Samus Project M
Mike Fowler
Samus is a heavy fighter who is unusually floaty, a characteristic defying those of her weight class. She utilizes a unique array of powerful projectiles in her arsenal, including Charge Shot beams, missiles, and bombs. Additionally, new to Samus's Project M iteration, using her side taunt allows her to switch between either fire and ice elements (with the former being default). This mechanic changes the elements of her forward smash, forward air, up smash, down tilt, and missiles (unusually, it does not change the element for her bombs), which allows Samus to utilize a new set of skills that players are able to use in strategic methods.
Samus does have her flaws, however. Despite being a heavyweight, Samus's vertical endurance is slightly below average due to her very slow falling speed (having the worst vertical endurance of the heavyweights); it also causes her to be easily juggled. Additionally, despite being floaty, Samus's recovery is below average should a few elements be absent, due to a relatively low air speed. Also, her recovery move, Screw Attack, offers very little horizontal and vertical distance (with the former especially occurring should Samus not gain any prior momentum, similar to Link's Spin Attack from Brawl). Samus can, however, improve her recovery by using both her bomb recovery technique and grappling beam for a tether recovery in conjunction.
In addition, she has a below average aerial approach due to her low air and falling speed, resulting in Samus receiving a poor SHFFL, despite her aerials generally having little to no endlag in her aerial attacks.
In Project+, Samus is one of few characters to receive a new character model, with said model now incorporating elements from Metroid Prime series and Metroid: Samus Returns. It received a new blue recolor to replace the one previously inspired by Dark Samus, and an alternate costume inspired by the Phazon Suit from Metroid Prime.
Samus' alternate costumes from Project M were significantly revamped to match the proportions of her new design. In addition, the previously unused PED Suit in Project M is included as an alternate costume, sharing the same touch ups as her other costumes. The Fusion Suit and the Classic Suit received recolors for team battles, with the recolors for the Fusion Suit inspired by the various suit upgrades in Metroid Fusion.
During the last week of May, I had the opportunity to interview pop culture critic Anita Sarkeesian of Feminist Frequency about feminism, games, and her upcoming video series, Tropes vs. Women in Video Games. In the time since, the project has become the target of an organized harassment effort. Of this, Anita says, "While I always expect some level of harassment when discussing gender issues online, this time it's a more extreme and sustained torrent of sexism, hate, and threats. All the horrible backlash has just made me even more determined and committed to creating this video series. I'm also happy that all the backers and supporters of the project have been and continue to be a source of encouragement and inspiration." You can read more about the harassment here on the project's Kickstarter page.
My feeling is that these kinds of reactions only underscore the need for serious considerations of feminism in games; if the idea of a project like this generates this kind of misogynistic outrage, clearly there are serious problems with women's portrayals in games and their place in gaming culture that need to be addressed. And the harassment campaign smacks of desperation to me, which gives me an odd kind of hope. If this small, vocal contingent is working so hard to derail the project, maybe they're scared, and if they're scared by these ideas, then maybe we are getting closer to a gaming culture that is welcoming to everyone.
Let's start with some fundamental stuff. In your work at Feminist Frequency, do you ever run up against difficulties in getting people to be receptive to your messages because they have misconceptions about feminism? If you had to explain feminism in the simplest terms, how would you define it?
One popular quote that sums up how I feel about this is "Feminism is the radical notion that women are human beings." Of course feminism has a long, diverse, and complex history with many interpretations and applications, but at the very core it's really about working towards the equal treatment of women socially, culturally, institutionally, and economically.
Feminists want an end to gender-based oppression, and although we have made great strides in some areas, there is still a long way to go in others. There are, unfortunately, a great many misconceptions about the term "feminism" floating around out there in the cultural ether. Much of the confusion can be traced back to a media/political backlash against women's rights and women's equality in general. The Straw Feminist trope, for example, is one popular rhetorical device created to propagate an exaggerated caricature of a feminist. Talk-show hosts and Hollywood writers deliberately use this trope to undermine and ridicule feminist movements by falsely painting us as crazy man-hating extremists. I interact with hundreds, if not thousands, of people who call themselves feminists--or feminist allies--and exactly none of them desire a society in which the scales of power are simply reversed, where women rise to dominate or rule over men. In reality, feminists want an end to gender-based oppression, and although we have made great strides in some areas, there is still a long way to go in others. Ultimately, we are fighting to be full and complete members of human society.
You're a pop culture critic who looks at all sorts of mass media--movies, television, games, and so on. When people respond to your videos with questions like, "Why does this stuff matter? Aren't TV, movies, and games just entertainment?" how do you respond?
Ah yes, the classic "but it's just entertainment" line is one of the most common defensive reactions to my Web show. My short answer is to quote the poet Muriel Rukeyser, who wrote, "The Universe is made of stories, not of atoms." I love that line because it offers a succinct way of saying that culture matters, that stories matter. Narratives have always been a core way human beings learn about, make sense of, and understand the world we live in. Stories have embedded myths and messages and can be carriers of positive, heroic, or subversive values, but they can also propagate or reinforce negative stereotypes and oppressive social norms. Historically, the telling of stories has been an important and revered part of any society, and that is no different today. Popular media culture--for better or worse--is currently where the learning is happening, and that means that movies, TV, music, books, and video games are helping to shape our collective cultural universe.
I think part of the misunderstanding comes from a misperception about how culture works. It's not a direct cause-and-effect situation where everybody just mindlessly copies the behaviors they see in the media. That said, media stories do have a profound effect on us, especially when messages, myths, and images are repeated over and over again. This is the reason why I choose to step back and look at the overarching patterns of how women are represented in video games over time. Because it's this collective repetition that can seep into our minds and shape, perpetuate, and amplify harmful or regressive perceptions of women.
To put it another way, popular culture is like the air we all breathe. It's in everyone's interests to make sure that air is not polluted with poisonous sexism so that we don't all end up with hideous misogynist mutations growing out of the back of our collective heads.
Like you, I grew up being exposed to video games. When I was young, I was excited to discover that Metroid's Samus Aran was a woman. But as the years passed, I realized that in many ways, Samus is handled problematically. The quicker you complete the game, the more of her suit she takes off at the end; her femaleness is presented as a reward, something for players to ogle. That was in 1986. I sometimes think that things haven't changed that much since then. Princess Peach still gets kidnapped all the time, and meanwhile, a character like Lara Croft appeals to me and to some other women I know because she's independent and very capable, but at the same time, there's no denying that she has often been presented as a sex object. Do you think characters like Lara do more harm than good? Can these issues even be discussed in such simple terms, or do we need to look at them more holistically?
Movies, TV, music, books, and video games are helping to shape our collective cultural universe.I will be talking extensively about the Metroid franchise in my upcoming video series and specifically addressing the use of Samus Aran's body as a reward for players as a prime example of the "Women as Reward" trope. Similarly, as part of my video about the "Fighting F@#k Toy" trope, I will be detailing the problematic ways in which even female protagonists like Lara Croft are still objectified and sexualized for a presumed straight-male audience. Obviously, I'm in favor of more female protagonists across the board, but it has to be linked with an intentional shift away from the idea that women in games exist primarily as objects of sexual desire. Sometimes it definitely feels like a "one step forward, two steps back" type of scenario. On that note, though, it looks like Lara Croft is finally wearing pants in the upcoming Tomb Raider reboot. So perhaps we will see less objectification, but judging from the E3 trailer, there are potentially a host of other problematic gendered tropes at play.
There is also a marked increase of what I would called "ironic sexism," whereby game developers will rely on extreme or hypersexualized female characters in very over-the-top or obviously sexist ways. This type of ironic self-aware objectification is in some ways more damaging than the non-ironic forms of yesteryear. Because, as you point out, it's always more helpful to discuss these issues in a more holistic and sustained way, I'll definitely be giving this question a lot of attention in the video series.
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