I haven’t posted here in a while because my usual Anatomy time has been spent assembling Super Metroid into a book. Unlike Metroid Vol. I, Metroid Vol. II will contain a fair amount of supplemental material. Nothing amazing, just a dozen entries or so of descriptive or summary text about bosses and regions. Still, as I’ve been writing this extra content, a few little details about Super Metroid bonked me on the head.

First, the Wrecked Ship is obviously a giant rip-off of the derelict in Alien. I guess that’s no real revelation, but it had never occurred to me before. Phantoon, I suppose, plays the role of Space Jockey. This is all in a happy world before Prometheus made a hash of Alien‘s back story, of course.

Secondly, it struck me that the game’s creators may have intended Draygon not to be the parent of all those evirs that swim around it but rather as some kind of mutant evir/metroid hybrid. After all, its room is directly beneath the space pirate lab where they cloned metroids to create moctroids. And while it does resemble a giant evir, it also bears some obvious similarities to alpha metroids: The more pronounced spherical belly (aka weak point), the claw-like appendages, the tiled carapace on its back, its metroid-like habit of attacking Samus by clutching her until she inflicts enough damage that it lets her loose. So does that mean…

It’s an interesting idea. But maybe I’m giving the designers too much credit… or maybe I shouldn’t write this stuff while my bloodstream is packed with cold medication.

It also doesn’t explain the freaky skulls on Draygon’s head. Because seriously, what the heck.