Samus Aran

Samus Aran is the main protagonist of the Metroid series where she is a bounty hunter of the Galactic Federation, and organization that fights against the Spacial Pirates. She is a playable character in Super Smash Flash and Super Smash Flash 2.

Character description
The concept for Samus began with the of the Metroid series. She, like the rest of characters, was conceived by Makoto Kano, while Hiroji Kiyotake designed her.

Samus spent her childhood with her family on the mining planet K-2L. The planet was raided by Space Pirates, who were looking for bounty. The leader of the Space Pirates, Ridley, killed most of the people in Samus's colony, including her parents, and then destroyed the planet. Orphaned, Samus was found by a bird-like alien race known as the Chozo, who brought her to their home planet Zebes. Samus was infused with Chozo DNA to give her a strong resistance to foreign environments, then trained as a warrior and given one of the alien race's artifacts, a powered exoskeleton called the Power Suit that biologically entwines itself with Samus's mind and body.

Typically, one of her suit's arms carries a cannon, which can be charged to shoot an extra-powerful blast, a limited number of missiles, and various beams. Samus's suit can collapse into a sphere, a mode called the Morph Ball, allowing her to roll through tight areas such as tunnels. The suit can scan objects to learn more about them, and has a grapple beam used to cross large distances, such as chasms. Since , Samus has been accompanied by her gunship, which is used in the games to save progress and restore health and ammunition.

Samus's suit can be enhanced by power-ups, the first introduced being the Varia Suit. In the original Metroid, it gives a pinkish color to the Power Suit, but in Metroid II: Return of Samus, because of the limited monochrome graphics on the Game Boy, the Varia Suit has giant shoulder pads to differentiate it from her other suits. The design has remained with the suit ever since. The difference between suits was explained in , in which after completing her first mission on Zebes, Samus is shot down and her Power Suit is rendered useless. There, she re-visits a Chozo shrine that she first visited as a child, and receives upgraded armor, with the larger shoulder pads. When the Varia Suit is destroyed, Samus dons the less protective Zero Suit. She wears a unique suit in  called the Fusion Suit, a weakened version of the Power Suit. Other suit upgrades in the series include the Gravity Suit, P.E.D. Suit, Phazon Suit, Hazard Suit, and Light and Dark Suits. As of , the suits have gained distinctive colors: the Power Suit (and variants) are yellow, the Varia Suit is red/orange and the Gravity Suit is purple. These colors are seen again in Metroid Prime and Metroid Fusion. Also in the Metroid Prime series, the eponymous Metroid Prime creature fuses with the remnants of Samus's Phazon Suit to become Dark Samus, an evil doppelganger of Samus.

Samus typically works alone. Before Metroid: Other M, she had never spoken in any of the games in the Metroid series other than Metroid Fusion and the opening cutscene of Super Metroid, conversing mostly through text dialogue. Typically emotionless, Samus reveals some of her true self in Metroid Fusion. Without her suit, she let slip some emotions while dealing with her artificially intelligent computer. In Metroid II: Return of Samus, Samus bonds with a Metroid, which later sacrifices itself to save her from Mother Brain in Super Metroid. Seeking revenge, Samus destroys Mother Brain in a scene that is "more than a little emotionally charged". In the Chozo's scrolls, Samus is recorded as The Newborn, an "orphaned warrior filled with vengeance". Thanks in part to her Chozo heritage, the Chozo consider her the hope of their race. The Galactic Federation sees her as the protector of the galaxy, and the Space Pirates refer to her as the Hunter.

In Super Smash Flash
In Super Smash Flash, she was the only character representation of the Metroid universe. Samus' sprites were ripped from Metroid Fusion. Those sprites however not from Samus; instead, they were from her clone-enemy, the SA-X because Samus was not in her trademark suit in that game the SA-X being a clone had taken Samus's trademark appearance. Samus uses a variety of beams in her attacks. uses a similar moveset so he could be considered a semi-clone of her.

In Super Smash Flash 2
In Super Smash Flash 2, Samus makes a return. In this game, she has custom sprites that is based on her appearance in Super Metroid instead of rips. Her moveset is taken directly from .

Trivia

 * In Super Smash Flash 2, Samus and Zero Suit Samus are separate characters like in . However, they were revealed to be separate characters in SSF2 before it was known in 3DS and Wii U.