Metroid

Even in the Prime games she can double-jump and screw attack, though.

Maybe she felt like taking it slow in the Prime games. Wanted a nice relaxing stroll through the countryside.

And her little jet-boosted sidestep maneuver.

I can understand that when talking about the Phendrana Drifts. That place is possibly one of my favorite setpieces in any Metroid game.

I loved Elysia. Looked amazing from beginning to end.

Phaaze was quite pretty, even if it was personally trying to kill me.

Really, most locations in the Prime series look amazing.

Now I'm going to have to replay the trilogy. I think I have a file left off where I was trying to get enough of the game complete to get the secret ending.

Well, Samus is less mobile in that there is no speed booster (there is a boost ball but it is neither automatic nor continuous) no wall jumping outside of certain points and you can't grab ledges. But I think some of it is perception too. Prime's areas tend to be very big and you experience them mostly in first person, which takes some of the scope away.

If you uncurl the morph ball or screw attack in places, you'll see Samus is jumping pretty high for her size. Still, it'd be interesting to see how another Prime style game handled another mobility upgrade.

Duraz alerted me to this humorous series of tumbls.

Ah yes. Nintendo not understanding what a bounty hunter was back when they first made the game.

Still, she does qualify for the title although "mercenary" may be closer (seeing as how she works like the Star Fox team).

I tend to believe that Samus hunts bounties in her spare time and just hasn't had a game focus on it.

Nintendo's wishes be darned.

Translation error? I don't buy it. I think it is more like Nintendo didn't pay too much attention to Metroid because it wasn't a franchise, much less a flagship one, until Metroid Prime rolled along.

Let's forget about the continuity errors in Super Metroid and Metroid Fusion. Let's look at the first game's manual. It says "space hunters" rather than "bounty hunters" but the job description is apt. "It's hard to catch pirates in the vastness of space, we'll put bounties on them and let citizens with hunting licenses take them out if they cross paths."

Metroid II is much the same. Its hard to employ exterminators for these pests. We'll let people with hunting licenses kill them for monetary reward. Logically, there should have been a ton of hunters on SR 338. No, logically, it's not a populated area so there is no reason not to simply have the army handle it, other than the cavernous ecosystems of Metroid apparently being immune to orbital bombardment.

But the real damning evidence comes from the "Manga". Samus actively hunts a bounty in it, with Adam trying to beat her to the trigger so he won't have to pay her. The "infiltrate pirate base" mission that comes immediately after it is odd for a bounty hunter but the Manga basically gave proof that bounty hunting is what she usually does and that the game plots are the odd balls out.

Then come Other M, while not as damning (and ignoring that its back story is glaringly contradictory to the manga's), treats the bounty hunting like it is some dirty, disgraceful thing that hurt Adam when Samus left the military for it.(ignoring contradictions is hard) That attitude is exactly in line with the Japanese stance toward bounty hunting (scum). The manga's is a more American, or at least USA approach (don't always get along with police or military but is a respectable form of law enforcement)

That part about Japanese having a negative view on Bounty Hunting but making the game specifically to appeal to an American audience is key. I think because Metroid was largely a cult classic till Prime on the Game Cube (which itself was merely a hit relative to the Game Cube being an underselling system, was developed primarily by foreigners, was bought and played primarily by foreigners) means less "translation error" and more "right hand doesn't know what the left was doing". This was Nintendo's first attempt at really trying to pander the Metroid brand to Japanese people. Hell, Metroid II was developed in America to get a better feel for the target audience and Prime was left to the target audience. Remember, Nintendo is the same company who put a man who had never beaten the first Legend Of Zelda game in charge of the Zelda franchise! Link to the Past and Ocarina Of Time are where it took off and suddenly the Master Sword and Triforce have become plot tumors[whether that's good or bad is subjective]. Unless you're a fan of Zelda specifically, you might not even know there were Zelda games before Link To The Past/Ocarina Of Time.

Combine that with real bounty hunters not having much presence in the public imagination, what with it being an illegal occupation and all, to paraphrase Chappelle's Show. "Lil John's allowed to say 'skeet skeet' on the radio because white people don't know what it means yet. When they find out they will be like 'My God, what have we done?'" Mexicans wear the Confederate flag generally because they don't know about USA's civil war and when they find out about it, are prone to sympathize with the Union(Mexico had its own slave rebellions after all). But to most Mexicans, the Confederate Flag design is from The Dukesof Hazzard. To most Japanese, bounty hunter is Super Hero, but grittier.(how that idea came into Japanese popular culture, I don't know. That's how they view it though)

That's my opinion on the thing. "Translation error" reads like an excuse for people who don't actually want to go through all the Metroid titles...which is fine if you're just a fan, reviewer. When you work on the product, I expect a little more attention to detail.

edited 26th Nov '14 2:34:19 PM by IndirectActiveTransport

Not really. SR-388 is apparently dangerous enough that mostly only Samus is qualified to take on the job. And they already did send in the army. The native fauna took out a team of researchers, a rescue ship, and an army ship sent to rescue the rescue ship, before they finally said "fine, just send in Samus. She fought Metroids before, right?"

But guys, samus as a dorky archeologist

I am totally down for that version of Samus. A 6'3" busty muscular amazoness who geeks out over dumb archaeology things.

So maybe Metroid II wasn't the best example? Should have just stuck to three points but sometimes I run on.

IT BELONGS IN A SPACE MUSEUM!

Metroid being Metroid, we know far more about ancient long-dead pseudomagical philosopher civilizations than we do about day-to-day life on earth. Maybe that does mirror Samus' own level of knowledge on both subjects.

She was raised by ancient giant bird people.

I think she's got an excuse.

The idea of Samus perching on streetlights or roaming parking lots looking for french fries still cracks me up.

I can't recall, did Samus and the other hunters in Corruption have a payment lined up for the anti-Phazon campaign, or were they just on board on the principle that the universe being blue-goo'd is bad for business?

By the way, I just looked up Prime 3's full ending. That bit where Samus is remembering the other hunters... sad times.

It's also possible that linguistic drift caused "bounty hunter" to cover assassination jobs and the like as well, so that in Samus's time, it is the normal name for the kind of "hunt down and destroy" missions that she does.

I imagine the Japanese got the idea of bounty hunters being badass super-heroes the same way we Americans did: Sergio Leone movies.

I think the weird fanbase Boba Fett got might have had something to do with it, too.

edited 26th Nov '14 6:47:10 PM by Pulse

Yeah, but all he ever does is stand there. Clint Eastwood basically created the bounty hunter archetype.