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    Metroid: Other M

    Game » consists of 8 releases. Released Aug 31, 2010

    Set between the events of Super Metroid and Metroid Fusion, Other M follows Samus Aran on a rescue mission to a derelict ship in deep space where she encounters her former commanding officer and a whole host of old and new trouble.

    So what is exactly is the Other M? How about this. (SPOILERS)

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    Hailinel

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    Edited By Hailinel
    WARNING:  The following blog post contains huge spoilers for Metroid:  Other M.  If you don't want the game spoiled for you, turn back now.  If anything, it will spare you from reading what might just amount to a lot of fruitless navel gazing and stating of the obvious.  (I mean, this is a blog post.)  On the other hand, maybe this rambling will trigger some good discussion.
     
    ----
     
    Metroid:  Other M is a strange title.  And as it turns out, there are a lot of Ms in this game.  But rather than plumb the depths of philosophical debate in the esoteric manner of the Double Rainbow Guy, allow me to say it straight out.
     
    Other M = Mother
     
    I know, I know.  It's such an obvious conclusion that anyone with a basic knowledge of English and anagrams could come to it.  But ultimately, the mysterious Other M of the title isn't so mysterious.  Nintendo isn't trying to pull a fast one here.  One of the most basic and essential themes of the game's story is that of motherhood.
     
    For starters, there's Samus herself.  Those with a knowledge of the previous games should understand why.  At the end of Metroid II, Samus has eliminated almost he entire Metroid population from SR388, from the most basic form all the way up to the queen.  But one last egg remains.  It hatches, a baby Metroid emerges, and it immediately clings to Samus as though she's its mother.  Despite it being her mission to destroy every last Metroid, Samus can't bring herself to kill it.  She spares its life and ultimately presents it to scientists for study.  Then in Super Metroid, after Ridley captures the baby and takes it to Zebes, Samus gives chase and searches high and low through the rebuilt space pirate hideout for it.  Ultimately, it finds her, and it almost kills her; its body grown to giant proportions due to the pirates' experiments.  Then, when it finally realizes it's attacking its "mother," it flees, as though ashamed of itself.
     
    And then of course, there's the iconic scene at the end of Super Metroid.  Samus, on the verge of dying, is rescued by the baby, who not only assaults Mother Brain and restores Samus's energy, but gives her the power to utterly annihilate Mother Brain upon its death.  Ultimately, its behavior was not that of a dangerous parasite and a threat to galactic peace, but that of a child protecting its mother.
     
    In Metroid:  Other M, there exist two new characters.  One is the head research scientist on the Bottle Ship; a woman named Madeline Bergman.  The other is an android named MB, named for the fact that her programming is meant to emulate aspects of Mother Brain.  MB was designed to telepathically control the wild creatures on board the Bottle Ship, just as Mother Brain exhibited control over the creatures of Zebes.  In particular, she was given a human form in order to establish a bond with an infant Metroid, just as Samus's bond had formed.  Yet this bond was also responsible for awakening emotions in MB.
     
    Madeline, in the meantime, treated MB as a daughter.  She even gave her a more human name; Melissa Bergman.  Just as Madeline saw MB as a daughter, MB saw Madeline as a mother.
     
    Unfortunately, with the emergence of MB's emotions, so too arose a pattern of increasingly dissenting behavior towards the research team.  Eventually, the other scientists felt that MB's personality needed to be rewritten.  Madeline, whose protests went unheeded, could do nothing to stop them as they dragged MB away.  MB saw this as the ultimate act of betrayal; one of a mother turning her back on her daughter at a time of great need.  The end result of all of this was a supreme act of rebellion against Madeline and the crew as MB used her power over the creatures on board to take total control.
     
    And all of this happened because Samus showed the baby a mother's compassion and chose not to pull the trigger back on SR388.
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    #1  Edited By Hailinel
    WARNING:  The following blog post contains huge spoilers for Metroid:  Other M.  If you don't want the game spoiled for you, turn back now.  If anything, it will spare you from reading what might just amount to a lot of fruitless navel gazing and stating of the obvious.  (I mean, this is a blog post.)  On the other hand, maybe this rambling will trigger some good discussion.
     
    ----
     
    Metroid:  Other M is a strange title.  And as it turns out, there are a lot of Ms in this game.  But rather than plumb the depths of philosophical debate in the esoteric manner of the Double Rainbow Guy, allow me to say it straight out.
     
    Other M = Mother
     
    I know, I know.  It's such an obvious conclusion that anyone with a basic knowledge of English and anagrams could come to it.  But ultimately, the mysterious Other M of the title isn't so mysterious.  Nintendo isn't trying to pull a fast one here.  One of the most basic and essential themes of the game's story is that of motherhood.
     
    For starters, there's Samus herself.  Those with a knowledge of the previous games should understand why.  At the end of Metroid II, Samus has eliminated almost he entire Metroid population from SR388, from the most basic form all the way up to the queen.  But one last egg remains.  It hatches, a baby Metroid emerges, and it immediately clings to Samus as though she's its mother.  Despite it being her mission to destroy every last Metroid, Samus can't bring herself to kill it.  She spares its life and ultimately presents it to scientists for study.  Then in Super Metroid, after Ridley captures the baby and takes it to Zebes, Samus gives chase and searches high and low through the rebuilt space pirate hideout for it.  Ultimately, it finds her, and it almost kills her; its body grown to giant proportions due to the pirates' experiments.  Then, when it finally realizes it's attacking its "mother," it flees, as though ashamed of itself.
     
    And then of course, there's the iconic scene at the end of Super Metroid.  Samus, on the verge of dying, is rescued by the baby, who not only assaults Mother Brain and restores Samus's energy, but gives her the power to utterly annihilate Mother Brain upon its death.  Ultimately, its behavior was not that of a dangerous parasite and a threat to galactic peace, but that of a child protecting its mother.
     
    In Metroid:  Other M, there exist two new characters.  One is the head research scientist on the Bottle Ship; a woman named Madeline Bergman.  The other is an android named MB, named for the fact that her programming is meant to emulate aspects of Mother Brain.  MB was designed to telepathically control the wild creatures on board the Bottle Ship, just as Mother Brain exhibited control over the creatures of Zebes.  In particular, she was given a human form in order to establish a bond with an infant Metroid, just as Samus's bond had formed.  Yet this bond was also responsible for awakening emotions in MB.
     
    Madeline, in the meantime, treated MB as a daughter.  She even gave her a more human name; Melissa Bergman.  Just as Madeline saw MB as a daughter, MB saw Madeline as a mother.
     
    Unfortunately, with the emergence of MB's emotions, so too arose a pattern of increasingly dissenting behavior towards the research team.  Eventually, the other scientists felt that MB's personality needed to be rewritten.  Madeline, whose protests went unheeded, could do nothing to stop them as they dragged MB away.  MB saw this as the ultimate act of betrayal; one of a mother turning her back on her daughter at a time of great need.  The end result of all of this was a supreme act of rebellion against Madeline and the crew as MB used her power over the creatures on board to take total control.
     
    And all of this happened because Samus showed the baby a mother's compassion and chose not to pull the trigger back on SR388.
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    Godwind

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    #2  Edited By Godwind

    It is also no wonder why the Acronym, Metroid: Other M results in MOM.

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    #3  Edited By Hailinel
    @Godwind said:
    " It is also no wonder why the Acronym, Metroid: Other M results in MOM. "
    Indeed.  It's kind of funny how up-front the thematic foreshadowing in the title is like that.
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    deactivated-5fb7c57ae2335

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    @Hailinel: I think that the "Other M" would be "Machete", which would explain why I saw a trailer for this game when I saw that movie today.
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    #5  Edited By Hailinel
    @InfamousBIG:   They showed a trailer for the game at a movie theater?  I've heard of that before, but I've never actually been to see a movie where a game trailer was actually played.
     
    It is kind of fitting, though, given that the game's unlockable theater mode is essentially a feature-length movie.
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    deactivated-5fb7c57ae2335

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    @Hailinel: Yeah, it was pretty weird.  I've never seen that happen, either.  Not sure if the audience who wants to watch Machete and the audience that wants to play Metroid are one and the same, from a marketing stance.  Weird decision.  
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    ryanwho

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    #7  Edited By ryanwho

    Finally a Wii game for moms. 

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    #8  Edited By Hailinel
    @ryanwho said:
    " Finally a Wii game for moms.  "
    And dads.  And sons.  And daughters.  Probably not pets.  They'd have a difficult time holding the Wii Remote in their paws.  (But stranger things have happened.)
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    #9  Edited By xyzygy

    This game deals a lot with the theme of motherhood... Personally, I was thinking the title Other M meant Another Mother. Who would in fact be Madeline, who was a mother figure to MB. 
     
    Samus also showed compassion to the baby Ridley, the same way she did for the baby Metroid. 
     
    BTW, Why the hell did Ridley start off as a baby in this game? I don't get that.

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    #10  Edited By Hailinel
    @xyzygy:   Ridley started off as a baby and progressed through his maturation cycle because he was cloned from genetic material scraped from Samus's power suit.  Rather than create a clone of the same level of maturity, the process used in the Metroid universe starts the clone off at the earliest stage of development.
     
    Your interpretation of the title is an interesting one.  It really makes sense, given the importance of Madeline to MB.
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    #11  Edited By xyzygy
    @Hailinel: So that means that, when the scientists scraped the remaining Metroid DNA from Samus' suit, they sent that data to the Bottle Ship where they created more Metroids and also baby Ridley as part of an experiment? 
     
    I wonder if they knew that Ridley's DNA was in fact Ridley's. I'm thinking that they just kinda found some foreign DNA and decided to experiment, giving Ridley his own special containment room and all.
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    #12  Edited By Hailinel
    @xyzygy:   They collected the DNA from Samus's suit knowing that at least some of it was from the baby Metroid, which was what they were counting on.  They cloned other DNA samples taken from the suit to experiment for bioweapon potential, but when they ended up with the young form of Ridley, they didn't even consider him a threat at first, much less know what he actually was.  They just kept him around as a pet and nicknamed him "little birdie."  They didn't know what a danger he was until it was too late and he killed a scientist to escape his cage.
     
    So no, they never actually intended to clone Ridley.
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    KingBroly

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    #13  Edited By KingBroly

    Doesn't this game confirm that Ridley is a Pokemon?  He's a stage 2 Pokemon, whereas Yoshi is a Stage 1 Pokemon.

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    #14  Edited By Hailinel
    @KingBroly said:
    " Doesn't this game confirm that Ridley is a Pokemon?  He's a stage 2 Pokemon, whereas Yoshi is a Stage 1 Pokemon. "
    Ridley is totally a Pokemon.  A high-level Fire type.
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    #15  Edited By Godwind

    Btw, I still think this game sucks.

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    #16  Edited By Hailinel
    @Godwind said:
    " Btw, I still think this game sucks. "
    Care to explain why you think that way?
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    #17  Edited By Godwind
    @Hailinel said:
    " @Godwind said:
    " Btw, I still think this game sucks. "
    Care to explain why you think that way? "
    I plan on posting a review.  I already have a review written out.
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    #18  Edited By Hailinel
    @Godwind said:
    " @Hailinel said:
    " @Godwind said:
    " Btw, I still think this game sucks. "
    Care to explain why you think that way? "
    I plan on posting a review.  I already have a review written out. "
    You can always summarize your thoughts here.  Otherwise, it's a little awkward only to come into the thread to say that something sucks without giving any explanation as to why.

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