Metroid == Aliens

Many people may not know this, but the Metroid franchise is basically the video game version of the Alien movies. There are many subtle similarities between the two that only the trained eye would notice. I’ve seen a few tidbits of info on the Internets, but most are incomplete, or haven’t been updated since Super Metroid. So, in order to right this wrong, I’ve compiled a short list of all the major ties between the two franchises. This is some real investigative journalism here people. This kind of stuff doesn’t come around too often, so pay attention.

1. The names of the alien creatures’ homes. In Metroid, the home world is SR-388. In Aliens, it’s LV-426. Two letters followed by 3 numbers.

2. Main character is a female lead. Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley character is one of the first strong female characters in action movie history. In the NES Metroid, once you found out that the iron-clad hunter was a woman, people looked at video game heroes in a new way.

3. A recurring villain in nearly all Metroid games is named Ridley. This one has two coincidences: First, the director of Alien is named Ridley Scott, while Weaver’s character name is Ripley, which is pretty damn close to Ridley.

4. In Metroid Fusion, Samus needs to be fused with Metroid DNA to stay alive. In Alien Resurrection, Ripley is created from Alien DNA.

5. In all Metroids, there is a higher being that is trying to breed Metroids for combat, either Space Pirates or the Galactic Federation. In most Alien movies, there is a higher being trying to breed and/or research the aliens, be it the government or the colonizing company that Ripley worked for in the first movie, which was later revealed as the Weyland-Yutani corporation.

6. The computer that monitored the crew in the first Alien was named Mother. The villain in the first Metroid, as well as Super Metroid (with a rumored return in Prime 3: Corruption), is named Mother Brain.

7. Both tend to end in an escape sequence where the hero only has a few minutes before the facility or ship they’re in explodes.

8. Metroid 2: Return of Samus introduces the Queen Metroid. Aliens introduces the Queen Alien.

Creepy stuff, huh? It’s amazing how close they mirror each other. The Prime series doesn’t have much in common, as no new Alien movies were made since Resurrection, which is more inline with Metroid Fusion. There was supposedly an Alien 5 script making the rounds in Hollywood, but has since gone missing.

It’s also interesting to see how successful a game is when it’s loosely based on a movie property, while games directly based off of movies suck major balls.