Ohh, that's right, for some reason I always thought Metroid Prime 2 released before Zero Mission. I thought the ending with Samus shedding her armor in front of the Lumoth was the first appearance of the ZS.

...Goddamn that was dumb. "Duhurrr Zero suit first showed up in a game that isn't Zero Mission."
Retro also took the entire Metroid franchise in a complete different direction.

Team Ninja is aping old school side-scrolling with first-person perspective gameplay. Retro at least did something entirely different that many fans chided them for early on. Before they found it it was, you know, perfect.

Plus Team Ninja kinda has a bad rep anyway.

Irony is the buzzword of the internet.
 

One company pulling it off does not mean that a completely different company is just as likely to do the same. Even if it did, that does not make it IRONIC.

Let's look at the situation that I'm describing:

A company with no track record makes a good game.

A company with a bad record pulls out a game that awes fans, with a character that they're used to objectifying.

The irony comes more or less from the fact that they're doing something outside of their zone with a company that's just about as bad as Disney when we're discussing IP.

If that's not situational irony (and a ballsy move on Nintendo's part) then I don't know what else could be crazy about this team up.

I rather like that Other M is focusing on some of Samus' more physical talents (like kicking pirates in the face) as it fleshes out the fact that she's not just some cyborg with a gun-arm and a bitchin' suit. She's a superhuman athlete with a gun-arm and a bitchin suit.

Also, I have to say that (minus certain parts of Prime 3) I rather enjoyed the direction Retro took with the Prime series, and I think I like the idea of melding 2d AND FPS action into one. The problem is going to be, as several others have put it, how they pull off the writing, dialogue, and story progression.

Plot in Metroid has always (barring Fusion and the more linear parts of Zero Mission, for those of you who did not sequence break the hell out of that game) been a background thing. You have a general idea of what's going on at all times, where you need to go, what powerups you need to get there, etc. Fusion was annoying because it was fucking gated from the start. You had to take orders from a goddamn computer EVERY TIME you entered a new sector through the front door. For those of you with the patience to shinespark your way to the bonus cutscene where Adam goes How the Hell did you do that?, you had to backtrack all the way back to that area and go through it again ANYWAY. I actually LIKED Fusion as a game (mainly for the SA-X sequences, those fucking had my heart racing), but the linearity was terrible.

Three of those are the basic power suit, just the art's slowly shifted over the years. The middle one's the Varia suit, and the one on the far right is the Fusion suit from (surprise!) Metroid Fusion.

I find it kind of strange that Samus' power suit has gotten more feminine over the years. It seems like a really odd and unnecessary shift.

Like, if she's in that suit, how the hell thin is her waist?

So okay you look at those suits and you see the first one, and it's totally androgynous. Then the middle one you look at the waist and thighs and go "Huh...looks kinda feminine," then the Fusion Suit looks a damn bit like they padded out her breasts and thighs and calf muscles. I guess it kinda makes sense since it's all biological/technological now what with her Metroid status, but...still.

The cynical answer would be that they no longer need to conceal her gender.

Power suit's always had a bit of an hourgass shape, especially the Varia Suit.

It's because the torso is bulky and then it has heavy armour on the legs. Some art exaggerates it a bit more.

http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f3...troidSamus.gif

But once again, it's hardly anything new.

Besides, considering all the acrobatic stuff she does in that suit (not counting the morph ball), a bulky suit likely wouldn't fly.

The Varia suit, well, it's the Varia suit. I'm not sure what purpose the Shoulders of Doom or the massive hip plates serve (temperature regulation maybe?), but you can bet there'd be hell to pay if they were removed from the design. :P

Varia suit is in fact Barrier suit mistranslated (You can guess what the massive hip plates are for).

Fun fact: Chôzo (彫像) means "statue", not the people represented, which is reffered by "bird people".

And it's been leaked: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFmzH52YrCk

Watch it before Nintendo pulls it.