Metroid/Headscratchers

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • 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.)
  • How can Samus be 6'3 and weigh 198 lbs 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 it's not too far off.
    • 6'3" and 198 lbs 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 armor alone, and Samus' own height and weight are a mystery. One person said she's 5'11, 148 lbs but did not source it.
      • Nintendo's official strategy guide for Super Metroid also states she's 6'3 and 198 lbs.
    • Here's another head-scratcher 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?
    • 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?
      • This Troper seems 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 armor adds to her height quite noticeably. In "Other M," when in the armor Samus towers over Adam Malkovich, but without the armor, she's a few inches shorter than him.
      • Which contradicts Zero Mission where it didn't add much height(but a lot of bulk).
  • Here's an obvious one: 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. (This troper 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 armor 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 Metroid 3 Morph Ball is somewhat less than 1/2 her height, because Samus is roughly 2.5 blocks high in that game.
    • 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 armor 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 favor of the ghost/energy/spatial folding explanations, its 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
    • 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.
  • The shoulders always bother me. 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 armor 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, armor 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 armor and flank.
  • How can the Galatic 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.
  • 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 A Us like using an anti-virus 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 realized 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? 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 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.
    • 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 Samuscave and just travels with what she needs? If she does need anything that got left behind.. Well, the chozo left their spare powersuit 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 authorized 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.
  • 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 armor halves, and the ball of energy in the center fried them like a bug zapper.
  • In the prime series, all of the elevators go down, if you're going to a new area. Now, this would be fine, but you go down, don't flip, and then you're in open sky! This bothers me to no end, and it gets really rattling in Prime 2, when you take an elevator down and end up at the summit of a MOUNTAIN!
    • Presumably the "going down" cutscene only shows part of the trip- there are likely some parts where the elevator goes sideways, or there are boring empty corridors between elevators that we don't need to play. Also, some elevators DO go up.
    • This troper always wondered how anything can survive riding the elevators in Prime 2: Echoes. The damned things are rocket powered, and they go from zero to full speed and then back to a full stop instantaneously - by rights the passenger(s), even those in super-powered armor, ought to be smeared across the ceiling or splattered on the platform. Apparently nobody ever explained inertia or momentum to the Luminoth...
      • Well, when heading downward, they actually use the rockets to slow down. Yes, upwards should be a trip into splattter land, but not downwards.
      • This is a world with space ships. I'm sure whatever stops the spaceship from splattering the pilot all over the walls can be adapted to rocket powers elevators.
    • The Sanctuary Fortress isn't at the summit of the mountain, it's built into the cliffside. The Temple Grounds, on the other hand, have cliffs all around the edges. They may very well be on a plateau on top of the mountain adjacent to the one the Fortress is on (you have to cross a bridge to get to the Fortress proper).
      • And that would be Jossed by the map itself. If you zoom out far enough, it shows you the placement of the levels in accordance to the other levels, the areas within the levels, and the height of the levels themselves. The Sanctuary Fortress is the highest on the map.
        • Yes, but the entrance of the Sanctuary Fortress is low; you then cross a bridge to a second cliff, where the actual fortress is.
    • In fairness, Retro themselves presumably realized these issues, phasing out elevators in Prime 3 in favor of Samus's ship (for both single-planet and interplanetary travel) and things like the Pirates' shuttle trains.
  • Speaking of the cliff, such as Sanctuary Fortress, just how does the Luminoth create the visual electronic illusion? (the surrounding environment, like all the way down)
    • There probably is something down there, you know, a certain someone falls out a window.
  • Anyone else notice that Samus' armor isn't radiopaque? In both Prime and Prime 3, you can clearly see the bones in her hands and arms through her armor with the X-ray visor. How she hasn't died of radiation poisoning multiple times over, this troper 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 armor plate but not bone? 2) Why doesn't it penetrate any other metal in the environment? 3) Why doesn't it penetrate the Pirates' armor? 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 aneurisms). Its 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 armor 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 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 spaces stations and ships all over the galaxy that the can somehow get to at a moments notice, this seems plausible.
    • A Buddy of mine mentioned she would kill any organism she looked at it with...
  • The events of Metroid Prime, and indeed the Prime subseries as a whole, began when Samus responded to an open distress signal coming from a research vessel. It turned out to belong to the Space Pirates, so she blasted them repeatedly and then followed their evacuating leader to one of their newer bases of operation. Let me say that again. The Space Pirates, galactic menaces, sent out an open distress signal. What were they thinking?
    • "Oh crap, the experiments got loose! We're all going to die!" ...No, seriously: they probably figured that since they controlled the only remaining habitable planet in the system and Samus hadn't yet found their little hidey-hole on Tallon IV (Pirate Data "Fall of Zebes"), the only people who would hear their distress call would be their fellow Pirates planetside.
    • The Pirates have always bordered on being Too Dumb to Live, the distress call being just one more example. They even start lampshading it by Prime 2, in which you start seeing individual Pirate logs busting on the colossal stupidity of High Command and the Science Team. ("Science Team thinks the metroids can be domesticated... I think Science Team has vapor for brains; I've already lost five troopers to the miserable little parasites.")
    • The distress signals were most likely encrypted, like most of their data. Samus is seen to have technology to break their encryption (which the Pirates eventually realize, exasperating them to no end), which would have allowed her to know that there was a vulnerable pirate research station within range.
    • Wasn't the distress signal she picked up automated? The computer realizing some of the escape pods had been launched? But even assuming the pirates intentionally sent out the distress call, they might have counted on their ability to overwhelm most people who might have responded.
      • In the first case, why didn't they disable the automated signal (or install one in the first place if they made the vessel themselves)? And as for the second point, why would they add "overwhelm the arriving forces" to their list of troubles when they are already getting wiped out by the experiments?
  • 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.
    • 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 seem 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.
    • 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 organization 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.
  • How on earth does the recovery system for long-distance falls in the Prime series work? You miss your jump, poor Samus goes hurtling off into the great beyond, and then you're instantly transported back to the platform you jumped from, with nothing more than a cute little "oof!" noise to mark the mishap. (Hell, Samus yells louder and takes more damage if she trips over a Zoomer.) Since long-distance falls kill you instantly in Hunters, the magic recovery business in the other games makes no sense at all.
    • The best part being that this problem was introduced with Prime II: Echoes, the original Metroid Prime was designed so there were no infinite fall areas to worry about, at least that you could reach.
    • Just remember that in this series, Hunters is essentially too bollocksed up to really count. Especially with random things like taking appreciable fall damage.
    • It works the same way it works for Link.
      • I have a theory regarding this. Essentially, every time you fall in either series, you lose health and are then returned to start, yeah? Easy fix: In Zelda games, Link is warped out of certain death, but the spell needs life energy to run so fast. Same deal for Metroid, except it only pulls from the suits shields to activate the teleport module. The only hole in this logic is why she couldn't just use the short range teleport all the time, but probably doesn't to conserve her shielding. Also, the 'oof' probably means it doesn't cancel the kinetic motion. so she still smacks the ground at her maximum fall speed, which her suits inertial dampers took on.
      • Time distortion/reversal. Can only be used for a short period and explains why you return to the platform, but can't hop over to the next platform with it. It can also be linked to a save point which provides the extra power to bring you the farther distance.
    • Also, what I consider disturbing is that some places are technically not bottomless pits (take some Temple Grounds cliffsides, and some of the locations in Corruption, save Sky Town for its cloudy surface)
    • I am going to assume Gameplay and Story Segregation. Samus never misses those jumps throughout the canon course of the story because doing so would be fatal (just as she never dies against bosses in-universe even though you, as the player, may see it happen many times). They don't make it a full game over because that would be too annoying, and you lose energy as a gameplay penalty for screwing up instead.
  • What were the Space Pirates doing in BSL? Clearly they were up to something... at least before the X took them over.
    • Knowing the space pirates, chances are good they got bit in the butt with karmic retribution. They discovered through some means about either the X parasite (Something they could have encountered before on SR388), or about that small lab module stuck off all on it's lonesome on the station, with its supply of goodies, and decided to raid pillage and plunder it. Plus, it's a Federation Science Lab, out in the open without escort. Easy pickings, it would seem to the casual pirate: Lot's of salvageable tech and information for Science Team, and a space station to create a Space Pirate base of operations that could sail through Federation Space without getting shot out of the sky. This idea held true and was panning out, right up until they got eaten by the X. See also: Metroid Prime (Parasite Queens), Echoes (the Ing), and whatever shot them in the face in Corruption.
      • What shot them in the face in Corruption was them returning to Aether after the Federation had been there to collect Phazon samples. According to a Pirate data log, they quickly went in with a small team to scoop up as much Phazon as possible before the Federation came back. This went surprisingly well. But not long after takeoff, Dark Samus reformed from stray Phazon particles in their cargo bay (see Corruption's intro scene) and wreaked havoc upon the ship. After restoring its body with the Phazon and brainwashing the crew, Prime/Dark Samus went to the Pirate Homeworld to take it over. Later she went to Phaaze and kicked Corruption's plot into high gear.
    • Alternate theory: The BSL researchers devoted Sector 1 to reproducing the atmosphere, flora and fauna of Zebes as closely as possible. Then someone said "Hey, didn't Zebes also have Space Pirates?" That guy didn't last long once everyone else found out.
      • Nope. Sector 1 was a replica of SR388, not Zebes (hence the map code SRX). However, there is a way Pirates could have wound up in SR388's ecosystem - see below.
        • This is true, but what about the fact that every other sector on the space station is carrying organisms from Zebes? Isn't that extremely suspicious? When did BSL get all of these samples? When the planet was a space pirate hive? Or when it went from being a space pirate hive to a slightly charred asteroid field?
      • I kinda like this theory. Besides, somewhere out there there is a scientist who would go that far for accurate reproductions.
    • Less stupid theory: Ridley was held captive there. Can't the Space Pirates go on their own rescue mission every once in a while? Especially after losing their bases and possibly access to their cloning methods?
      • Nope, still a stupid theory; Ridley was not held captive there; their leader(?) Ridley was dead. The Federation cloned him. That's not their leader, unless his genetic memory ever becomes canon.
        • That wasn't established until Other M, which was released after this JBM was written. Even with that game in mind, considering how many problems stemmed from Ridley accidentally being cloned, would they really want to do it deliberately? Despite this group's Zebesian work, their goal wasn't to recreate the Space Pirate organization as a whole. (At least, it shouldn't have been. The plot is sounding more and more like a Hand Wave to recreate all of Samus's classic threats in an effort to prolong the series, isn't it?)
    • Alternate, less stupid theory: The Pirates knew that metroids originated on SR388 from the first Federation survey ship way-back-when. (That was the catalyst event for the original Metroid, as quoted in the manual. The Feds had just discovered SR388 and sent a survey expedition, which got hijacked en route back to Earth along with their research specimens - including a handful of metroids in stasis). Samus exterminated the Pirates' original metroid stash on Zebes, but the High Command wasn't about to let metroids go so easily and mounted their own expedition to SR388 to capture more. This was the origin of the Tallon metroid line, and may explain why the Tallon metroids (as seen on Tallon IV and Aether) look strikingly different from the Zebes version (smaller, more color variance, get killed by lots of weapons instead of ice+ missile only, etc). During that mission, some hapless Pirate trooper got attacked by X; Pirate command never noticed because they were losing troops left and right to the local wildlife. Since X reproduce asexually and retain the genomes of all their past victims, it's plausible that at least one clonal line retaining the Pirate genome made it to BSL. When Samus started kicking all their lower-order forms around, the X switched to forms with better combat capability, including that of the Space Pirate. Voila.
      • That could work, but shouldn't all the little scrubs in the entry hall change to ferocious combat forms as well? It looks like they can only mimic one creature at a time. With the Big Bad of the games final transformation being the exception, probably due to how many signatures were present in the original host.
    • I thought it was established that the Federation was secretly working with them.
    • Working with mixing the events in the game with manga here, but the Metroid were developed to destroy the X parasite by the Chozo, under Mother Brain's surveillance. Since Mother Brain was siding with the Space Pirates in the end, they might have heard something about X from her along with the Metroid. Since one of the reasons for destroying BSL and SR388 against Federation orders was to keep the Federation, or anyone else, from using X as a biological weapon, it's possible that the Pirates got intel that X could be useful to them, and the station was a more controlled environment than trying something so dangerous as to track it down something that no longer has a natural enemy in its own environment.
    • A lot of the pirates you meet are in the station's reactor area. Perhaps their true intention was to sabotage the station, causing it to crash into the planet below, destroying all life! Because seriously, even space pirates should be able to tell that the place is a shithouse.
      • Aren't these the same space pirates that designed their own ships and bases with doors that they themselves cannot open quickly in an emergency? Space pirates are generally portrayed as dumber than a space sack of space bricks, especially the command wing (Ridley excluded). Someone high-up could've given the order to sack BSL, the Red Shirts grumbled and complained and saw just how risky attempting to loot an obviously compromised research station would be, but still went through with their orders as an alternative to being launched into the nearest sun. Common sense isn't the SP's stock and trade.
    • Theory from a fanfiction I once read (which can be found in the fanfic rec's): BSL was built as a training ground for what would essentially be more Samuses. It would have everything Samus had faced so far, so the trainees would end up as strong as Samus. Then the X invaded, and they decided that using the X as an unstoppable bioweapon worked just as well.
    • Alternate Alternate Theory: The researchers had some intact Space Pirates in storage to eventually study. BSL had retrieved Ridley's corpse, so grabbing some Pirates while they were at it isn't out of the question.
    • My best guess is that the X on SR388 somehow got ahold of Pirate DNA, or possibly the Feds had samples on the BSL. As for Ridley... We know that the one you fight is just a copy, but I've always believed that the frozen one wasn't the real one either. Maybe the Feds were studying a clone they had made? Then again, we know he's in Other M, which is between Super and Fusion, so we may get to see how they got Ridley into the BSL.
    • Other M might have explained this one. It's revealed that the Galactic Federation had been experimenting on Zebesians, cybernetically enhancing them to be used as bioweapons. As one would expect, this went horribly wrong, mostly due to Ridley's unexpected appearance. So it might be that they were continuing said experiments on BSL...since Ridley wasn't going to be an issue, seeing as how he was dead and (just in case) frozen solid, they probably thought they would succeed this time around. Then the X Parasites came.
  • Of course, the above discussion reminds me. What happened to the remaining eight SA-X that were onboard the station? They couldn't have all been on the super happy fun compartment, we only saw the one. Then there was the one that got blown up in the control room... So we're missing like, eight of the buggers, according to ADAM.
    • Unless one of them smuggled inside Samus' ship(which didn't happen do to the ship being able to detect them), they were blown to smithereens. It's hard to survive a space station crash. Followed by it self-destructing. And taking the planet it crashed into with it.
      • Simple. They weren't there. Adam was lying about how many there were in order to scare you and get you off the station. (After hearing this, you pretty much have free reign to explore the rest of the station, but you'll never see any more SA-X until the endgame. If there were really so many of them, it would be possible to run into them.)
      • How long have you been on this website?
      • No, they're definitely gone. One got nom'd by metroids. One of them was absorbed by Samus, and the other eight were blown up with BSL, SR388, and the rest of the X.
      • Or, they could just be stranded in space. The only way to destroy X that has been shown is absorbing it's energy. The Chozo created the Metroids specifically for that purpose. Samus having Metroid DNA is able to do it too. Why would an explosion kill all of the X at the end of the game, when they are not shown to be affected by explosions anywhere else?
      • Because Adam says an explosion the size of the BSL will kill X parasites caught in it and one big enough to take a planet will kill all of them in the area. Individual X are shown to be slightly affected by the power bomb. Not damaged but they are still moved by the blast, maybe once the bangs get too big their defenses just can't take it? Draining their energy just seems like a much preferred and safer method than planet sized explosions.
  • Also, is there a chance that Samus will regain her traditional armor in the next move forward in the series? the Fusion Armor 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 armor boosts (gravity suit, for example) to get bits that presumably add only extra defense and/or comfort. Presumably at some point before the next chronological game, she'll get new shoulder pads and an outer armor 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.
  • This should follow the first one on this list. 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 bullets 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 depressurized 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.
  • Not a gameplay/story issue, but did anyone else find the Phendrana Drifts in Prime to be almost emotionally draining? the combination of the music and frozen wasteland had an Ecco-ish induced feeling isolation for me.
    • That was probably the point.
      • I would submit that this is the point of the entire series.
      • Yeah, that was definitely the point of the drifts. The atmosphere is GREAT, too. I felt like I was playing a videogame version of The Thing during that section.
      • Really? It always made me feel hopeful for some reason...
  • In Metroid Fusion, Samus is attacked by the X and, as she claims, some parts of her armor 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? No Just No.
    • 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 Brothers 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 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, this long-haired troper 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 hygienical 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 Warhammer40k or at least the Sisters anyway (since most of the men have standard military cuts.)
    • Also agreed. I've always thought the long blond hair didn't really go so well the 'this is not glamor-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 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. (The manga came up with some goofy business about how the suit is part of her DNA and manifests itself out of pure energy when she wills it to appear, which as far as I'm concerned smacks entirely too much of a low-budget henshin show.)
      • 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 armored Samus right before her eyes before taking on Omega Metroid.
        • Keeping in mind that in this series, phazon can corrupt machines, and ing can posess 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)?
    • This troper's guess is that the ice beam can freeze enemies in midair by the use of anti-grav particles in the shot. Of course, this will get shot down rather quickly.
    • According to Hunters, the Judicator is near Absolute Zero. 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 insteaed of staying aloft. Some shatter, some don't.
    • 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.
  • And what about THE BOMB in her Morph Ball mode... Did 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: Small sample of charged explosive 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.
  • I've been wondering for a while, how exactly did the X infect Samus? The suit is airtight and protected by an energy shield. So far, Samus's suit seems to have a crippling weakness to plot.
    • Where does that fit in Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors?
    • I don't think the suit is entirely airtight. It likely has some sort of pressure system, where it seals up automatically in increased pressure of being underwater or the decreased pressure of vacuum, but if you'll recall, poison gas hurts Samus in the Prime series, so in regular environments with breathable atmosphere, there is apparently some openings, probably filtered, for breathing air. The X probably got in through there.
    • It's said above that the suit is partly organic, the X might not have even needed to penetrate it. Alternately, they assumed microbial form and snuck in through the smallest cracks.
      • Except that it was acidic gas, and the suit has an energy field around it. So it somehow got past the shields, through the armor, into the organic parts, and then got to Samus herself?
      • The X are shown to go intangible, to the point where Samus can't absorb them if they're phased out. They probably phased past the shield when they attacked Samus.
      • Also, the energy shielding may only protect against energy weapons, while the armor is designed to handle everything else that gets thrown at her. Note that all of the Prime games feature all kinds of materials getting on Samus' armor, notably her helmet's faceplate (water, bug guts, trash-disposal... um, liquids), which indicates that the shielding isn't deflecting those materials away. Thus the X, being organic and not affected by the shielding, would only have had to get through the armor at some previously mentioned weak point.
        • This then raises the question of why physical attacks still drain energy from the shield. Samus takes nearly the same amount of damage from a high-powered beam as a punch from the Omega Pirate. The only way this is possible is if the shield blocks them, too. In addition, the shield has blocked such things as ghostly attacks and demonic possession, and that Omega punch should have tossed Samus across the room, but didn't. The materials themselves don't damage Samus, but merely obscure the visor and seem to cover the entire suit. Perhaps the shield essentailly "hardens" when hit by a physical attack, and those substances can stick to it when this happens. Maybe the X simply wasn't registered as a threat, and the shield didn't react. They sre microscopic, after all.
          • About that demonic possession: Samus's armor wasn't initially able to resist Ing possession on its own. Samus needed to acquire the Luminoth's Energy Transfer Module from the possessed creature sent to steal the last of Aether's energy to be able to resist. Strangely, I don't think it was ever explained just what in the module itself would prevent possession. During the short time before she gets it, I don't think the Ing had even bothered attempting to add her to their forces.
              • The Ing never bothered to possess her because the Ing couldn't take a physical form in Aether, and just attempted to possess what they knew. When that didn't work, and she made her way into their home, they tried to possess her, which didn't work either. Also, I always assumed that because, as far as the inventory descriptions say, it's essentially a giant ball of light, and the Ing hate the light...
                • If that were true, and I don't think the module protecting Samus was ever said, the Ing would not have been able to steal it or possess the Alpha Splinter, since his Dark form had it. The more likely explanation is that either Samus or the suit is simply unable to be possessed due to Chozo foresight/wizarding or sheer willpower.
                  • It was specifically stated in the log book entry for the transfer module that its core contains the Light of Aether which prevents Samus from being possessed.
                    • I think the transfer module doesn't do anything to the Ing. If it did, they wouldn't be able to use it to steal Aether's energy. Since it's made of light, though, when Samus added it to her suit, it basically made it immpossible for Ing to possess her. I imagine the light has a burning effect...
                      • It is stated in-game that holding the transfer module immunizes you to possession. The Ing can take it and use it just fine, such as the one leading the final attack on U-Mos that possessed an Alpha Splinter, they just can't possess whatever being is holding it. Which means that particular Ing couldn't be possessed by its fellow Ing, because I heard you like Ings but we can't put an Ing in your Ing.
  • Who packed BSL with enough explosive charges to take a planet with it when the self-destruct goes off? Whoever they are, they have vapor for brains.
    • BSL is full of biological weapons. The explosives are either there for sterilization purposes (in case something escapes; which is exactly what happened) or the BSL itself is a weapon.
    • I've always assumed the planet-destroying explosion (technically it doesn't destroy the planet as you can still see it on the radar, just blow most of the surface into orbit) was not caused by the explosive self-destruct mechanism itself, but by the explosion causing the station's reactor to go critical. Assuming the station was powered by antimatter or something a breach in the reactor could cause an enormous explosion.
      • Actually, the self-destruct explosives seem to be much more powerful than the reactor overloading- that's exactly the reasoning ADAM gives to why you have to stop the reactor overloard earlier on. But as said above, BSL is packed with all kinds of top secret bio-weapons, special projects of dubious legality and some of the most dangerous creatures in the galaxy, a thorough self-destruct has several purposes: a containment failsafe, a reason for invaders to be hesitant to use heavy weapons, and plausible deniability.
        • Thoroughly destroying a space station is one thing. Taking an entire planet with it is another. That transcends plausible deniability and goes straight on into "making it worse". With a thorough enough self-destruct, you can at least claim the station never existed, but when a PLANET suddenly disappears because of your secret illegal experiment lab, that's harder to explain away. There just isn't a good Watsonian reason for why the station could destroy SR388. Of course, a probable Doylian answer is that someone on the development team went, "Super Metroid was awesome, and it ended with a planet exploding. We should blow up a planet again. That'll make Fusion awesome."
          • In a Watsonian sense, it may have been a combination of the explosion and the impact. There's a decent chance that the station is both large enough to be analagous to an extinction-level meteor, and have shielding to keep it from burning up in atmosphere, and if things were timed right- which they probably were- and the self destruct went off the moment it hit the planet, it would increase the force with which it hit the planet. Like a bullet hitting an egg.
  • Ok, so your mission in Super Metroid for the SNES was to rescue the captured Metroid from Ridley. You fail, as the metroid sacrifices itself to save your life and give you the power to destroy Mother Brain. Alright, I'm cool with that. What Just Bugs Me, having left the planet sans Metroid, it still says "The mission was completed successfully". The hell it was!
    • Missions like that usually go along the lines of, "Retrieve resource or prevent opposition from using it". Samus got the second objective, and royally screwed over the pirates in the process. Basically a success.
    • Alternately, it was a continuation of her mission from Metroid II: exterminate all Metroids. That mission was not complete, as the infant Metroid still lived. Other M makes it clear that Samus keeping the thing alive and giving it to researchers was a serious breach in protocol (though apparently not actually illegal). When she's giving her report to the Federation in the beginning of Other M (right after Super), she specifically cites the "Exterminate all Metroids" objective as being completed successfully.
    • In the first Metroid, Samus's mission is to destroy the Pirate leadership. Kraid, Ridley, and Mother Brain all get better. In Metroid 2, she's sent to annihilate the Metroids, and brings one back for study. Super sends her to recover the infant Metroid, which is destroyed (ironically, Mother Brain completes Samus's second mission for her by doing this). Fusion has her helping an investigation team on SR388, which directly results in the infestation of the X parasite on the station, riding in on her armor. Other M, she investigates a distress signal on a mission to rescue survivors, and winds up destroying the entire station, as well as recovering only 50% of the survivors in question. Can we just say that Samus sucks at her job?
      • Her mission in the first Metroid was to destroy all Metroids on Planet Zebes and Mother Brain. She did that quite handily; nearly eliminating Pirate activity on Zebes for at least the period of the Prime Trilogy and perhaps even Metroid II with both destroying Tourian and destroying the Pirate Ship in Zero Mission. Also, if every job she did resolved simply, that wouldn't be very entertaining.
  • In Zero Mission, Space Pirates never drop energy. Why is that?
  • I know this only from word of mouth, but in Metroid Prime 3, if you don't get through the one Pirate Homeworld part with four guys, Admiral Dane says something like "We don't have enough guys, we need to pull out", and then you just randomly die. Would it have killed them to at least have a pirate or something parachute his way in and laser you to pieces with a high-powered particle beam?
    • Because if they did, someone would inevitably ask why didn't the parachuting particle beam Pirate parachute down and particle beam Samus at the earliest opportunity. If you've got a cool parachuting particle beam Pirate at your disposal, surely you'd want him to parachute and particle beam folk at any time, rather than an arbitrary point in time that just happens to be conductive to parachute particle-beaming.
      • I will PAY you to say this three times fast.
    • What problem did they have with making you go back to the rendezvous and get more bombers, then return?
    • Like many things, Gameplay and Story Segregation: Samus didn't fuck up. The instant death is just a flimsy way to show that you failed, and force you to succeed.
  • Super Metroid question: How can Crocomire swim through acid and tear down the wall OF SPIKES when he's just well... BONES?
    • I'd assume he wasn't completely skeletoniced while he was swimming there, but by the time he jumps out all of his flesh had disolved. Doesn't quite explain how he managed to jump out, tho.
      • Sheer Hatred.
  • Metroid Prime, the main villain of the trilogy named after it, can't be an actual Metroid, right? I mean, Metroids were created BY the Chozo, so there's no way a meteor they've never heard of or seen could have one inside it.
    • I think the Metroid got in there, was mutated by the Phazon, and Space Pirates got him some weapons. I think.
    • My theory is that there wasn't a Metroid inside it. The Leviathan crashed into the planet and enthralled a Metroid already there as its Guardian, the same thing that happened to Mogenar, Helios, and Ridley. This Metroid ended up eating the Leviathan core and fusing with it, becoming nearly unrecognizable as a Metroid. Chozo lore never mentions that the Worm came with the meteor, just that it appeared afterwards in the Impact Crater. The only problem is that there is no evidence of Metroids on Tallon IV prior to the meteor. That doesn't necessarily mean there weren't any, but it's hard to prove.
    • This is why Trilogy's ret-con regarding the Pirates' knowledge of Prime's existence creates more problems than it solves. The original NTSC version explained why there was a mutant Metroid in the Impact Crater, as well as why it had "mechanical" weapons as well as organic ones.
      • None of the weapons are explicitly mechanical. Given what some other fully-organic bosses pull, the only evidence we have that Prime's weapons are mechanical is the NTSC version saying they are.
    • Prime 3 shows that there are Metroid Primes on Phaaze. I'm guessing one got in before the Leviathan "launched" and made it to Tallon IV. It became the guardian, absorbed phazon faster than the core could produce, absorbed the core, and essentially began self-producing phazon. Still doesn't explain the mechanical weapons, but the ret-con may have removed the fact that they're mechanical in nature and not natural.
      • Those Primes were probably evolved from the Pirate's Metroid stock. Dark Samus knew how powerful Phazon Metroids were. She just killed any that mutated enough to reach Prime level because she didn't want to be challenged.
    • My guess is it's not ACTUALLY a metroid, but its behaviour is similar to a really large, planet-munching metroid, so they just called it the Metroid Prime.
      • It could very well be a metroid. Remember the variety in Metroid II: Return of Samus and Metroid Fusion? You have the Queen, the Omega metroid, and all those other weird looking ones in the background of Fusion when you discover metroids were being bred.
  • Okay; Samus was genetically modified to survive living on Zebes, mainly due to the atomsphere 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 Incredibly Lame 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 H 2 SO 4 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 armor 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.
  • Am I the only one who can see skull-like faces in the centre of Bryyo doors in Corruption at a few paces away, or is there someone else sharing my insanity out there?
    • They resemble those skull things Reptilicus Hunters wear, now that I think about it.
  • Is it just me, or is it kind of odd how Samus constantly refers 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 armor 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 organization 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.
        • This Troper 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.
  • 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. Similarity to Reptilicus? Could have just evolved to fit similar niches on different planets. Kraid and Reptilicus have different morophology, most noticable in the arms and the belly and the golems are made of living rock. Krade has scales.
  • There's a bit of a Double Standard going on about Exclusively Evil. For the first game and the Prime trilogy, the working viewpoint is that Metroids are Exclusively 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 Exclusively 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 civilization" 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 SR-388 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 outwiegh 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; possible to contain)
    • 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 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.
    • It's less Exclusively Evil and more "too dangerous to exist".
  • The original NES Metroid back story explicitly states that Federation researches 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.
  • What's the dark energy of the dark beam made of?
    • Luminoth logs state that they tried to overload the Ing with their own dark energy, and so used a concentrated form of Dark Aether's atmosphere.
    • Then what's the 'Entangler' made of, considering that tentacles actually come out of your arm cannon if you wait long enough?
      • The description just says "shadow tendrils." The whole thing is rather inconsistent, switching between dark matter, dark energy and shadow energy. Since it also says it's the same thing that powers the Ing, it probably takes after their tentacle-y nature or something.
    • Edginess?
  • 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 equivilent 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 HUG 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 transfered by some sort of localised radio frequancy (simlar to the connection between the coils of a transformer) and thus subject to static from particularly strone interference.
    • Another thing about the visor is that the world should be seen in a tinted color. Green, blue, that slick orange that the best sunglasses have.
    • The head scratching caused by Samus's visor can ultimately be tracked back to Retro's decision to make it see through. Had they not let us see her face through it, it would have been easier to buy as a screen, much like the head scratching 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 color 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.
  • Why are people so quick to say that Samus has the DNA of all the X-Viruses she absorbed? It's only stated that the Metroids ate the X-Virus, not that they obtained their DNA in doing so. It'd be like humans gaining the DNA of every animal and plant they ate. As for the Fusion Suit gaining upgrades back from absorption, that's more because the Core-X's had copied the existing data, which the suit regained, than absorbing the X's DNA. It Just Bugs Me that some tropers think Samus is some horrible chimera of a thousand different creatures when she "only" has human, Metroid, and Chozo DNA.
    • People tend to get weird thoughts when they obsess over something, in this case, every game after fusion being a prequel.
    • It seems to me that there's very little evidence either way regarding exactly what happens when Samus absorbs an X. It's never mentioned anywhere that the X can store information in any way other than DNA, which would mean that either Samus absorbs the DNA to gain abilities, leading to the Humanoid Abomination describe above, or her suit is capable of sequencing the genomes of everything that X had previously absorbed and somehow filtering out only the part that is a suit upgrade, all in a matter of seconds, all while in an incomplete, damaged state. Personally, I think the former sounds more likely, but it's all up in the air until either Word of God or a sequel.
    • Against taking the DNA of food, Samus's suit has adapted other technology before, including Pirate stuff. Absorbing the X also helps the suit repair damage and regain missiles, so why wouldn't larger core X have better healing properties? Metroids eat life energy, not solid food, and the life energy could be used to power shielding, replinish supplies and repair damaged systems. No need of DNA taking required.
  • 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 (and arguably, has a better color scheme)? 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 colors 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.
      • Later on in Other M, once she reactivates it, Samus never receieves a color 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.
  • How come the Dark Suit works perfectly for Samus? That armor was made for the Luminoths, who are essentially giant Chozo moths.
    • Samus' suit has always had adaptive properties and is somewhat prone to Mega Manning. It's been shown to use Galactic Federation, Space Pirate, Alimbic, and whatever other technology there is flawlessly. Why not Luminoth? It shouldn't be a size issue, either, since the suit managed to turn a giant laser drill into the Nova Beam, or Ghor's Plasma Cannon into a Plasma Beam, or even the Omega Pirate's armor (and body) into the Phazon Suit. There's also the fact that the Luminoth and the Chozo have had some level of contact; there's a Screw Attack on Aether, so they're fairly compatible.
  • 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 armor 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 fizzeling out of existance,) 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 works 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 organization 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 color 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 missles 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 suit.
  • Fusion is chronologically the last game in the series. 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 powersuit.
  • 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.
  • In Fusion, the X infect Samus's suit and create the SA-X. Fine. Then they start dividing and create more SA-X. Um... How? How did some virus/bacteria/amoeba looking thing recreate lost Chozo technology? Can they now cannibalize metals and recombine them to create any alloy they want? I think that would make them at least as valuable as 'infinite energy' metroids.
    • They are that useful, if they could be used. But they can't. The fact that they're impossible to control is kinda a plot point. Plus the Powersuit isn't exactly technology as we know it, its solid energy and whatnot and may have enough organic composition to replicate with a little metal ingestion.
    • It's likely part of the X ability to process data and make things out of it. They've shown the ability to turn data (which is just information) into a functional Varia shielding effect, as well as all of Samus' beam weapons. They can apparently use any type of information to accomplish this, such as the information stored in DNA as well as the other upgrades. It's entirely possible they can also do this with nonorganic material if they have a molecular composition to work with (like the Nightmare and B.O.X's armor as well as their organic parts.) As long as they have the power suit's specifications and data, they can make more copies.
      • Indeed. By all accounts, they can reproduce matter at its most basic level, copying the very atomic structures themselves.
        • I've always figured that the X synthesize an organic substitute for inorganic materials.
  • 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.
  • How could Samus use energy tanks without the suit in Zero Mission?
    • When you see the back of the Zero Suit, aren't there three pink spheres? Maybe those are energy tanks, considering that a full one is bright pink/magenta in your energy indicator.
  • 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 amoung theives" 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.
  • 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.
    • Radiaton clearly penetrates her armor, 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 an Easter egg so you can see Samus's trigger finger. Also, as said earlier, X-Ray goggles don't actually shoot X-rays, the X-ray visor needs to use actual X-rays 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 armor 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.
  • 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. 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 leach annoys a human, it kills a fish.
  • Why is Anthony Higgs the squad's point man? He's the biggest guy in the squad with the slowest-firing weapon ever created in the history of mankind, and it's his job to be standing between the rest of the squad and restricting their line of fire while being expected to return fire first. Buh?
    • The "slowest firing weapon" isn't his primary weapon. He's got a machinegun and a freeze gun just like the rest of them do, too.
  • 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.
  • 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? Story wise 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.
    • 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.
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