I got distracted doing my Western Metroid concept art project for school when I was trying to find out Samus’ height. Turns out in some official art for Super Metroid (1994) she’s described as such:
The Power Suit hides a strong, muscular woman. Samus is nearly six feet, three inches tall and weighs nearly 200 pounds.
Then it lists the exact numbers as 6’3” and 198lbs. That’s what’s “hidden” by the suit, not with the suit, as some people on the internet seem to be suggesting. If you look at the illustration, the suit doesn’t add much to her height anyway.
So anyway the point of all this is that Samus is now 5’3” and that sucks. I can’t find where this stat came from but it’s being quoted by several fans online, and if you obsessively compare screenshots from SSBB like I did, you’ll find that it’s accurate to the inch when she’s standing next to the 6’ tall Snake. So that blows. I think the 6’3” Samus seems way more likely to be an ex-soldier turned bounty hunter who pilots a power suit and doesn’t take shit from anyone. Also she’s a babe.
Disclaimer: I haven’t played a game in the Metroid series since the SNES, all knowledge from the internet, take this with a grain of salt.
Besides this great comparison there’s also this rad blog post that details a lot of her appearances in official comics, art, manga, and screencaps from games where you can see she is getting shorter over time, especially compared to the towering lady shaking the scientist’s hand in SM. There’s also the fact that her waist in-suit keeps getting smaller, especially compared to old Metroid manuals.
Which is a shame since the one on the far left is exactly what I always figured Samus would be, and she’s still hot as hell, but alas.
So this is all neat but I can’t help but notice that neither Samus’ hips will unsway
I miss buff Samus…
This is real interesting. I remember seeing a Samus illustration in Nintendo Power (I think?) that depicted her as she looks to the left. And she looked AMAZING. I really wish she would’ve stayed tall and buff instead of devolving into her more generic modern look.
Tall muscular Samus is awesome, and makes sense. She’s got Chozo blood in her, man, it’s a given she’s going to look just a little superhuman. I am just a bit disappointed by how she’s been shrunken down over the years to appear more… predictably attractive, I guess. And then comes Other M… Yoshio Sakamoto was having none of that tall Amazoness stuff in his personal fanfiction, it seems. In my mind/personal canon/whatever I’ve always had kind of a middle-ground in mind, I guess, but leaning more towards the tall Samus.
(via redblooperstuff)
