Metroid introduced us to Samus Aran back in 1986 and this iconic franchise is showing no signs of slowing down. Many of us grew up with this incredible series, but not everybody has been along for this journey since its humble beginnings. Because of this, the hilarious crew over at the YouTube channel Lore has compiled a “fast facts” video to break down everything you should know about this badass space explorer!

• Yoshio Sakamoto, co-creator of Metroid, has stated that the 1979 sci-fi masterpiece ALIEN, was a major influence on the creation of the game, including having a female protagonist and the boss Ridley as a reference to ALIEN director, Ridley Scott, but the similarities don’t end there. A Nintendo Power issue states that Samus’ appearance in a comic adaptation was based off Ripley.
• It’s debatable whether or not sequence breaks — the act of completing tasks in an unexpected order — were intentionally built into Super Metroid. The map, however, wasn’t finalized until the later stages of development, which cut short the amount of time for bug testing. This could be why Super Metroid has so many sequence breaks. But if after completing the game and leaving it to idle on the title screen, a gameplay demo will show advanced techniques essential for sequence breaking.
• Samus’ most iconic power-up, Morph Ball exists only because Nintendo’s programmers couldn’t animate Samus crawling under low walls and into secret holes. So instead, they just had her turn into a ball.
• Part way through development it was decided that the usual SNES noises for the bosses didn’t have the right oomph, so the developers turned to various Godzilla movies to find the right sounds. Crocomire and Phantoon had cries similar to Titanosaurus from Terror of Mechagodzilla, Draygon was sampled from Anguirus, and Mother Brain has the same sound as the… mother of Godzilla villains, Mothra.
• Perhaps the most iconic part of Metroid is Samus’ Varia Suit. The name is actually a mistranslation the developers decided to make canon. Originally the suit was called the Barrier Suit because it could withstand high temperatures and acid.

Admittedly, some of us hardcore fans probably knew a good chunk of that already, though I will say that I didn’t realise that her suit was a mistranslation. The more you know! What other Metroid trivia do you have up your sleeve? Sound off with your thoughts in the comment section below, and don’t forget to check out DFTG on Twitter for gaming and entertainment news live 24/7!