She’s tall but she’s way too narrow to actually fit the shoulders on the suit. It’s one of those weird game oversights, like how many game building interiors are too large for the exterior to contain.
I don’t think it’s an oversight as much as it is simply the design of the suit to have large pauldron-like shoulders that also make it look like mechanical joints. And I mean, the biggest “how does that work” thing for me has always been the morph ball. How does she not just liquify?
My absolute favorite thing about the morphball is that even in canon it’s a total mindfuck that makes no sense. Very light lore spoilers for Metroid Prime 1:
spoiler
There’s a couple of research scans that essentially describe Space Pirate reverse engineering of Samus’ morphball tech that basically say “This morphball shit is a lost cause. All our test crew have ended up as extremely dead pretzels. We should just quit while we’re behind on this one.”
The morph ball is usually half the height of samus’ full sprite, which would make it a whole meter in diameter (iirc super metroid is the only exception). Most people could fit in that comfortably.
Actual models vary pretty wildly by game (out of suit for Other M has her quite short compared to other people), but I believe the only official height and weight comes from the Super Metroid player’s guide (and more vaguely in the Metroid 2 manual), which says she’s 6’3" (190 cm) and weighs 198 pounds (90 kg) without the suit.
Her shoulders were only big because of the outfit. Which was very much in style for 1986.
On the best endings, especially for the games where she isn’t 27 pixels in total, she’s traditionally shown to be pretty muscular.
Not space-marine pauldron-filling muscular, but far too big not to be called woke…
Isn’t she super tall?
She’s tall but she’s way too narrow to actually fit the shoulders on the suit. It’s one of those weird game oversights, like how many game building interiors are too large for the exterior to contain.
I don’t think it’s an oversight as much as it is simply the design of the suit to have large pauldron-like shoulders that also make it look like mechanical joints. And I mean, the biggest “how does that work” thing for me has always been the morph ball. How does she not just liquify?
The issue is that her arms would have to be cut off at the shoulder to fit into the arms of the suit. This fan-made diagram shows what I mean:
Her arms are actually bunched up in front of her so she can hold a little Xbox controller
She can morph into a spaceball - I can believe the detached shoulders.
She just needs bigger pauldrons.
My absolute favorite thing about the morphball is that even in canon it’s a total mindfuck that makes no sense. Very light lore spoilers for Metroid Prime 1:
spoiler
There’s a couple of research scans that essentially describe Space Pirate reverse engineering of Samus’ morphball tech that basically say “This morphball shit is a lost cause. All our test crew have ended up as extremely dead pretzels. We should just quit while we’re behind on this one.”
The morph ball is usually half the height of samus’ full sprite, which would make it a whole meter in diameter (iirc super metroid is the only exception). Most people could fit in that comfortably.
What if she does?
Actual models vary pretty wildly by game (out of suit for Other M has her quite short compared to other people), but I believe the only official height and weight comes from the Super Metroid player’s guide (and more vaguely in the Metroid 2 manual), which says she’s 6’3" (190 cm) and weighs 198 pounds (90 kg) without the suit.