A space dragon so
big controversial, he deserves his own topic.
I am NOT getting into Other M plot stuff. And I suggest everyone else drop it. We all know neither side will budge, and the argument itself has already been beaten into the dust since the game came out 3 and a half years ago. If you really want to do this back and forth again, at least don't do it here. Keep it to Smash related stuff, of which "the Ridley Scene" is not.
Are you saying only the games can be legit sources of information? Do the officially licensed manga and Nintendo Power comic just not count? Even when events that took place in those are called back to within the games and other related media?
And I'm not just talking about the ending pictures in Fusion. Old Bird is one of the Chozo that raised Samus. He debuted in the Nintendo Power Comic. He was a major character in the official manga, panels of which were repurposed for those extra ending pictures in the Japanese release of Fusion. And, and this is the important one if my questions before yield yesses, you see Old Bird in a flashback in Zero Mission. Samus' backstory with Ridley on K-2L also was first shown in the Nintendo Power comic. And it has been referred to in other games as well, such as Smash Bros. trophies and the manual for Metroid Prime.
But more importantly than all that. You are saying that a big pterodactyl-like creature and a bunch of marauding aliens under his command decimating a space colony and orphaning a very young Samus is in no way a heavy contribution to the Metroid mythos. That sounds like some pretty heavy [parasitic bomb] to me, man. Doesn't seem like the kinda thing you can just shrug off. If that event never happened, none of the games would have taken place. We have Ridley to thank that we can play these games ironically enough.
I don't know how else to show Ridley's significance and therefore eligibility to be a playable character in Smash Bros. I've accepted the fact that he's not gonna be playable in this one cause there's too much evidence against it. But the point of all this is to show that his inclusion is possible, appropriate, and relevant. Ignoring all this evidence is just ignorant, man.
First and foremost, the current discussion is how important Ridley's contribution to the series is, specifically as the murderer of Samus's parents. I am not denying such events exist within the mythos. Now while this may sound entirely subjective, you can argue for or against this importance depending on your line of reasoning.
I'll reiterate my stance: Ridley killing Samus's parents is not made important relative to everything else within the games. The main reason for this is because the K-2L backstory isn't a main focus or major plot element for many of the games, so the developers chose not to emphasize it in light of other priorities (which is typically the already minimalist plot). Said event is only emphasized within the manga and Other M.
To say that Ridley's murder is important is to say the manga and Other M is important relative to the other games. Ignoring Other M for now, I'm going to point out that knowing such a fact pre-Other M was in fact very obscure Metroid trivia that many players would not have known without outside research or coincidental reading via Smash trophies or forums. It doesn't make sense that most people wouldn't be aware of such an "important fact" after playing the games. It's not people being ignorant, it's you and the writer(s) being unreasonable expecting people to know. If you asked 10 people what Metroid is, 10 out of 10 people will tell you it's a game series, NOT a manga.
Such event could be explained through instruction manuals, as is the case with many older games. However, every pre-Other M Metroid given the bare backgrounds of the plot function perfectly fine without knowing said fact. Again, the boss fights with Ridley are never portrayed explicitly or implicitly as one of personal vengeance, therefore saying that they are is forcing an interpretation that can't conclusively be supported without outside material.
Which brings me to my next point: Other M, despite emphasizing such a fact occurred, never even bothered to tell the players such an event happened, in spite of all its other flashbacks. On top of that, such a plot element is completely useless within the context of Other M's story: Samus doesn't get vengeance for supposedly-dead Anthony and is denied proper closure. Plain and simple, that's bad storytelling. Going by Occam's razor, it's obvious the writer(s) shoehorned the breakdown flashback in an attempt to reveal Samus's backstory, add drama, bridge Super and Fusion, and give fanservice (ie Ridley), but ultimately this results in not only character regression (Samus revisiting a problem she already resolved, even IN the manga) but character assassination (her once boundless courage is now revoked, destroying her larger-than-life superhero status).
But let's say you accept Other M's "story" at face value: that still doesn't change the fact that Ridley killing Samus's parents was never emphasized until now outside the manga, which again should be seen as complimenting the games rather than an essential read.
Lastly, saying Ridley is the cause of everything Samus because "backstory" is like contributing a significant portion of Apple's success to Steve Job's biological father.