Games - Samus Aran

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	Games - Samus Aran

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

Stats

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

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

Equipment

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

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

Challenge of gender roles

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

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Samus Aran ]

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Games - Samus Aran

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Equipment

Challenge of gender roles

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