Metroid
Genre
Metroid is an example of a hybrid genre… it mixes together First person shooter, Action and Adventure, Sci-Fi, Horror,
Interplay of codes
The animations and textures are inspired by science fiction futurism and the dark aesthetics of gothic horror.
Steve Neale argued we could classify films according to the “specific variations” of the “interplay of codes” the producers used to construct meaning
Metroid is hard to classify as it draws from many different genres.
Narrative
“Metroid Prime 2: Echoes” is an adventure narrative
the hero, Samus Aran, is on a search and recuse mission – “locate federation troopers and render assistance”. She travels to the coordinates of their last transmission, a rogue planet called Aether, but she soon discovers the soldiers were brutally murdered by evil creatures from a parallel dimension.
Samus encounters U-Mos, who begins to describe to her the evil darkness that has befallen Aether. She agrees to retrieve the “Light of Aether” and the save the planet, and the entire galaxy, from certain doom.
The threat posed is the disequilibrium of Todorov’s narrative theory. Your role is to travel across the three regions, collect the light and return it to the Luminoth temples. This repair will create a new equilibrium of peace and stability to Aether.
There is a simple binary conflict between the light and dark worlds. In terms of Propp’s character types and spheres of action, you are the hero.
Destroy the baddies in each level. Return the light to the temple. Save the universe. Simple.
Representation
original marketing material for “Metroid” did not identify the protagonist’s gender. For example, the first edition of “Club Nintendo” magazine referred to Samus Aran as a “highly trained and infamous space hunter” and avoided any gender specific pronouns:
Samus Aran is a feminist icon because she is not reduced to a passive stereotype, such as the princess who needs rescued, but is represented instead as the determined and brave hero in the narrative, keeping the galaxy safe from Space Pirates and other wicked villains.
she subverted the traditional gender roles found in many other computer games and her character could be considered a breakthrough moment for the representation of women in an industry that was dominated by men.
Young girls could now imagine themselves as their heroine going on incredible missions and battling evil forces rather than having to construct their identity according to representations of masculinity.
While Samus Aran is one of the most prominent female characters in computer games, her representation remains problematic because plenty of critics argue she is still being objectified for the male gaze.
The denouement was determined by how long it took you to complete the game. If you defeated the main boss in under an hour, Samus Aran would strip out of her exoskeleton and wave to the player in nothing more than a bikini. In fact, if you entered “justin bailey” (or a few other more obscure codes) as the password, you could play the entire game in a pink leotard and pink boots.
Judith Butler argued representations of gender that transgressed the traditional binary definitions would cause gender trouble. Since the producers knew they were subverting expectations, did they feel the need to offer this half-naked depiction of the character in a guilty attempt to emphasise her femininity?
Target Audience
If you were to scan through the videogame magazines or the marketing materials for major releases, you would assume young boys were the primary audience because they feature so much in those media texts.
The game also appealed to young girls, statista estimated 45% of video gamers in 2021 were female. This figure has been fairly steady since 2008.
