Metroid/Awesome

• Even in the instruction booklet for the original Metroid game, Samus Aran was played up to be a man...or at the very least, a cyborg, with such lines as, "Even the Space Pirates fear his armor." But beating the game in a very short amount of time treats players to Samus stripping away said armor to reveal...a chick in a bikini. take that, Damsel in Distress archetype!
  • This Troper still remembers how ecstatic she was when she finished the game as an eleven-year-old girl and found out that.... You know. The ending of Metroid was huge CMOA for female gamers everywhere, even if it did involve a PG-rated striptease.
• Super Metroid has two characters get a CMOA in the same scene. The fight with Mother Brain isn't going too well--she transforms from a helpless brain in a jar to a towering, drooling, screeching beastie and has Samus at her mercy. Just as Mother Brain's charging up for the final blow, the Metroid hatchling Samus saved from Metroid II shows up all grown up and drains Mother Brain into submission, then transfers the energy to Samus while taking heavy fire. It brings Samus back to full health before one last shot from Mother Brain kills it. After its heart-rending death squeal, Samus stands up. Hello, Hyper Beam. Hello, Theme Music Power-Up. And hello, Mama Bear.

"Mother. Time to GO."

• • This scene is even visually awesome: Before, your most powerful weapons were barely scratching Mother Brain. The Hyper Beam, on the other hand, sends her reeling with each hit. Here is a link to watch the battle.
• In Zero Mission, after destroying Mother Brain, Samus' ship crashes, forcing her to trek through the pirate mother ship without her powersuit, constantly having to dodge the murderous pirates and their powerful weapons. At the end of the level, Samus discovers a new powersuit in the Chozo Ruins....a far more powerful powersuit than her old one. Cue the Transformation Sequence! Cue the Theme Music Power-Up! Cue the mass amounts of buttkicking that commences when Samus can now kill the pirates with one shot, instead of the other way around!
  • Cue the giant fucking shoulders!
    • The game is worth playing for that one moment. You beat a boss without your armor, then about ten seconds of pure awesome go by. Then Space Pirates go boom.
• And really, how many planets can one woman detonate before she becomes the Queen of Badass?
  • I'm gonna go ahead and say 42. Just throwin' that out there.
  • Wait. She's not the Badass Queen yet? She's Samus Aran, DESTROYER OF WORLDS, BITCH!
• Metroid Fusion has several in the final segment of the game. After hearing from her computer that there are TEN SA-X running around (clones of Samus) and that the federation is coming down to capture the clones and study it, Samus decides to send the research station crashing down into SR388, even if it means killing herself in the process, which she acknowledges to the computer. The computer's personality then changes, deciding to help Samus while taking the personality of Adam, Samus's long gone commanding officer and mentor. "Any objections, Lady?" In a Super Metroid moment, Samus fights the Omega Metroid and one swipe knocks her health down to one. One of the SA-X appears, ignoring Samus and shoots the Metroid with its Ice Beam. The Metroid kills it, which releases the parasite. Samus absorbs it, which full heals her, gives back the Ice Beam, and changes Samus' suit color to the traditional red, orange, and yellow. If that wasn't enough, Samus' ship arrives after the battle to help her escape. It wasn't the computer controlling the ship, but the friendly creatures that Samus released much earlier in the game.
  • Don't forget, that canonically, Samus rescued said creatures in Super Metroid while Zebes was about to explode.
• In the manga, when Samus finally got out of being The Chick and Took a Level In Badass, she has three CMOAs:
  • Walking with a longcoat. It just shows how awesome she is, especially when without her armor, she easily defeats several GF Marines.
    • Gee whiz... that outfit makes her look like Carmen Sandiego!
  • Talking to the higher ups of the Federation...in a half tank top and shorts. Just like if someone can talk to the UN dressed like her.
  • THREE! I'll Defeat you by the count of three.

"If you're capable, we'll count together."

• Ah hell, I'll just say it: the Metroid series is a Crowning Franchise of Awesome for the Video Game Medium as a whole.
  • Armored lady hunts aliens and pirates, in space. No arguments from me.
• The entire Metroid Prime Trilogy is going to be re-released on the Wii, the first two games remade with Wiimote Controls, and the token system, the multiplayer mode from Echoes will still be in the game, and Corruption is also on the disc. And all of this is only 50 dollars? 3 of the best games from the Gamecube and the Wii for 50 dollars, and they were improved... This may just be my love of the franchise coming out, but just hearing about that is a gigantic crowning moment of awesome.
  • The pre-order deal nets you a T-Shirt. Unfortunately that part of the deal is only valid in the US.
  • What did it for me is the fact that the US and EU are getting the Trilogy deal, rather than having to buy the first two primes separately under the New Play Control! rerelease scheme like Japan. Since the NPC! games have been about half the price of a regular Wii game, we're basically getting both games with Corruption thrown in for free!
  • Not to mention the fact that the game comes in a special metal case. Nintendo games being released with special casing happens about as often as Ridley stays dead.
  • If the act of putting a disc in the drive could count as a Crowning Moment, then booting up Trilogy when you haven't played a Metroid game since the Super Nintendo is most certainly one. A disc with nine times the amount of quality playtime as your average new game on the market (allowing that a Prime game takes about 3 times as long to fully explore as your regular blockbuster). Cue the Metroidgasm!
• A meta-example: the first IGN pool Samus Aran Vs Master Chief. Samus won with a whole 73%. Adding to the amazement, this was held right after the marketing frenzy that is Halo 3 came out (meaning that Samus still won even with the Master Chief's massive PR campaign).
• This troper would like to nominate Super Metroid as an entire Crowning Moment of Awesome. That game defines the trope Even Better Sequel for video games.
• Some might consider this a moment of Badass Decay , Other M revealed a very interesting facet to Samus's character. She's abso-bloody-lutely TERRIFIED of Ridley. This equals CMOA for both characters. Ridley, because Samus, Destroyer of Worlds is Terrified of the guy, and Samus, who killed him no less then FOUR times (maybe five) at this point DESPITE being absolutely terrified of him.
  • I saw that scene as a combination of PTSD and shock at Ridley returning from the sum total of:
    • An Afloraltite explosion.
    • Having his ass handed to him sufficiently as to necessitate cybernetic implants for his survival.
    • About 42 seconds under the Wave Buster, 800 Plasma Beam blasts, and 16 Chozo Eye Beams to the heart.
    • A 684,128 kilometer Disney Death.
    • 5 Super Missiles down the throat.
    • A dip in a fucking NUCLEAR REACTOR.
    • Massive Phazon Mutation. (At this point, for those keeping score, he's a Cyborg Mutant Radioactive Zombie Space Pirate Dragon)
      • • Don't forget clone. Twice.
    • Being blown apart, having the pieces atomized, and having whatever was left after the atomization be on Zebes when it when BOOM..
  • All just to respawn in a month because the Federation's Science Team also has vapor for brains. So I see it as Samus freaking out over the being she watched kill her mother, told her it ate all her family and friends to survive her father's Heroic Sacrifice, which she's been sure was dead FOR A MONTH (and should have been 7 times over by now) standing before her eyes. I think she's fully justified in suffering a five-minute Heroic BSOD.
    • Not even five minutes. Most real life people with PTSD would probably need a sit down, some counseling, and a non-stress environment for a while to get over a debilitating onset of PTSD. Samus takes about a minute-and-a-half, tops, to decide to stop freaking out and start jamming plasma beams down his throat. She freezes up, then gets ground against the wall in a room filled with lava, while her power suit's on the fritz, and she bounces right the hell back and, as mentioned below, kicks Ridley's ass so thoroughly that his only option is to GTFO like his ass is on fire.
  • Oh yes. Say whatever you will about Samus's portrayal in that scene, but it made Ridley out to be a completely unstoppable killing machine... which is what he is.
  • And at the end of said battle, Ridley ends up so freaking scared of Samus that he crashes through a wall in a frantic attempt to get away from her.
• Are we forgetting the Manga? In it one of the Chozo, Gray Voice, after pretending to betray the Chozo when the Space Pirates invade Zebes, reveals that he was just looking for a chance to take out the Mother Brain, and, dusting off an old Chozo suit of Powered Armor, starts blasting away at the Mother Brain with a BFG, despite the fact that the Chozo all programed themselves to feel intense pain if they ever used violence.
• Most of the early SA-X encounters in Fusion involve you running and hiding because the feared evil twin can easily kill Samus with one shot of the Ice Beam and Super Missile (in that order). Once you have the Varia Suit, the Ice Beam won't freeze you (still hurts a lot, though), and by the time you meet SA-X again after getting said Varia Suit, you will be able to turn the tables on it by using Ice Missiles to freeze it. It only buys you about one second to run away, but this troper couldn't help but think "Who's laughing now?!" before running like hell to a hiding place.
  • Not just that, but come the end of the game, you get to stomp that thing into the ground in a boss fight.