There’s an unspoken rule that every Nintendo hero must have a recurring nemesis. Mario and Bowser, Link and Ganon, Kirby and King Dedede, Tom Nook and the IRS. The Metroid series is no exception, and across more than a dozen games Samus has repeatedly faced off against her arch-enemy Ridley, an emaciated pterodactyl that refuses to stay dead no matter how many times his body explodes. Ridley has appeared as a minor antagonist in all but five of Metroid’s 14 games and frequently plays a central role in whatever threat to interstellar space Samus is attempting to thwart. In Metroid Prime, a cyborg version of Ridley serves as the penultimate boss fight on Tallon IV - for some reason. Ridley doesn’t fit well into Metroid Prime&💖r♉squo;s story, and his appearance in Samus’ first 3D adventure doesn’t make as much of an impact as it could have.
Ridley is a constant thorn in Samus’ side. While the original Metroid’s story is fairly opaque, its remake, Zero Mission, makes clear that Ridley isn&r🌺squo;t just a monster lurking in the depths of Lower Norfair, he’s actually a sentient being and a high-ranking member of the Space Pirate organization - possibly their leader, though that’s never confirmed. While on her mission to exterminate the metroids, Samus is caught in an ambush and has to defeat Ridley by blasting him with exactly 30 missiles.
Metro꧋id Prime, which takes place chronologically after Metroid, reveals that the Space Pirates recovered Ridley’s scorched remains and rebuilt him into the cyborg Meta Ridley. Samus first encounters Meta Ridley as the Space Pirate frigate Orpheon self-destructs, prompting 🍌the villain to escape to the nearby planet Tallon IV. Samus gives chase, and Metroid Prime begins in earnest.
It’s not a bad setup for the return of a popular villain. Though Metroid fans already knew Ridley survived the original Metroid thanks to his appearance in Super Metroid - the final appearance of the original Ridley - Metroid Prime’s position on the timeline created an opportunity to expand on his character and add depth to his rivalry with Samus. Unfortunately, Ridley doesn’t really serve𝓀 a purpose in Metroid Prime at all.
Before our showdown in Prime’s final boss rush, we only see the baddie one other time. After your first excursion to find the Thermal Visor in the Space Pirates’ Research Core, you return to the Phendrana Drift an🅺d encounter Ridley soaring over the icy terrain. His enormous frame casts a long shadow over your path, sending a not-so-subtle reminder that our enemy is present. The problem, of course, ꧋is that Ridley’s presence is not felt in any meaningful way.
As you tear a bloody path through Tallon IV, collecting power and dismantling the Space Pirates’ entire operation, Ridley never makes a single appearance. He never tries to slow you down, he isn’t in the Space Pirate base, and he never shows up to challenge you over one of the Chozo Artifacts that unlocks the door to the Space Pirates’ ultimate prize: the Metroid Prime. Ridley is content to let you find all of your upgrades and kill his entire army of Space Pirates until the very last moment when he makes a feeble attempt to stop you from entering the Impact Crater to kill the Metroid Prime. ♛As the supposed leader of the Space Pirates and Samus’ arch-nemesis, he doesn’t do a very good job of posing any kind of serious threat.
It doesn’t help♔ that Ridley’s boss fight is the worst one in the game. Metroid Prime’s bosses are puzzle-like. They challenge you to use the environment and figure out how to combine all of your different weapons and visors together in new ways. Ridley’s fight is purely mechanical and boils down to ‘shoot when his mouth opens’. There’s nothing to figure out, just dodge left and right and get shots in when you can. The fight goes on so much longer than it has any reason to, as Ridley takes less and less damage𝔉 as his health bar gets smaller. It would be one thing if he had earned this knock-down-drag-out battle to the end, but all things considered he’s barely a footnote in Prime’s story. If you blinked at the wrong time you might have missed that he’s even part of this game until the last fight.
Ridley is the ideal antagonist for Samus because, like all great villains, he represents a part of the hero that she hates. Ridley represents all of the carnage and brutality Samus is capable of, and her fear that she’ll never be truly safe. He is the monster she could become, and his tendency to rise from the dead in new forms is a harrowing reminder that Samus can never stop fighting. Their relationship is thematically complex by Nintendo standards, but Metroid Prime reduces Ridley to mascot villain - a bad guy for our good gal to fight just because they’re supposed to. For a game with as much narrative depth as 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Metroid Prime, I’ve been disappointed by൲ Ridley’s wasted potential.