as a trigger-happy ditz with far more strength than smarts.)
- Dummied Out: Two very interesting things were removed at some point from Zero Mission. One was the ability to turn suit upgrades on and off from the pause menu, as in Super Metroid; fans are still wondering why this much-missed feature was taken out. (Cheat codes can turn it back on.) The second was... Crocomire! This Super Metroid boss was found in the ROM, with a full set of sprites and some movement code, but nothing else. It's possible to hack him into various rooms.
- In turn, Super Metroid's ROM includes some interesting objects that were never used, most notably a "reflector" which would bounce any beam or missile off at a 90-degree angle.
- Dungeon Bypass (The Shinespark.)
- Earth Shattering Kaboom (Zebes at the end of Super Metroid, SR388 at the end of Metroid Fusion. Phaaze, the source of all Phazon, in Metroid Prime 3. On the other hand, Dark Aether merely seems to fizzle out of existence rather than exploding grandly, though if it did, normal Aether would probably eat it as well.)
- Elaborate Underground Base (Arguably, every game features at least one, though Tourian (both versions) is probably the most classic example.)
- Eldritch Abomination (The X parasites in Fusion are the most dangerous life form in the Metroid universe because of their ability to absorb and replicate the capabilities of any host. Samus herself is nearly killed by an X infection in the prologue of Fusion. In one of Samus' interior monologues during that game, she acknowledges the grave threat of what may happen if SA-X realizes its true potential. Considering that the Chozo created the Metroids as a weapon to fight the X, this should give you an idea of just how unspeakably powerful these creatures are.)
- Eleventh Hour Superpower (beginning with Super, most Final Bosses have a weapon used only against them)
- Emergency Weapon (the stun pistol in Zero Mission)
- Ending Fatigue
- Eternal Engine (Tourian)
- Even Evil Has Standards (Subverted in the manga. Ridley at first seems to avoid trying to kill Samus, but was instead lowering her guard.)
- Everythings Better With Spinning (Screw Attack)
- Evil Twin (SA-X in Fusion and Dark Samus in the Prime trilogy)
- Exactly What It Says On The Tin ("Choujin-zoku" roughly translates to "bird race". The Chozo are, y'know...)
- The Metroids as well. "Metroid" is revealed to be Chozodian for "ultimate warrior". In the early games, Metroids were near-invincible, and by far the most dangerous non-boss enemies around.
- Also, nobody is going to be asking what a member of the Space Pirate race does for a living.
- Expanded Universe: Many characters and stories such as Chairman Keaton, Chief Hardy, Old Bird, Adam Malkovich, and Armstrong Houston made their first appearances and/or are fleshed out in the Japanese manga and the Nintendo Power Super Metroid comic.
- Exposition Fairy (Adam in Fusion)
- Fetish Fuel (The Zero Suit in later games. Also, about 90% of the post-game artwork.)
- Foreboding Architecture
- Fridge Brilliance (How did the Chozo manage to hide power-ups for Samus' armor on every planet she happens to visit? They were a hyper-advanced civilization who could see the future, that's how.)
- Fridge Logic (Remind me again why Mother Brain, already demonstrably in league with the Space Pirates, assisted the Chozo in creating the galaxy's most powerful anti-Pirate warrior?)
- From A Single Cell (X-Parasites, if not absorbed, will simply reform into another body)
- Fungus Humongous (Brinstar)
- Genius Bruiser (Samus herself; in addition to being twenty different flavors of Bad Ass, she is also apparently quite learned in biology and electronics, and she designed her own gunship. She also shows a fairly philosophical leaning in the few internal monologues and journal entries we hear.)
- Germans Love David Hasselhoff (Much of the Japanese series' fanbase is based in America, which might be why the 3D revival of the series was given to an American development studio.)
- Giant Poofy Sleeves (Fanon assumes the huge shoulders on the Varia suit contain the cooling systems that allow her to travel in superheated areas.)
- Which is a little silly, because the Varia Suit cools her just fine in Zero Mission prior to getting the aforementioned shoulders, but I digress...
- This troper always thought the mechanisms for the Gravity Suit and non-boots Space Jump required the space inside those massive shoulders.
- According to some barely-legible text in the option menu for the Hunters 'First Hunt' demo, the pads are primarily to help relieve the burden of the arm-cannon's weight (the left one must be for symmetry sake).
- This troper always thought they contained morph ball parts. (It's most noticeable in Prime 2, where the ball changes to match whatever shoulder pads you're wearing at the time - in particular, the Dark Suit ball clearly looks prolate, not spherical.)
- Out of story, the shoulders are actually a design choice; since Metroid 2 was black and white, they added the shoulders so that you could identify the different suits.
- Ghost Planet (For being the base of the Space Pirates, you sure don't see any Space Pirates on Zebes in the first Metroid, aside from Ridley, Kraid, and the Mother Brain. Plenty of intergalactic fauna, though. They do show up in Super Metroid, however.)
- Zero Mission explains this. The Space Pirates were all either in Tourian (where the Metroids ate them), or on the mother ship.
- Also SR388, and arguably any world that the Chozo once inhabited.
- Ghost Ship: The Wrecked Ship from Super, with the ghost-boss Phantoon.
- Goddamned Bats (Mellows and Weavers in Brinstar, and pretty much any lava enemy in Norfair. The titular enemies, however, skip right over this into Demonic Spider territory.)
- Go For The Eye (Frequently)
- Grappling Hook Pistol (Grapple Beam)
- Gratuitous Japanese (Maru Mari means something akin to "Round Ball" or "Perfect Sphere". It's the only item in the original Metroid to keep its Japanese name in some translated releases.)
- Guide Dang It (Hundred Percent Completion is HARD)
- The infamous "Noob Bridge" in Super Metroid is a collapsing bridge with spikes above it. Trying to cross it normally will make you fall. Many newcomers get stuck on this part. Little do they know that all they have to do is use the run button while running across it. This has frustrated many veterans who often get asked how to cross the bridge. Though it can be done without running.
- The main "victims" of the bridge were ROM pirates, who didn't get a game manual with their download.
- Hailfire Peaks (practically every zone is "X meets Eternal Engine")
- Half Human Hybrids (Samus is a genetically augmented human with Chozo DNA, and then later receives an anti-X "vaccine" made from Metroid cells.)
- Happily Adopted (Samus considers the Chozo her "real" family as much as anything, and they certainly don't skimp on their love for her.)
- Has Two Mommies (In the manga, Samus' two primary caretakers are Old Bird and Gray Voice, two presumably male Chozo elders. However, in the games, her younger self's depiction of her "parents" includes a Chozo never shown in the manga; conflicting canons, perhaps?)
- He Who Fights Monsters (Samus nearly succumbs to this in the third chapter of the manga. On the planet of Jigrad, Samus saves a group of slaves from the Space Pirates. When confronted by Samus, the last remaining Space Pirate pleads with her to show mercy. Driven by her memories of her homeworld K-2L being mercilessly razed by the Space Pirates, Samus is about to murder the last Space Pirate in cold blood when the sound of a small girl crying snaps her out of her murderous rage. Shortly thereafter, the small child thanks Samus for saving her and Samus tells her that she saved her as well from becoming just as much of a merciless killer as the Space Pirates.)
- Also applies to the ending of Metroid II. In Metroid II, Samus is charged with the task of eradicating the Metroids once and for all. After destroying the Metroid Queen, Samus finds a newly hatched Metroid. Despite knowing that Metroid is a Chozo word for "ultimate warrior" she still can't bring herself to kill a child.
- Heart Container (Energy Tanks)
- Heroic BSOD (Happens in the manga. In Samus' first encounter with Ridley after the Space Pirates destroyed her home, Ridley forces Samus to remember as she watched Ridley, whose flesh had been charred by a space ship explosion, feast upon the carcass of Samus' mother. For the entirety of the next chapter, Samus shuts down emotionally and mentally. In the first half of the following chapter, Samus begs her comrades to kill her when she remembers the sheer horror of being forced to watch Ridley murder her parents at the age of three.)
- Heroic Mime (In Prime 3, the first voice-acted game in the series, she has no voice acting beyond her usual grunts, on the grounds that Samus talking would be "too creepy." In Fusion, she's a veritable chatterbox, but it's mostly internal monologue.)
- Now she'll be talking in Other M, which, combined with the fact that she had verbal taunts in Brawl, seems to suggest she's going the "talking hero" route.
- He Was Right There All Along (Acid Worm, Ridley in Zero Mission, Torizo...)
- Hopeless Boss Fight (first fight against Ridley in Super; you can sort of win as he fumbles the hatchling if you hit him enough times, but he still takes off with it after)
- Not to mention the Super Metroid Final Boss, which can only be won through a Deus Ex Machina - and yes, it's possible to fumble it and LOSE during this fight. And SA-X before the game's finale.
- Hot Amazon (Over six feet tall, clad head to toe in armour, and the biggest Bad Ass in Nintendo's arsenal. Why don't we see more like her?)
- Because if she wore any less at the end of the game, it would push the rating into AO.
- I Am Not Shazam (people who call Samus "Metroid")
- Oddly enough, if one were to describe Samus as "a metroid", this would actually make some sense: in the Chozo language, the word means "Ultimate Warrior".
- It applies more literally in Fusion, where she is infused with Metroid cells.
- An Ice Person (Samus, considering all the ice power-ups)
- It's Personal (Just read the manga and you'll see that Samus has quite the bone to pick with the Space Pirates, Ridley, and Mother Brain.)
- Last Of His Kind (Super Metroid features the last Metroid. Samus herself might even count, given that, although human, she's carrying the DNA of the practically-to-totally extinct Chozo race.)
- Late To The Party (Fusion)
- Latex Space Suit (Zero Suit Samus)
- Left Hanging (Some people are a bit annoyed at the lack of a sequel to Fusion, in no small part because the ending to that game didn't address a little factoid: Samus just blew the shit out of a Federation-owned scientific laboratory, taking a planet with it. Sure Samus was getting rid of the repli-Metroids and the X all in one go, but certain elements of the Fed wanted to keep both of those around so they could use 'em as weapons... meaning that Samus is, in all likelihood, an outlaw now. And then they spend the next near-decade making prequels. Is it a little too much to ask for some resolution to this, Nintendo?)
- Lego Genetics (Samus is a human being genetically enhanced by Chozo blood. By Fusion, she's also part-Metroid, and by the end of the game she's part-X virus.)
- Leitmotif (Ridley, ever since Super, has his own boss music)
- Lethal Lava Land (Norfair. Tourian counts too.)
- Load Bearing Boss (at least one in every game)
- Lowered Monster Difficulty (The titular creatures are the scourge of the universe in Metroid and Super Metroid, needing to be frozen and pelted with missiles to kill. Through the Prime series, they become progressively less of an actual threat. In Prime 2, they can be beaten with enough firepower from any of your weapons, and in Prime 3, you eventually get the ability to kill them in one shot. Until then, though...)
- Possibly justified; the Metroids in the Prime games are a different strain (Tallon Metroids) that have been horribly mutated by massive, repeated exposure to Phazon. The SR388 and Zebes strains, on the other hand, are only vulnerable to cold. (Fusion's Omega Metroid was cloned from the last SR388 Metroid, hence only the Ice Beam damages it.)
- Mac Guffin (The Metroids themselves; the Federation wants them for their energy-producing abilities - and maybe something a little more sinister - and the Pirates want them for their destructive capabilities.)
- Malevolent Architecture
- Mama Bear (The baby Metroid's death in Super Metroid results in an asskicking so epic that the Space Pirates probably call Samus Aran "She Who Must Not Be Named.")
- Memetic Mutation ("REMEBEH ME??!?!?")
- After the above trailer was released it took about .372 seconds for "Mysterious Black Guy" to become a meme.
- Metroidvania (Pretty much started the genre)
- Mike Nelson Destroyer Of Worlds (As soon as Samus steps on a planet, you know that something's gonna go kaboom.)
- Minus World (In the NES original and Game Boy sequel).
- Mirror Match (the Chozo Mirror in Zero Mission)
- Multiple Endings (the Segmented Endings subtrope, whether based on completion time or percentage)
- Neglectful Precursors (Although the Chozo could never have predicted the Space Pirates, and did train Samus to fight their mistakes on behalf of humanity.)
- Never Live It Down: Fans like to say that any planet Samus lands on will explode at some point. They must not think Tallon IV, Aether, Norion, Bryyo, Elysia and the Pirate Homeworld exist, then.
- They do exist, but simply haven't exploded yet.
- Nice Job Breaking It Hero: (Samus' Metroid extermination campaign caused an explosion in the population of the X Parasites, which the Metroids had been designed to kill. Oops.)
- Nightmare Fuel: This series has PLENTY.
- (In the manga, Samus' facial expressions during her Heroic BSOD are Nightmare Fuel in and of itself, especially when she begins to scream at her comrades: KILL ME! KILL MEEE! HE HACKED THEM ALL TO PIECES, HE SHOT THEM AND KILLED THEM, HUNTED THEM LIKE ANIMALS!! IT'S HOPELESS TO RUN SO KILL ME BEFORE IT HAPPENS!!)
- The intro and the first stage of Super Metroid also counts. You know, bodies lying on the floor, everything gone dark and quiet, and that utterly creepy music, with the plaintive squees of a lone metroid over it...
- Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot (Ridley started as a dragon space pirate, and adds more to this title in the Prime games, culminating in him being a mutant zombie cyborg dragon space pirate.)
- No Holds Barred Beatdown: Samus to Mother Brain during the mother of all Mama Bear moments at the end of Super Metroid. After what Mother Brain did, she completely deserved it.
- Ominous Latin Chanting (Lower Norfair... and it's awesome)
- One Winged Angel (SA-X, though it later turns into a gigantic hulking monster that can be defeated with three charged shots.)
- One Woman Army (The Galactic Federation staged an all-out attack on the Space Pirate base on Zebes. When that didn't work, they sent Samus.)
- Our Monsters Are Weird (The titular Metroids)
- Palette Swap
- Personal Space Invader (The titular Metroids)
- The Pirates Who Dont Do Anything (Arguably the Space Pirates, who often are found in lairs breeding bioweapons but rarely found actually committing piracy. And Samus, despite being a bounty hunter, is rarely seen hunting bounties. In the original, she was allegedly after the bounty on Ridley and Mother Brain, but given the Retconning that gave her more revenge-flavored motives, it doesn't seem she EVER gets around to hunting criminals for money any more.)
- Not quite: the opening text crawl of Super mentioned that she left in search of a more mundane bounty after dropping off the Metroid larva at Ceres, but Ridley's little kidnapping lark put paid (literally) to that idea. Also, the Feds routinely hire Samus and other hunters for search-and-rescue missions, irregular warfare and black operations, making the entire job description rather more mercenary than bounty hunter anyway.
- Not to mention in Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. During the initial part aboard the spaceship, we see Samus has been hired by the Federation, along with three other bounty hunters to hunt down some "organic supercomputers" that look suspiciously like Mother Brain. You see the pirates stole one of them and infected the others with a virus... So, not only is Samus not unique in the galaxy, the other hunters have non-Chozo powers she does not.
- Also, Metroid Prime 2: Echoes starts with her accepting a contract to locate and assist the crew of a crashed Federation ship. Unfortunately, you soon find out that she is Late To The Party.
- Point Of No Return: Once you've saved at the second save point in Tourian in Super Metroid, you can never go back.
- Power Crystal (The Lensman-like hand crystal on the back of her left hand. Originally just a visual effect, Zero Mission made it integral to use of the Power Grip, and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption has it as the source of the Grapple Beam)
- Powered Armor (Samus' suit)
- Pronoun Trouble (the original manual, when translated into English)
- Though, by calling Samus a male, it could've simply been hiding the (then secret) twist that Samus Is A Girl.
- Puzzle Boss (many, including Crocomire)
- Puzzle Pan
- Raised By Natives (Samus)
- Recurring Boss (SA-X in Fusion, though it's not really a boss until near the end of the game. Ridley may be a better example, considering he appears in almost every game, and twice in Zero Mission.)
- Reverse Funny Aneurysm (The Japanese strategy guide for the original Metroid was in manga form, and featured an introduction where Samus was watching a video of herself surrounded by scantily clad women. Cut to her saying "Watching my promotional videos makes me feel good!" At the time, her gender was still ambiguous, but now, the implications make it hilarious.)
- Reverse Shrapnel (Ice Missiles behave this way)
- Ridiculously Cute Critter (In the manga, Samus' pet Ponchi appears to be about half squirrel, half rabbit, and all adorable.)
- Also Etecoons (Monkey-koala hybrids) in Super and Fusion. The Dachoras (Ostrich-style creatures) also count.
- Roaring Rampage Of Revenge: In Super Metroid.
- Samus Is A Girl (Duh.)
- Sand Is Water (In Maridia, when the Gravity Suit is acquired, water no longer renders Samus sluggish. However, flowing sand pits underwater still slow her down.)
- Save Point: The second type is a common sight in the series starting with the second game; the first game used passwords instead. With the exception of Chozodia save points in Zero Mission and Samus's gunship, they never refill health.
- Schematized Prop: Many of the more recent games have taken up this trope, most notably using a Power Suit schematic as the item/weapon status screen (Zero Mission, Prime, Prime 3, Super, Fusion; the schematized suit was also seen in the instruction manual for Metroid II).
- Scifi Writers Have No Sense Of Scale (Very few of Samus's weapons have numbers behind them, but those that do are absurdly powerful — like "fully automatic nuclear explosion launcher" powerful)
- Scrappy Level: The second play through of Sector 2 TRO, in Fusion, is arguably the hardest part of the game due to the play overgrowth, lack of weak enemies, and the fact that every enemy you do encounter deals at minimum 1 bar of energy in damage (nevermind the SA-X, who takes 3 of them every time you touch her).
- Maridia in Super gets this too, due to the sheer backtracking and how easy it is to get lost there, map or no map.
- Sequel Difficulty Spike (Metroid 2 was a tad bit tougher than the original, though this may have had more to do with the switch in system than anything else)
- Sequel Hook (scanning a certain monitor in Prime 3 gives you the message "Metroid project 'Dread' is nearing final stages of completion". That message scared this troper more than anything else in the game.)
- Perhaps this troper should explain - another new Metroid, titled Metroid Dread, was in development at the same time as Corruption but never saw release. It was hotly anticipated, mostly because it was suspected that it would return to the franchise's side-scrolling roots. Word Of God is that it hasn't been officially cancelled and may still come out someday, hence the nod in Corruption.
- Actually the Corruption developers weren't aware of Dread - production on the game had probably stopped years before they made the quote. The reference was actually removed from the Japanese release to stop people yapping on about it.
- Debatable, Retro was chosen to produce these games because they're American developers that are fans of the series, I suspect the mention was an Easter Egg that backfired and the developers just downplayed it.
- On a different note, Fusion sure seemed to leave one hell of a sequel hook, what with Samus having illegally blown up a Federation outpost and become something way other than human. Sure, Samus had her reasons, but all the implications in-game are that the Fed will be pissed as shit with her now.
- Sequence Breaking (possibly one of the most well-known examples)
- Shape Shifter Baggage (No attempt is made to explain where Samus stuffs the rest of her body when she assumes Morph Ball form. The games say it is about a meter in diameter, but the visual size is arguably smaller than that. X parasites are another example, morphing from single cells to monstrous creatures instantly.)
- Even Lampshaded in-game when the Space Pirates tried to copy the Morph Ball technology, and ending up breaking every bone in the test subjects' bodies.
- She's Back (In Zero Mission. After getting shot down and losing your Power Suit? Running and hiding from just about everything. After the Chozo Trial boss fight? The Hunter, who sends waves of terror throughout the Space Pirate legions, is reborn, more powerful than ever.
- Shifting Sand Land (Sector 3 - PYR)
- Shoulders Of Doom (the Varia Suit adds them)
- Shout Out (Several to the Film/Alien franchise. Ridley the pirate is named after director Ridley Scott, and the opening shot of Prime is almost identical to that of the first film.)
- A non-enemy creature in Super Metroid has a turtle like shell that flies around while spinning. Likely a nod to Gamera.
- A blink-and-you'll-miss-it example is the name of the planet that houses one Federation shipyard, where the GFS Olympus and Samus' gunship (the one used in Prime 2; she goes through gunships like other people go through tissues) were built: Aliehs III.
- And then there's the fact that, as of Super Metroid, Samus can SHIIIIINESPAAAAAAAARK!
- Slippy Slidey Ice World (Sector 5 - ARC)
- Subverted in that last one, as nothing slides on the ice in Fusion. You do take damage from stepping foot in it if you don't have the Varia Suit upgrade though.
- Sole Survivor (Samus, twice over: first when the K-2L colony was slaughtered by the Space Pirates, and again when the Space Pirates, under Mother Brain's direction, invaded Zebes and killed the remaining Chozo. Well, on Zebes, anyway.)
- And then there's the last remaining Metroid from Metroid II.
- Space Pirates (the primary antagonists for most of the series; only three games didn't have them as the main attackers, and in two of the three, they made cameo appearances anyways)
- Spiritual Successor (Kid Icarus)
- Sprint Shoes (Speed Booster)
- Stock Ness Monster (the boss Serris is a sea serpent with Super Speed)
- Sub Boss (Return of Samus is the only game that doesn't have at least one.)
- Suddenly Voiced (In Brawl, Samus finally spoke her taunts. However, they sounded rather...odd. In the upcoming game Other M, she will speak for the first time in her own series.)
- Superweapon Surprise (Don't mess with Chozo statues... just, don't: "Those who defile [our statues] shall know our wrath, unfettered and raw.")
- Suspicious Videogame Generosity (if there is a save station - and possibly recharge room - next to a huge room, expect a boss to be nearby...)
- Swiss Army Weapon (Samus' cannon shoots various beams, including power, ice, plasma, and wave, and also missiles)
- Sympathy For The Devil (As the series goes on, you realize the Metroids aren't so bad - this culminates with Samus becoming part-Metroid in Fusion.)
- Techno Wreckage (The Wrecked Ship in Super Metroid)
- Temple Of Doom (Chozodia)
- That One Boss (Yakuza, Nightmare... And Ridley is hardly a fair fight, in any game.)
- The Dragon (Ridley, a literal SPACE Dragon)
- The Hunter (So much so that it's the Space Pirates' nickname for her.)
- Theme Music Power Up (This occurs in every Metroid, but perhaps the most gratifying moment is in Zero Mission when, after running for your life from Space Pirates with nothing but your Emergency Pistol and defeating the Chozo Ghost, Samus' unknown items transform into the Plasma Beam, Gravity Suit, and Space Jump Boots. At this point, you can finally kill the Space Pirates and with ease I might add.)
- They Changed It Now It Sucks (Metroid Fusion's linear progression caused waves of Internet Backdraft.)
- Tomboyish Name ("Samus" isn't a real name in any language, but it sounds a lot like "Seamus," which is.)
- It shortens to Sam, which could also be short for Samuel or Samantha.
- Trauma Induced Amnesia (Happens to Samus in the manga. The trauma of watching her homeworld being destroyed and watching her parents die is essentially forgotten until Ridley forces Samus to remember what happened in their first encounter many years later. After remembering the event, Samus suffers a horrendous Heroic BSOD and begs her comrades to kill her.)
- Underground Level (Brinstar)
- Unexpected Genre Change (Stealth after Samus loses her suit in Zero Mission)
- Urban Legend Of Zelda: Many minor ones, but here are some of the most major:
- The belief that the infamous Justin Bailey code had an actual meaning, instead of being just a random result of password calculations.
- Replica Justin Bailey codes in Metroid II and Super Metroid. This eventually resulted in fan-made Game Mods in honor of the fruitless searching.
- The NARPAS SWORD password, unlike Justin Bailey, was purposely coded into the game and means North American Release Password. This didn't stop hundreds of kids from searching through the game looking for a Narpas Sword weapon.
- The Very Definitely Final Dungeon (except for Fusion, the Final Boss is always in an impressive location)
- Video Game Caring Potential (If you don't assist the Etecoons and Dachora during the escape from Zebes in Super Metroid, you are a heartless, soulless person! Thankfully, Fusion shows that they lived canonically.)
- Video Game Remake (Zero Mission)
- Vindicated By History: Super Metroid was overshadowed at the time of its release by the hype for Donkey Kong Country, people didn't start acknowledging it as one of the greatest games of all time until 1996 or so.
- Wall Banger: No matter how mixed the opinions about the Metroid Zero Mission Manga is, almost everyone seem to agree that the chapters from the middle to near-end are a bit... Strange. Luckily, nobody seems to mention it in the next chapters.
- Warp Whistle (Echoes enables travelling in temple Pillars of Light, and Corruption, landing on certain areas with the gunship)
- What The Hell, Player? (The "Shinespark" Easter Egg in Fusion)
- Womb Level (Parts of Brinstar Green in Super.)
- The innards of the Leviathans in "Prime 3" may also count, though that's more of a case of 'Womb Boss Chamber'.
- X Meets Y (Early 2D Metroid was thought of as a combination of Mario's platformer gameplay and Zelda's exploration and item collecting mechanics.)
- You Dont Look Like You (Samus herself suffered this problem until about Metroid Zero Mission. Her armor didn't change much, but she herself, well... She was usually a blonde—except when her hair was brown, green, or Dark Skinned Purple—and her various facial features and overall style of rendering fluctuated somewhat. However, once Zero Mission/Prime 2 hit, her appearance seemed to standardize.)
- Younger Than They Look (According to the official tie-in manga, Samus is only supposed to be 17 during the events of the first game. Fans have their doubts.)
- She is 17 for the majority of the Manga, but the final few chapters feature a Time Skip that brings her up to around 20.
- She's fourteen for the majority of the manga. The timeline shows her briefly at age three and age ten, skips to fourteen, then skips to seventeen.
- It would seem there are some different translations out there.
|
|
