How does Samus Aran’s morph ball work?

With MetroidIt is a terrible placeMetroid enthusiasts like yours truly are asking a lot about Samus Aran, the intergalactic bounty-hunter. I recently summarized Samus Aran’s career prior to Metroid Dread, but one question has proved particularly difficult to answer, and that is the nature of Samus’ morph ball mode. What is the secret to this tiny, musclebound Amazonian woman being able to contract her body into such a small sphere?

I’m here to tell you that it’s completely possible. It used to.

Original version Metroid, Samus Aran’s morph ball form was precisely half her height. Although every human being is different, the average person’s height is half when they are curled up into a ball. This stock photo of a man doing a somersault makes it clear enough.

Here are the screenshots from the original Metroid (courtesy of a YouTube playthrough by naswinger), you can measure Samus’ height according to the building blocks of the game’s walls. A corridor for a morph ball is one block high, whereas a corridor that’s tall enough for Samus to walk through is two blocks high. The morph ball has the correct size.

Grid View

As for how the morph ball would actually work, that’s another story, and it’s not a question that any Metroid game has answered: How can Samus see well enough in morph ball mode to navigate an underground maze? And wouldn’t she get dizzy? I believe that the morphball functions in a similar way to a glide eyeball, so Samus will be curled up while she is in morphball mode. The morph ball should still be half the height of Samus Aran, standing in full armor.

Original Metroid This fulfills this requirement. Metroid Games: At the very least, at least one Metroid game (e.g. Metroid PrimeAlso, it appears that they fulfill this requirement. Text in-game Metroid PrimeAccording to one source, morphball corridors measure approximately 1 meter in height. Metroid PrimeA fan collected game assets that show Samus to be half the height of her armor. The height of Samus in her armor is 6 feet 3 inches. Super Metroid Nintendo’s Player’s Guide, although there’s some dispute among fans as to whether that figure refers to her height in her suit or not Regardless, one meter is a little over three feet, so Samus’ height and the morph ball’s height seem about right in Metroid Prime.

It becomes increasingly complicated when you factor in Metroid: Other M. Samus stood at 5ft 2ins outside her powersuit in Team Ninja 2010. Fans have highlighted this discrepancy in diagram form. Additional M made Samus’ morph ball about half her size in the zero suit, but not the power suit, which … well, it would make sense if she weren’t so tall in the power suit, but sure.

And then there’s Super Smash Bros., perhaps the biggest source of confusion out of all Samus’ appearances, in no small part because it’s the one with which most people are familiar. It’s also the smallest her morph ball has ever been, to a point that’s ridiculous. You can find it here Super Smash Bros UltimateAs you can see, her morphball barely reaches her knee. These screenshots were taken by Choctopus, YouTube user.

Grid View

Let’s see how it works Metroid Dread stack up in all of this, as the most recent iteration of Samus Aran’s morph ball? It’s certainly better than Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, but the morph ball still isn’t big enough; it’s about a third of Samus’ height in The fearIt’s not half the value it should be.

At this point, the morph ball has been normalized as being less than half of Samus’ height. That’s too damn small, and for no reason. It wouldn’t make the morph ball puzzles and mazes any less fun if Samus were just a little bit bigger when she did them. The only reason I can imagine for why Samus’ morph ball is so small now is because the size difference looks funny, especially in something as cartoonish as Super Smash Bros. Or perhaps it’s because Samus became a lot more waifish and diminutive in Metroid: Additional MThe result was the stark discrepancy in height between her zero-suit and power suit-wearing selfs. Ultimate. The morph ball is supposed to be half of her height, at 5 feet 2 inches? Additional M(and) UltimatePerhaps in zero-suit form? Is it meant to be half of her height? Super MetroidAre there levels?

I can’t speak to any of that. But I do have some consolation in all of this: Researching this post allowed me to find a massive fan community of artists who have chosen to illustrate taller versions of zero suit Samus — in particular, the artists who’ve decided to pair up this taller version of zero suit Samus with the diminutive boxer Little Mac. This is In Ultimate, they’re about the same height, but in this fan art, she towers over him. It’s great.

Nintendo, let Samus be great! In her zero suit, her power suit and in her Morph Ball. It’s only right. And it’s what the fans want.