Get into a conversation with a gamer about feminist icons in their medium of choice and they’ll probably give you one answer: Samus Aran. Miss Aran is the take-no-prisoners bounty hunter star of Nintendo’s twenty year-old Metroid series. She’s capable, powerful, athletic, a natural blonde, and she takes no-guff from space pirates, space jellyfish, or giant brains perched atop tyrannosaurus-rex bodies. There’s a huge problem though. In almost every Metroid, a better performance in the game is rewarded with images of a de-robed, tarted-up Samus. Hit the jump for a look at what I'm talking about.
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