Metroid Database Bestiary Appreciation and Discussion Thread

[CapCom]

Thanks for the appreciation, guys! I am really proud of the work Ryan and his team of artists put into all this (along with Jesse and rondus doing the code) - I just did a few of the log entries

One other thing we had debated about was correcting some of the mistranslated names:

Zoomer --> Geemer
Skultera --> Skultetra
Nova --> Sova

M2 has a LOT more names that are different, but they were more localization. So we might go back and forth between the two...

[Chozo Guardian]

Okay, then in that case, only put in the ZM one enemies that aren't in the original, aside, of course, from the ones that need different tactics such as etc. (Although you can hardly see that little hopping thing as Ridley. Or the 3-ft. turtle as Kraid for that matter. Lol. )

glad to see that its finally up. I can now finally post the work on my Deviant =D

[VGMStudios]

got an idea for the Name section. What do you think if beside the English name you had the Japanese name in brackets? like for example Name: Metroid (メトロイド).
I thought this would be cool since Metroid was created in Japan.

If you need I can supply all the Japanese names.

VGM out...

[Infinity's End]

got an idea for the Name section. What do you think if beside the English name you had the Japanese name in brackets? like for example Name: Metroid (メトロイド).
I thought this would be cool since Metroid was created in Japan.

If you need I can supply all the Japanese names.

VGM out...

Thanks for your suggestion.
We may integrate a feature that when you click on the name, it displays the japanese text and romanization of that name. That won't be until later, though.

So a person relayed a few bits of info for me to relay to you:

Actually, I'm impressed. Things like this almost always suck. This is generally suck-free.

Not entirely, however.

M1:
Polyp: As far as I know, this entire thing is complete bullshit. Pretty sure they're defense systems, not waste explusion systems.
Ripper: Ripper IIs should have no apostrophe
Ripper II: Ditto.
Skree: I'm pretty sure "kamikaze" is not a verb.
Viola: OH GOD WHAT IS WRONG WITH THAT ART. Granted the design is a bit cartoony to begin with, but it just looks REALLY out of place rendered like this.
Zoomer: Description talks about Geemers instead, and where did that pronunciation come from? AFAIK it's never been made official.

M2:
Arachnus: I'm pretty sure its Japanese name is Malachi, a Biblical name... probably applied due to the "round" pun, but still.
Gulugg: Description is completely ridiculous, and rife with fanon. Also contradicts itself, because Misc. gives an accurate etymology, but Info gives a completely different, completely unsubstantiated and meanignless etymology as well.
Moheek: How do we know it has two eyes? If the art looks like there's one, and the sprite is only ever seen from the side... Also, it says that they were aquatic and then evolved gills. Um.. you mean LUNGS?
Other: God, there's a lot of talk about infrared vision here. Where is all of this coming from? At least half of the monsters say they use infrared vision! Even ignoring the fact that fanon should be kept to a minimum, it just seems really repetetive.

SM:
Cacatac: Almost completely fanon.
Zebesian (Grey): The manga, Fusion, and Other M explicitly show that their lasers are NOT organic/natural.
Geega: Clearly not an insect. Leathery skin and dragon-like wings, non-segmented legs...
Powamp: "Caudral" should be "caudal"
Torizo: First explicitly says it's an organism, then says that it might actually be a robot while acknowledging that no one knows what it is.
Waver: Missing everything from the Other M scan. Might be redundant with the M1 entry, but it feels really lacking as-is.
Zebesians: Red and Green show them with their Fusion/Other M design, despite them being in the Super bestiary. Just seems ill-fitting, considering Kraid and the Metroids get their M1 design in the M1 bestiary... And Gold just looks WEIRD in my opinion, but that's hardly a "problem" so much as personal taste.
Other: There was also one instance of "siphon" being spelled wrong, but I forgot where it was and it was before I realized there were enough mistakes to start writing them down. It was spelled "syphon" IIRC, so you could run a ctrl+F to find it maybe.

MF:
Core-X A-Type: "Cellular walls" exist around, y'know, cells. Since you explicitly said this is an amalgamation of multiple X-parasites, it's hardly a single cell, and thus can't have a cell wall.
Neo Ridley: "This glitch can glitch up your game!" Awful wording aside, HOW does it glitch up the game, beyond being performed by a glitch in itself?
SA-X Monster: "... making it lose its ability to fire the Ice Beam. Though the SA-X had lost its ability to fire the Ice Beam..." Redundant much?
Serris: Man, this was SO good up until the end, when suddenly it pulls some fanon about using different luminescence patterns to attract mates or prey.
Yakuza: Refers to it as an arachnid in the last sentence. Arachnoform is a pretty decent invented(?) term, actually, but seeing as it has six legs, it can't be an explicit arachNID in its base form.

General: Every apostrophe and quotation mark has a backslash attached to it. Th'fug? Also, duplicated monsters in master list, but I'm sure you know about that already.

Whew! All done, as far as I know.

Don't mean to be all negative here. Seriously, I like it overall. But why make it good when it can be great? And that's what I'm trying to help you do.

Also, the Grey Zebesian art is fucking awesome.

[Infinity's End]

Did you mention to him that the majority of the descriptions and quite a bit of the programming were made in the last 2 months? Not to mention the majority of the integrated code was probably done in the last 2 weeks?
We are all aware of the current glitches and problems. It is an Alpha. We have stated so.

Glad he likes the majority of it. We're far from finished. I'd say more but since I don't have to, I won't.

Next time maybe he should register on the forum and tell us himself.

[VGMStudios]

Who is this person? Is he some kind of guru of all things metroid? Sure comes off like one. i agree with IE though. If hes got input for this he should tell us himself. Always good to have more members.

Vgm out...

Is he some kind of guru of all things metroid? Sure comes off like one.

He works on the Wiki, though I'm not sure his position.

So I'll tentatively say "yes".

And yes, he realizes it's a work in progress. That's why he pointed out this stuff: so it could be fixed. That is the whole point to feedback, is it not?

[CapCom]

The alternative names come from the original Japanese. The manual translations are actually full of name changes. Some of these are localization changes (Marukara Arachnus) but others were translation errors (Geemer Zoomer; Koben Coven). I am in the process of getting a list of Japanese names from strategy guide scans (thanks, VGM!), but from what I've read in the manual, there are dozens of changes. Aside from Geemer, Sova, and Drakon, there really weren't too many changes in the original.

The text is still in the process of being composed. A proper revision sweep has not yet been done. After all the entries are up, I am most concerned with whether the strategy is accurate. After that, punctuation and cleanup.

Enemy descriptions are done based on what makes the most logical sense given the enemy's official descriptions, behavior, and imagery. If all text was straight by-the-book, these entries would be only two lines of text long and wouldn't be very interesting to read. Kind of defeats the purpose of having snazzy art (which you could technically argue is 'fanon' anyway since many of these enemies have never been drawn in this fashion - the Sova, for instance).

Regarding infrared: caves are 100% dark unless there's bioluminescence present (and that's usually pretty rare). If a creature has eyes, they are blind. This is an alien planet, so why not have vision evolve differently? I would love to hear a logical explanation for why SR388's caverns are so colorful, especially when Samus is described in the manual as using infrared to see everything.

Regarding infrared: caves are 100% dark unless there's bioluminescence present (and that's usually pretty rare). If a creature has eyes, they are blind. This is an alien planet, so why not have vision evolve differently? I would love to hear a logical explanation for why SR388's caverns are so colorful, especially when Samus is described in the manual as using infrared to see everything.

For all we know, the whole cave is biolminescent. Would explain why light is so plentiful almost everywhere haha.


Also, for the sake of being the devil's advocate.... if in the manual, it says Samus uses infrared to see everything..... why are there darkened rooms?

[Dekutulla]

Well, first of all, I at the fact that this got turned into the discussion thread.

On topic, this is great! Way more than I had expected it to be. I look forward to the Prime entries.

With the Prime entries, will you just be using the logbook entries, or something else?

Good work, and I look forward to the rest!

[Chozo Guardian]

Perhaps they can have the logbook entries word for word, but also have something else too.

[YamI]

I know this has absolutely nothing to do with the Bestiary, or disscusion, but the "read" in Thread, at the top of the post that says "Post Subject" is cut off, just thought you should know that, if you ever wanna fix it, IE, Jesse, CapCom.

[Infinity's End]

If anyone out there has a DA account, I'd appreciate it if you could go to this article and fave it up (click the little +heart underneath the number). I'm trying to get word out on the Bestiary as much as possible, but unfortunately it seems like almost all the major game news sites are completely ignoring us.

Thanks in advance.