I dunno if you had ever played Metroid-games enough to actually cherish the rarity of seeing Samus taking her suit off and looking good yet [
natural while doing it.
But guess what? And no crazy fanart memes sprung up from that.
That's something. Perhaps they actually had some respect for this character?
Super Metroid seems more realistic rendition of her to me (a buff woman)
Fusion, while having her looking bit like a popstar, looks rather good too.
What mattered the most is that getting to see pics like these was DIFFICULT. And the developers kept her real self hidden away from the player every game until Zero Mission came up. That kinda testamented on her being still a badass heroine rather than a hottie I see people depicting her a lot today as. It was something special about her, but didn't take over her overall character like today. Internet BTW too.
Now going on DA and typing "Samus" nets me more of ZSS-pics (sometimes hypersexualised or suggestive) than the regular Samus with in her suit or without her suit (and not having Zero Suit).
Our point's just that Samus didn't use to look like a sex model for her series this much before Zero Mission. But since Brawl, it's has almost overshadowed bounty hunter self because it seems to be more on people's minds than her actual character. Along with Other M treating her a lot differently than she acted (Fusion) or we got to experience her as before (rest of Metroids), I think it has now made her mostly a shadow of her former badass self. And personally it irks me to see her being now portrayed so much this way by the fans. It clearly shows they don't respect her as a character anymore like she was used back at past days.