Bye Bye Little Birdie
December 20, 2015
10:23 am
Puttin’ this up now because I have a 1,300 KM road trip ahead of me and I need to make sure this webcomic gets fed before midnight.
I know everybody hates Other M, but on the other hand it gave us Little Birdie Ridley which is probably my favourite single piece of Metroid canon.
I don’t think anyone minds *that* part of Other M, just, y’know, the Samus stuff :)
I mind! Ridley is supposed to be a badass space dragon, and they turned him into a goddamn Furby!
A Furby that can kill fully grown humans armed with rifles and turns into a badass space dragon. It’s not like he’s not a dragon anymore.
yeah its important to note that this wasnt Ridley, but rather, a weird bioweapon clone of ridley that started out in a tiney furby stage before growing into Ridley form
Ridley II: Electric Boogaloo
So you listen to Dr. Steel, then?
So… Furby Ridley is to Original Ridley like Fish Lips Lobo is to Origina Lobo?
Can’t all Furbys do that?
Indeed they can if you want it enough.
Furbys are worse than space dragons.
Furbies are terrifying.
Only thing that annoys me is people going nuts over Samus’s Zero Suit. I prefer the armor, myself, which was shown here. Happy feelings.
I just realized the only place I know anything about Other M from is… uh… sankakucomplex… didn’t look so bad from what I saw on there…
Normally, you see, when Samus finds Ridley, missiles fly and she becomes death incarnate. When Samus sees him in this game, she breaks down crying and becomes totally useless.
Well in the official e-manga that Nintendo made for Zero-Mission, that does happen to her the first few times she meets him. Then He kills he Chozo bio-dad and she switches from scared to angry. It’s not like her freaking out is unprecedented. Her reaction is also understandable when you consider that he was supposed to be completely 100% dead after Zebes, but still comes back like a ghost of everything taken from her.
Well, think of it like this. Imagine a Mario Brothers game that happens to take place right after the first Mario game in the loose “timeline” and when Bowser shows up (whom Mario believes dead because he either fireballed him to death or dropped him in lava in the previous game) and suddenly Mario starts having a traumatic episode and becomes entirely useless for a while.
Even if you come up with a “story excuse” players won’t buy it. Mario has never been one to huddle in a corner while something bad happens. Sure, he’s had moments where he was too surprised to react in time, but there are too many games where he’s rushed head first into danger and fought Bowser one on one to suddenly have him have a debilitatingly intense fear of him.
Likewise, with Samus, she’s up to that point never had a problem with fighting Ridley. Even though this game takes place earlier in the timeline, players have encountered Ridley too many times to accept Samus suddenly acting completely differently this particular time.
I’m re-watching the scene to make sure I have the details right. When Ridley shows up, Samus starts backing away, has a flashback to being a scared little girl and then when it cuts back she’s still the little girl. Adam tries to tell her to attack, but she doesn’t. She ends up letting herself get grabbed, loses her suit temporarily, and has to be rescued by a side character. She doesn’t recover and start the boss fight until after seeing the guy get knocked over the ledge.
There was no point in any other game where Samus behaved like that, so far as I recall. You can still have her be traumatized and stay in character though. Most players have had the experience of fighting a panicked, losing battle against Ridley. You can connect to that by having her react with disbelief and anger that Ridley is still alive after Zebes destruction; for flashbacks you could show her killing him, killing mother brain, then the planet exploding.
Then, she goes berserk. Wasting missiles with wild shots while Ridley flies around the room avoiding them easily. Once her missiles are out, she would stand with her arm still out, too out of it to realize that she’s out of ammo while Ridley lands and approaches her, picks her up, and then gets a face full of laser from Anthony. He could then run in, carrying a box of rockets and drops it next to her while he tries to fight Ridley. Upon seeing him get knocked over the edge, Samus comes to her senses, reloads, and then the boss fight can start.
She would still be traumatized, and still get rescued, but she would match the implied character we’ve seen in the other games so much better.
Sure, but see, that would make too much sense.
Yes I’m bitter.
“Well, think of it like this. Imagine a Mario Brothers game that happens to take place right after the first Mario game in the loose “timeline” and when Bowser shows up (whom Mario believes dead because he either fireballed him to death or dropped him in lava in the previous game)”
Worst than that- Other M takes place after Super Metroid. Meaning Samus has beat Ridley in the original, beat the Cyborg version in Prime, killed the Phazon-infected version in Prime 3, saw him come back in Super Metroid, and killed him again.
Samus has Ridley killing down to a *routine*. It’d be like Mario freaked out by Bowser not after Super Mario 1 or 3, but after World or later.
Sakamoto didn’t consider the events of Prime when making Other M, and they may not be canon to it (though they are to the rest of the series). As such, she fought him twice – both times on Zebes. Only the second time was he supposed to be dead for good. So Samus confronted and destroyed her greatest nemesis and, to her, literally appeared to have come back from the dead. Given other hints in the series at possible PTSD, her reaction isn’t anything odd. That she didn’t react this way before is also pretty typical – the same triggers don’t necessarily cause a flashback episode every single time. That’s why soldiers can go a long time before being properly diagnosed, in the worst possible ways.
The main problem is she’s killed him by this point, like, multiple times. At least twice, maybe 3 times. *He* should be traumatized by *her*, and her young trauma should’ve been replaced with cold rage.
Specifically, she fought his normal incarnation in Zero Mission, then a robot likeness of him in the same game; fought him cybernetically enhanced in Prime 1; both a cyborg and infused with Phazon in Prime 3; and finished him off in Super Metroid which happened like a week ago? Plus she ought to be smart enough to realize this incarnation is a clone and not some spooky ghost from her past. (Incidentally, she’s fought plenty of ghosts.)
This in the same game where her commanding officer restricts her equipment on an as-needed basis to prevent accidental disintegration but only authorizes her heat-resistant suit after watching her finish run through lava city while constantly taking damage.
My disbelief can only be suspended so far!
Including the *grapple beam* too, but yeah the Varia suit has to be the dumbest example.
I hated how the game portrays her as disturbingly submissive, paralyzed by fear/guilt, sensitive/nurturing, and just *stupid*. Pick like, 1-2 of those and it may have been an interesting evolution of Samus’s character… maybe. Instead Sakamoto seemed to want to make her a stereotypical perfect waifu who needed Adam’s firm masculinity to control her hysteria and steal the freakin show.
I am still so upset. Plus he tried to declare Prime non-canon… Screw that, nobody should care about his opinion! Glad they took him off the project.
I actually think the Varia suit thing had potential, but they dropped the ball by having to far too subtle, and having Adam only instruct her to use the suit rather than working a character moment into the scene.
The way I saw it, when Adam first gave her the instruction to not use ANY equipment without authorization, it was a challenge as much as an order. The Varia suit scene would have been a perfect opportunity to drive that point forward BECAUSE it was a purely defensive piece of equipment.
Being entirely defensive, there is only one possible meaning behind activating it without authorization: That she was afraid, and wanted more protection than Adam believed she needed.
Remember; Adam is her commanding officer in this situation and is supposed to be monitoring the situation and evaluating what equipment is necessary at any given time. If he didn’t tell her to equip the Varia suit, that means he doesn’t think she needs the suit.
At the same time, Adam feels betrayed by her leaving the army, and is being harder on her than he should be in order to make her prove herself. Which is probably why he didn’t authorize the suit right away. In that part of the game, they were silently playing a deadly game of chicken.
The Varia suit situation should not have been an example of Samus being too submissive and passive to protect herself. With just a little more effort it could have been an incredible display of her willpower and determination.
If it makes it better, I’m pretty sure that Adam doesn’t have any actual authority over Samus since she’s a bounty hunter and not one of his soldiers.
THat was the opposite of making it better, wasn’t it? Sorry, I always get that wrong.
Actually, since it was a military operation, Adam did have authority over the situation. Bounty hunters are not above the law. Since she wanted to participate in the operation, she had to treat Adam as her commanding officer throughout. That requirement was established fairly early on.
That context does make her obedience more palatable though, really. She’s not being submissive; she’s just following military protocol.
No she’s still a simpering idiot with no initiative.
An attempt to justify Samus not having all her stuff just made us really, really hate Adam.
Hm, it’d have worked better if it *was* a supposed-to-be-bad commander holding something over her.
But in that she simply runs away. Flight is a perfectly reasonable reaction to the psychotic space dragon who murdered your parents. Removing your Armour and crying after kicking his ass 2-5 times already is not.
Oh em gee! IT’S SO CUTE! I can hardly believe that’s what Ridley used to look like!
Y’know what? I can actually see Jared taming this thing.
Ridley is sentient, you can’t really tame a sentient creature.
Sure you can. How do you think relationships work?
Tell that to my girlfriend. I used to hate Cooking Channel.
There’s a bunch of human-intelligent or smarter pokemon, and they still get “tamed.”
Which is a whole slew of really unfortunate implications, really.
Well, we’re talking about a game where the premise is “little kids are entrusted beings with the potential to destroy entire cities and use them to organize cock-fights.”
Long story short, Pokémon is the poster child for “unfortunate implications”.
Only if you ignore what the games have been telling you for the last decade or two.
Wasn’t that N’s whole thing in Black/White, anyway? Is that he didn’t think people should be enslaving pokemon, so he set them free?
Which also involved ignoring what the Pokémon themselves were saying on the subject.
You’ve never heard of religion? It’s sole purpose is to “tame” sentient beings in order to collect wealth and power.
Are you 12?
He’s Dracula.
No, he has a fedora.
There’s a difference.
Because a twelve-year-old with a fedora satirizing religion is noticeably different from a twelve-year-old without a fedora satirizing religion? I’m sorry, I don’t understand. (Heh.)
It’s really more comparable to domestication/herding, anyway.
I thought Other M was a really fun game. The story was a travesty, but the gameplay was some of the strongest in the series.
i think it wasn’t even the story itself, just how samus expressed her emotions, and let them run her over like a train
You only think it was fun because the story was so bad that you feel there has to be at least something redeeming about it, but even the gameplay was simply awful.
-Spam dodge + charge shot to win
-pixel hunts
-Game actively discourages exploration (Locking doors, placing tiny ledges to prevent speed boosts)
-No pickups
-Forced to use a d-pad to navigate a 3d environment
-firing missiles was super awkward at best
Having played Fusion, Hunters, and the original NES game and enjoying Other M more than all of them, I stand by what I said. Super Metroid and the first two Prime games are easily better than Other M, no question, but Fusion’s absurd linearity trumps even the average Mario game, Metroid 1 was an exercise in obtuseness and just as much pixel hunting (if not more) than Other M, and Hunters… well, that game was so awful it would be easier to explain what it got right.
I didn’t have the slightest problem with the D-Pad since the game was clearly intentionally designed around it, the missiles are so rarely used as to hardly matter, and exploration, though discouraged, was hardly impossible. Ultimately I view it as a bad Metroid game, but a fun game if you don’t think of Metroid; I’d take it over most any Fallout or Mass Effect or whatever’s hyper popular in a heartbeat because the moment-to-moment gameplay was a joy for me.
I haven’t played nearly enough Metroid games to comment on your opinions, but I do wish to state I appreciate your structured formulation.
…perhaps I need to visit the retro store again.
I enjoyed Fusion and Zero Mission, but you’re right. Metroid 1 was obtuse and Fusion was linear.
As much as Other M’s version of Samus makes me want to scream, it does look decently fun to play. And the fight scenes are pretty cool when they’re not… Well, anyway.
other m is way more linear than fusion.
My issue with the gameplay is that it wasn’t in the Metroid style. It’s not a bad style, mind you; it’s similar to the Ninja Gaiden games, which are excellent. However, Metroid games had, up to that point, been all about precision control of the character. Fights were decided by how well you could avoid enemy attacks and maneuver for a good shot, and the player’s own dexterity and coordination with the controller determined how fast they could play, what secrets they could reach, and what sequence breaking they could do.
Metroid: Other M traded that for Beat-em-Up gameplay. Now, most combat maneuvers caused a sort of “mini-cutscene,” where once the player started them, they’d have no input for at least half a second. That may not seem like much, but one can really feel the difference when on one hand, every twitch of the thumb decided what direction they moved, while for the other, a simple tap causes an automated dodge cinematic over which the player has no control. It steals away the thrill of playing, at least for me.
Now it must fight Mr. Fish. Please?
Now it must cuddle Mr. Fish. Please?
Now we must write fanfics. Please?
now we must write fanfics about it fighting Mr. Fish, then cuddling with him after. Please?
Now we need a fanfic of Jared writing fanfics about Ridley fighting Mr. Fish, then cuddling with him after.
Now we need a fanfic about Jared reading his own fanfiction about Ridley fighting Mr. Fish, then cuddling with him after, as Jared and Mr. Fish fight to keep Ridley from leaving out of boredom, then cuddling with him after he ultimately gives up.
Don’t forget the critical subplot of a partridge in a pear tree.
Now we need a fanfic of Commander secretly having a fanfic diary in which he wrote a fanfic of Jared writing a fanfic about Ridley fighting Mr. Fish, which ends in the two cuddling. Afterwards, Commander hides his diary in a secret false bottom drawer, but Kratos knows about the false bottom and secretly reads Commander’s fanfics when he’s not around, but Commander secretly knows Kratos reads other peoples’ fanfics and only writes them for Kratos because he knows he enjoys them.
Maybe someday someone at Nintendo will do what Bethsada did to the “Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel Game” in Fallout 4. “This record is in dispute,” but at least there was a blimp (or chubby baby Ridley, as the case may be).
I loved when Tuvok mentioned the blimps, though I assumed it was a Fallout Tactics reference (Maybe the BoS game involved blimps too). I wish they’d make it canon, but I understand why they aren’t… yet…
As for Other M, maybe it was Dark Samus the whole time!! A perverted entity’s best impersonation of Samus. I want to believe…
I’d like to think that the govt agency contracts out to Samus to keep watch while Commander is away, and that after working together a few times Jared still thinks she’s a guy.
Gremmmlliiinnn!!!
I could take baby Ridley being a furby about as seriously as anything else from that turd of a game (even the gameplay was trash), so why not. Parodies are the only thing Other M is even remotely good for.
I think Nintendo just really really really hates women, is all. The settings of their usual games just make it hard for this to come across because they’re so cartoony and surreal, or in the case of Zelda, steeped in rigid classical fantasy tropes that take the brunt of the blame for them.
Also I wouldn’t give budgie Ridley too much thought- the Metroid canon is a train wreck right now, with the last few games coming from different, antagonistic dev teams which all seem to be trying to invalidate each other’s narratives. Metroid Prime and Other M can’t both have happened for a laundry list of reasons, and the next Metroid game Nintendo has announced is a multiplayer deathmatch game that contains no appearances by Samus. I used to look up to Samus as a role model, but right now I’d call the series dead until somebody reboots it from scratch.
Other M screws with every single Metroid game before it, not just the Primes.
My headcanon is this: after the events of Fusion, the corrupt segments of the Galactic Federation realized that they had to do something about the BSL incident. In order to simultaneously cover themselves and defame Samus, they created a propaganda film where they make her look a weak and powerless crybaby, while also pinning all the blame of the BSL incident on some “rogue cell” in the GF.
Damn, I like this. Much less silly than my “It was Dark Samus!” idea/joke.
I’d say that Nintendo doesn’t really ‘get’ women, not that they dislike them. They have no one on staff that has any real idea on how to write women, and I’m sure Team Ninja can’t really help them there. Between that and the fact that what Japan sees as ‘manly’ is definitely different then (many) western values (see the continuous pushing of overly dramatic pretty boys over there vs the emotionless macho manchild soldier over here), and you are left with some headscratchers.
Not that I’m defending them. But Other M was their first attempt at an actual female lead, and they just kind of didn’t know what they were doing. The Prime games don’t actually count, I think; Samus was the main, but the game wasn’t about her personality at all, so they didn’t have much to write OR screw up. She has, what, less then 20-30 lines in each of them? And most of those are observation based? There’s no real ‘character’ there, but there didn’t need to be because that’s her usual shtick. I don’t know WHY they tried to change formula, but they tried to make a game where Samus was a stronger, more defined character and… well, like I said, they have no idea what they’re doing. In a way it actually was a pretty bold choice, to try to grow an established character and give her some actual background and back story, it just didn’t pan out well, but I don’t think that was from lack of effort on their part.
Hire better writers, I guess, Nintendo.
I’m going to have to partially disagree here. Samus’ combine lore seems to paint a very difficult character to protray well. I mean, she’s a badass with very subtle and internalized emotional range. In other words the quiet one thats actually saying quite a bit if you pay attention. PRime 2 had a scene that protrayed this perfectly though, where she was shows a subtle sense of loss over all the fallen gf troopers near the beginning. It was all body langauge and not exaggerated at all, but you could clearly tell a bit of “I’m sorry” in it.
I actually agree with you and that’s kind of the point I was trying to make. She IS a fairly silent, quiet, serious minded protagonist, and that’s the role that she A) does well, and B) is what we’ve grown to expect from her. You can only do so much with that, however, and I feel like that’s what they were trying to expand on. “Quiet loner” is an excellent archetype, but by nature doesn’t interact with others well. If you want to have stories that include other characters, you have to build on that a little.
Some series, Halo comes to mind, bring in a supporting character to do all the talking. Cortana is an excellent companion to the Chief BECAUSE she’s a likable little chatterbox; it lets him sit back, stay stoic, and do his one-liner thing. Link with his bevy of hit-and-miss female fairy/spirit/sword-thing sidekicks are the same scenario, to varying degrees of success.
You can’t do that route with Metroid, though. Samus being a lone wanderer is her thing, so you can’t fit in a cute mascot in without breaking the entire box. The closest she has is that baby metroid and… uh… So, if you want to have stories where Samus interacts with people (ie stories deeper then “go to this place and become an extinction level event”), she’s the one who has to do the talking.
I see the goal. It’s a noble one, and one that Nintendo will likely have to deal with at some point. Mario this is not, where they can coast along on the thinnest of paper thing narratives. Team Ninja was not the people to go to get help with that, however.
I’m with you. It does seem, though, like there’s a middle ground between “stoic silence and emotional cues inferred from body language in cutscenes,” and “dull running monologues that make the show-don’t-tell rule the first victim in Samus’ latest pyroclasm.”
Samus spends long periods alone, so it would make sense for her speech to be terse and efficient, not the florid narration she gives in Other M. That runs the risk of turning her into another cookie-cutter monosyllable action hero, though, so let’s look deeper. She was raised by enlightened cosmic space birds, lovers of art in many forms. Why not write her as saying little, but engaging in wordplay, metaphor, even poetry, when she does speak? A few words, if they’re the right words, can have more impact than a dozen paragraphs of purple prose.
Also, this just bugs me a little bit: in Samus’ official bio, she’s listed as being 6’3″, yet in Other M she’s been shrunk to near-waif proportions. She has been literally, physically diminished.
Hmmm… a game with a protagonist whose language apes the most minimal and purified styles of poetry? Now there’s an interesting idea!
Making proper use of her raised-by-aliens backstory – nice!
Reciting relevant bits of Chozo wisdom or speaking in terse verse could work really well. I would have just given her a companion AI. ADAM worked well in Fusion I think, but your idea sounds better.
In this case, I gotta put it on Team Ninja as opposed to Nintendo. Even if you put Itagaki and…..well ….. the entire DOA series aside, Team Ninja’s writing of female roles hasn’t evolved since the first Ninja Gaiden where Ryu first met Irene Lew and then had to save her twice in the same game. I’ll give Team Ninja credit. I expected them to give Samus a pair of double-Ds and then having her standard suit explode so she would have to go through the game with a bikini version of the Zero Suit so points for that, I guess. But, while I wish that I could say that changing Samus’ personality to that of a neurotic 15-year-old girl with daddy issues who has to be saved by MANthony Higgs was surprising, it’s Team Ninja.
At least, except for the Missile stuff, the gameplay was okay. Overall, the game just barely squeaked past my cutoff point back when I rented before buying but it still made it past the cutoff.
I kinda assumed the same, but what I’ve read indicates that this is really Sakamoto’s fault. Which hurts more because he’s the original creator. Apparently he always wanted to do this with Samus, we’re just lucky he didn’t get a chance earlier in the series.
Much of the trouble with the game is that the director had complete control – there were definitely people on the team who objected to some things they were mandated to do (control scheme for sure), but they were consistently overruled.
This isn’t a case of Nintendo hating women, but Sakamoto doesn’t really know how to write them. He was in charge of the project. He had the final say. It was his “artistic vision” that led to this. And Nintendo’s not the worst of it. The gaming industry has a severe underrepresentation of women in development and creative positions. Not that we necessarily need to have them to write female characters properly. There really is no excuse for the often sexist or at least poorly-written portrayal of women in media. Unfortunately, we also have the problem of people assuming that a female character having a moment of weakness is always sexism, even when it’s not. This whole situation could go back and forth repeatedly until everyone is blue in the face and get nowhere.
Yeah, first time I saw that thing in Other M I wanted to shoot it, but nooooooooooo, the horribly written plot wouldn’t let me.
What Metroid game? What baby? I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53PSPFE07Hw
The joke
Your head
The joke
Your head.
I, for one, *loved* Other M – but then, I’d played Fusion first.
Same. I actually quite liked the story and characterisation as well. What I can’t forgive is those horrible forced 1st person sections.
I might be an outlier though, my personal favourite of the whole series is Prime 2: Echoes. Probably because you actually save an ancient species and civilisation from extinction, rather than picking over their remains.
I liked the story, but I didn’t think it was fantastic or anything. The characterization could have been better. The gameplay was kind of fun, if occasionally frustrating. Overall, I thought it was decent.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved the gameplay in Other M, but I’m kiiiinda hoping they’ll retcon the story and give us back Prime Trilogy Samus.
Seconded!
So, the question I have is why is Samus at the office? Did someone invite her or does being a kickass bounty hunter/endangered alien surrogate mommy, allow her to meet the requirements for being macho.
Well, she’s a bounty hunter. She was probably there to bring Kratos in for property damage.
Samus is more manly than most of thev manly men at the agency. She just doesn’t suffer from machismo poisioning .
A. She could just be visiting, like Jones usually does.
B. Or she could be an honorary member or adviser.
C. All of the manly guys there are afraid to tell her to leave.
Definitely C.
Isn’t the whole point of this strip that manliness isn’t about gender or physical strength, but rather about emotional maturity? In short, what’s between your legs isn’t an indicator of how manly you are.
Seems like people are misconstruing my question. I’m not asking why she’s there as a woman, I’m asking if she’s there hanging out cause someone invited her over, or there cause she’s meet the requisite amount of macho to be able to use the agency.
Is there really any doubt she’s met the ‘Macho’ requirement?
I think there is, if only because the Chozo values she’s been instilled with place a lot more focus on spirituality and harmony with nature than human culture. The Chozo have always preferred to work in harmony with nature.
Whenever Other M comes up, I like to post this link:
http://moonbase.rydia.net/mental/blog/gaming/metroid-other-m-the-elephant/article.html
This is why Other M is a hot mess garbage video game. There are other dumb things (pixel hunts, the way upgrading works, the “worst map in a Metroid game” game design) but the above link is the reason it’s just irredeemable in my eyes.
Thank you. Here’s something else, just in case someone tries to argue that that was just a biased, loud minority issue.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/lb_i.php?lb_id=13373815860B43920100
Thanks for the link, that was an interesting and informative read.
I hadn’t known that Other M is the one appearance by Ridley where Samus doesn’t kill him in the entire game. That’s worse than the freak-out by itself.
…Wow. I was already disturbed by the game, but I didn’t fully understand why. It’s so much worse than I thought. The author does an excellent job of calmly explaining and extending benefit of the doubt, too.
Good to see Samus in the strip, I always thought her armour was a really cool, and pretty distinct design.
Add in that she’s more or less as messed-up as some of the guys at the agency, and she’s likely one of their regulars, too – nothing says Rock only caters to men.
I don’t even know-
Ok, I DO know why everyone hates Other M
I just don’t see why that’s such an issue
They took an established, strong, female antagonist, and made her a sniveling girl who needs a man to tell her what to do.
That’s the harsher criticism for it. I thought it was an attempt of showing PTSD and deference to the judgment of a father figure, done by writers with an understanding of neither.
Do you mean protagonist?
RogeSoja is actually a Space Pirate.
Baby Ridley is the most adorable, terrifying thing in Metroid.
Excepting Samus, depending on how far you extend your definition of adorable. At least this version of Samus counts: http://www.awkwardzombie.com/index.php?page=0&comic=121906
Also, this: http://awkwardzombie.com/index.php?page=0&comic=121310
And now I’m sad: http://awkwardzombie.com/index.php?page=0&comic=092214
Quick! Expose it to bright light!
Regarding your Twitter feed– yes, Bisley Lobo is best Lobo.
As someone who collected Lobo comics during the 90s, I would second this and I would say “Yes, the 93 convention special was pure gold” in no small part due to the accuracy of a lot of it’s satire.
I see Jared’s love for all things fluffy came back to haunt him again…
Anyway, any chance you could do a comic with the new Thunderbirds series?
I didn’t mind this version of Ridley. The only thing I hated about the game was how Samus was written.
I hated the nigh unplayable game (no nunchucks in 2010? No backtracking in a Metroid game?) AND the And the art style.
Ridley.
Is.
A.
Furby.
Urgghhh… of all things to reference Other M. That whole game makes me want to puke.
I quite like how Jared seems to completely ignore (or be completely unaware of?) any gender ‘norm’ stuff, despite being raised with access to Xbox live. Idiot he may be, but somewhere in there a portion of his education went very right.
But remember kids, Ridley’s for life, not just for christmas.
To be fair, most people raising Ridley wouldn’t get much further than Christmas.
He was kinda weird about Poison, but that was evidently because he lusted after her.
So I guess he just doesn’t care in most cases. So yeah, very right. I wonder how much of that we can credit B-52 with.
Probably a good amount. Rock’s a great role model, well-adjusted and accepting, yet not perfect in any sense of the word (except “perfect character to star in this webcomic”).
honestly I never played pass the first Metroid
Yer missin’ out, b’hay! Pick up Super Metroid immediately!
lil Ridley’s lucky that Mr. Fish didn’t eat him
Mr Fish didn’t eat him… yet.
Oh dear… No matter what kind of creature it is, Jared loves it.
It wouldn’t be so badly thought of if Nintendo would release another game already. It’s been five years, and yet fans still haven’t been given a game to wash the stink out. C’mon guys, stop giving us just spin offs, claw grabber machines, and Smash cameos. Give us a real classic style Metroid game on the 3DS.
That being said, Baby Ridley was one of the few designs I didn’t completely hate. Probably because it ventured outside of the SNES palette, unlike every other creature in the game.
Forget Luigi, Samus is Nintendo’s true neglected mascot.
The worst bit is… literally everyone is trying to fill the void because THERE IS A DEMAND FOR NON-LINEAR ACTION PLATFORMERS.
Axiom Verge, Xeo Drifter, Environmental Station Alpha… and that’s only the ones that borrow the Sci-fi aesthetic!
I think we’re all ignoring the real questions here:
Who’s the agency’s insurance provider? And what’s the monthly rate?
Did Jared make Fattest Pidgeon the dad?
I am drooling at your Lobo pic in your Twitter feed now. Woof! Now that’s Lobo!!
I have no difficulty imagining Samus as one of the socially unajusted bros, probably went on a few missions with Commander too, going after bounties handed out by the Future Space Marine Army.
Cuz petulant, whiny, bratty Other M Samus doesn’t exist. Nope. Lalalalalala—can’t hear you!
Samus is more like Marv from Sin City in a lingerie model’s body. Someone that has seen some shit but has a heart of gold, but you gotta do alot of digging to find it.
I think cute and fuzzy baby Ridley would’ve worked a lot better if they didn’t immediately reveal it as a malevolent entity. If Samus thought of it as a little buddy, and it turned into a Ridley, it would’ve been an interesting twist that goes along with its initially harmless appearance. But no, Samus immediately finds it revolting and evil, and yet doesn’t kill it, despite routinely committing planetary genocide.
Clearly he got that Ridley in a trade. They always get outta hand when you let ’em level too far.
Ridley has hair now? Screw all the other bullshit, this is the last straw! Other M has crossed a line with hairy dragon aliens!
“Badges? We ain’t got no badges. We don’t need no badges. I don’t have to show you any stinkin’ badges!”
…but it does make training Pokemon harder.
It occurs to me that I should actually start tooting my own horn here. See, I spent last year writing a book in which I came up with a way to create a strong, interesting, realistic character of a gender not my own.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/Unique
I call the method “Rule 63.” Yes, that’s one of the “internet porn rules.” But I’m serious. You start out by creating a strong, interesting character of your own gender. Then you change the gender – and NOTHING ELSE. If it wouldn’t work for a male, it wouldn’t work for a female. You don’t change the personality or the backstory or the behavior. You take their character sheet and the only thing you edit is the tiny little option marked “Gender.”
In “Unique” I first applied the concept by creating a badass grandpa, and then turning the character into a badass grandma. The result is… well, Helga would definitely fit in at the agency (especially around lunchtime; she learned a few things about french cuisine during her time with La Resistance). But try this: imagine “Other M’s” Samus genderswapped as a male. Doesn’t the image come across as a veteran reacting to the arrival of an enemy he’s repeatedly defeated in the past by acting like this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2ycDWywGls
And that… is why nobody liked Other M.
So apparently Samus herself is only tangentially aware of the events of Other M? Is this repression, or was Other M just Space Pirate propaganda?
Wow. I must have hated Other M even more than I thought cause I don’t remember this thing at all. Cute though.
Can we not talk shit about Other M for just a second and realize that we were given baby Ridley?
If nothing else, that is a glorious thing. In my opinion, the game exists for no other reason than ADORABLE baby Ridley. The rest was just filler to excuse his fat little fluffle bottom being canonical.
The problem is that for baby Ridley to be canonical, so must the rest of Other M. bRidley is cute, but… bad trade.
Canon has nothing to do with it. How widespread the concept has been spread thanks to the game alone is worth it.
Fair enough.
They should make a new game, one where there’s baby Ridley (because he was adorable! OMG! and the fruit!) and were Samus isn’t OOC.
How did Jared get through the room? The door is still blocking the way and the hole in the wall was supposed to appear behind him.
You know I actually spent a long time thinking about that while I was drawing this and figured either he went through the door and tried to slam it behind him right as the frame was getting ripped apart or Ridley was basically on top of him when they crashed through the wall and he took it as a chance to scramble.
I know I’m WAY too late to complain about this spoiler, but… Dangit. I didn’t know before know, and I’d just recently started playing the game!
It’s not too late! Save yourself! Cast the game into the fire and just watch a Let’s Play or read a synopsis! It’s not worth it!
omg YES