I will note that outside of playing the original game for about half an hour on my Switch last night (which naturally confused me a bit), I have not played anything in the Metroid franchise and therefore know nothing about Samus or the lore of the games, other than tiny bits and pieces picked up from playing Smash Bros for two decades. From what I've picked up on the original game, though, is that the instruction manual says Samus is actually a man, and the gender reveal only happens at the end of the game, and only under certain conditions.
The video game industry and community has a reputation for being… er, pretty sexist, to say the least, and my gut tells me that it was even worse in the 80s, though that is totally speculation. So I can imagine that this would ruffle some feathers upon release. But Metroid became a very successful franchise, and Samus was a playable character in the first Smash game a decade later, so it seems like the franchise must have become popular in spite of any sexism of the era.
So, what motivated Nintendo to make a female action hero for this game, and did they face any backlash for that (particularly from male fans)? If so, [how] did they overcome it?
Nintendo itself published an interview with two of the developers (Yoshio Sakamoto and Hiroji Kiyotake) where they discussed the very subject of why they made Samus a woman.
I'll get to that, but I first want to point out that it was not at all clear to players of the original game that Samus was a woman. In fact, both the US and Japanese manuals was actively deceptive about this!
As a last resort, the Federation Police have decided on this strategy: to send a space hunter to penetrate the center of the fortress and destroy the Mother Brain. The space hunter chosen for this mission is Samus Aran. He is the greatest of all the space hunters and has successfully completed numerous missions that everyone thought were absolutely impossible.
The Japanese game was arguably even more deceptive. It's not hard to write Japanese text without mentioning gender, but the manual goes of its way in the same section to use kare ("he", "him") three times.
The only way to make the discovery was to not only beat the game, but to beat it under five hours.
Beating between 3 and 5 hours: Samus would remove her helmet at the end, revealing long hair; while this does suggest a woman, it's not exactly definitive, especially for someone who read the manual.
Beating between 1 and 3 hours: Samus removes the entire outside suit, revealing the "Justin Bailey" suit. It's then possible play while in that suit.
Beating in under an hour: Samus ends in a bikini. (This is admittedly not unusual for 1980s Japanese sci-fi; Metroid was released the same year as Project A-ko.)
I won't get into if the last ending (which few gamers of the 1980s saw) undermines any "feminist" notion of Samus, because according to the developers, even if Samus became a feminist icon later, that wasn't what went into the original decision. From a 2016 interview, published on Nintendo's website:
Q: How did you decide to make Samus Aran a woman?
Sakamoto: Once we entered the final stage of development, we started talking about having different endings depending on how long it took players to clear the game. We wanted to prepare a reward for people who cleared it more quickly.
Kiyotake: We wondered what would surprise everyone and talked about removing Samus's helmet.
Sakamoto: Then someone said, "It would be a shocker if Samus turned out to be a woman!" And everyone thought that would be interesting and wanted to do it, so we decided it right away.
Kiyotake: Yeah, we decided that in a flash. Back then, people played games over and over, so we wanted to give a reward for playing through quickly. Then we decided to put in four endings, with Samus removing her helmet or her suit and so forth.
As they played, everyone thought Samus was a tough, musclebound guy, but they learned in the end that Samus was a woman.
Sakamoto: People who played it back then were shocked. And even now people talk about it like a kind of legend. (laughs)
The last point is echoed in reactions, which based on all the testimonials I've found tended to either
a.) not realizing that Samus is a woman at all until a much later time
b.) shock and surprise
Unfortunately, it's very hard to give a scholarly answer on reactions, especially ones that came from 1980s schoolyard rumors where it's hard to quantify just what the "average person" thought and what the "average person" even means. The closest I've found to approaching the problem is a 2012 study of Katherine Roberts, who had players comment on the depictions of Samus in Metroid Prime and Metroid M, with Appendices I through XVI. I've included all the thoughts that seem to harken back to feelings about Metroid from the 2D platformer games. At the very least, there's a little continuity in creators: Yoshio Sakamoto worked on both original Metroid and Metroid M.
(For context on some of the comments, Metroid M includes a character called Adam that Samus is deferential to, sometimes nonsensically.)
one of the all-time best Nintendo characters
Samus Aran, a bounty hunter like no other
You play as the female bounty hunter, Samus Aran. She is one bad ass lady.
And don't you think; from coming from one of the first games to feature a female protagonist, all the way to this superb adventure; it's really quite amazing.
a protaganist who is equal parts Jesus and Boba Fett
She is back and better than ever!
Samus kicks !
This game puts you behind the visor of the most lethal bounty hunter is the galaxy
for once you get to play with a girl rather then a guy always being the hero but I guess thats how Metroid has always been
That lad (wait, 'he' is a female. Sorry) is back for the extreme action!
Samus had not appeared since way back in 1993, the year of Super Metroid and many had seemingly forgotten about her. Except her fans
Samus has always been powerful
It makes Samus about as brutal as a Nintendo character's ever likely to get
We wanted Samus the bounty hunter but we got Samus the insecure
they decided to turn Samus into a weak character with a poor and unoriginal personality that goes contrary to fan opinion and apparent characterization in the past.
They have killed Samus as a strong female character
The game's biggest flaws lie in its poor characterization of Samus
The other thing about Samaus is her personality this time around. Like I said, everyone knows here as a bad-ass bounty hunter, but in this game she sounds like a regular every day teenage girl.
I thought there was too much emotion from Samus. Call me a purist, but [however] the mysteriousness that Samus displayed throughout the text-based talking was great. I knew that she was struggling with things, but it wasn't in my face.
I just don't approve of all the emotion that she so easily displays, that's all. I think that she should remain hard and cold to an extent, and not really worry about what others think of her While she doesn’t come off as the badass/strong silent type she tends to be in every other game, Other M shows off a more human side to Samus,
Too much emotion in the story (Makes Samus seem less tough)
they changed Samus in a number of ways that could have been left alone, and probably would have been better left alone instead of shown off and/or altered.
meant to flesh Samus out as a character and turn her into an even more super version of herself. This game certainly did that, but not to the extent that I would have liked
In all prior Metroid games, Samus was a quiet woman. Stoic, yet strong. A few have mistakenly and incorrectly claimed she had no personality, that she was simply a cipher for the player's emotions. On the contrary, Samus has displayed very strong, powerful personality traits since the days of Metroid 2, from her single-minded determination to eradicate the Metroids, to her compassion in sparing a baby Metroid that imprinted on her. Retro Studios, creators of the Prime games, specifically mentioned they came up with a variety of psychological studies, asking the original Metroid creators "how would Samus act?" and then implementing their responses in the game, giving us a Samus that was a woman of action, courage, intelligence, nobility, resourcefulness, and stability. Other M's portrayal of her is quite the opposite.
...
Altice, N. (2017). I Am Error: The Nintendo Family Computer / Entertainment System Platform. United States: MIT Press.
Mandelin, C. (30 August 2013). Was Samus Called a He in Japanese Metroid Too? Legends of Localization.
Roberts, K. (2012). A sociological exploration of a female character in the Metroid videogames series. The Computer Games Journal, 1(2), 82-108.
