Samus Aran

Samus Aran is the player character of Metroid, a platformer / action-adventure series developed by Nintendo. One of the most famous female video game characters of all time, Samus is also the most successful female in video game character popularity tournaments. Among her wins include the fifth Character Battle in the GameFAQs website, and the Queen of /v/ 2019 tournament held in 4chan's /v/idya imageboard.

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Samus is a bounty hunter who protects the galaxy from space pirates, fighting through hostile alien worlds and creatures including the titular Metroid species. The character wears a powered suit which is armed with many weapons and features, many of them needing to be obtained by the player in various locations scattered throughout each game's world.

In the original NES game, Samus is assumed to be a male because of the form-concealing powered suit. However, if a player completes the game, the ending will show Samus removing the helmet, revealing her face. If the game is completed quickly enough, Samus might even appear in a bikini. This surprise reveal is considered a landmark moment in video game history, as no prominent game featured a female protagonist like her at the time. Furthermore, a famous password named "JUSTIN BAILEY" changes Samus' appearance into a green-haired woman wearing a leotard and knee-high boots.

Despite being praised as a strong, independent female by many critics, Samus is also widely sexualized by fans, and her alternate costume, the skintight Zero Suit (introduced in Metroid: Zero Mission, a remake of the original NES game) has become another iconic part of her appearance.

In GameFAQS Samus is regarded as the strongest female character in the entire history of the contest. She is the only female member of the group of elite contestants known as the "Noble Nine", and is also the only female to ever win a Character Battle, having won the fifth edition in the summer of 2006 which featured a segregated bracket for males and females. The bounty hunter has never failed to finish outside the top eight stage throughout the contest's history, and as a Noble Niner she's only lost to fellow members Sephiroth Link, Cloud, and Mario in 1v1 tournaments.

Her notable matches include:
 * defeating the first seed Sonic the Hedgehog by a mere 46 votes in the division finals of the first character tournament
 * a very close match against FF7's Tifa Lockhart in the quarter-finals of Character Battle V, where she won by a difference of less than 1500 votes. She won the rest of her matches by fairly comfortable margins afterwards en route to her championship.
 * the three-way final round in Character Battle IX, where she struggled to gain ground as her votes were split against Solid Snake, resulting in both contestants failing to take down the Reddit brigade-boosted Draven.
 * her legends bracket run on Character Battle X, where she won against Tifa twice and lost against Mario twice.

Other
ISML 2018 Video Game Exhibitions