An interesting observation on the Prime pirates

So, have a look at the pirates throughout the series. Prime 1 fucked them up horribly–don’t get me wrong, they look awesome, but they’re completely different in every way from how they ever were, before or after.

Purple leathery skin with smooth green metal texture, a weird rifle-barrel thing, rings around its shoulders, and a positively awkward two-thumbs one-finger system… plus a beastlike mouth.

But if you look further, and see the concept art for 1…

It had a scaly grey armor texture, a claw-like gauntlet gun, fins over its shoulders, and a beak. Plus it had ‘gills’ on the undersides of its arms and legs.

Now look at Echoes, both art and ingame.

Scaly grey armor texture. Claw-like gun that either replaces the arm or fits over it like a giant gauntlet thin. Fins over its shoulders. A beak. Gills under its arms and legs.

Also note that Prime 1’s art has claw-like protrusions on its waist–similar appendages exist on 2’s Commandos. And their fingers are arranged like Prime 1’s art’s, with two fingers and one thumb, instead of the other way around.

Everyone went “wtf, are there more species of pirates?” after Echoes revealed these things, and confusion ensued.

Fastforward to Prime 3. The basic troopers look more like the old-school pirates, losing the spikes and fins and helmets, and standardizing the claw-gun by making it a ‘gauntlet’ that unfolds into a claw. Then, on top of that, they come in an Armored variety, which is nearly 100% identical to Echoes’s trooper design in every single minute way–minus the beak, and the helmet provides a ‘beak’-like protrusion over the mouth anyway: And closer examination of Prime 1’s art shows a mouth under the beak!

Echoes’s scan logs confirm that the troopers’ equipment had been upgraded since Tallon IV, explaining the differences between 1’s (art) and 2’s (game and art). And bingo, everything is singularized.

But wait, there’s more–now look at the Militia in 3.

A beast-like mouth. A weirdly shaped non-gauntlet gun. Rings around the shoulders. Leathery skin. Metallic arms and legs.

… Sound familiar?

My initial feel was that this was just supposed to represent Prime 1’s pirates as a ‘link’ between the ‘racial diversity’ displayed in the past games, but… Jones put a lot of work into those pirates, and made an awesome design combining classic Super Metroid bug-lobsters with modern 3D-workable ferocity, which got totally butchered into a lizard with metal limbs. I’d be pissed, and perhaps he was too–maybe that’s why Militia suck so much.

They’re ugly as hell and pathetically weak, and all of their design flaws are ripped straight from Prime 1’s ingame model, whereas all of the strong pirates are evolutions of Jones’s original creations.

Kinda interesting, if you ask me, but maybe I’m just obsessive.

On another note, Jones also drew concept art of the Varia Suit, which included the Echoes/Hunters/Corruption-style visor and more vibrant colors.

Whaddayano? Prime 1 dulled it and changed the visor, and every future game went back to what Jones originally created. At least Corruption didn’t include an insanely weak Prime 1 Varia knockoff as revenge for that too…

Edit: On a side note, the infamous “crotch claw” beta pirate from Prime 1 has the bubbly grey skin texture, the shoulder fins, the waist claws, and the proper finger alignment. Its gun was even more ridiculous looking, though.

So their very similar, it is interest on how artists may change the look ,but in contrast they are the same. They just been upgraded, but what about the Wave,Ice,Power, and Plasma trooper. Their helmet was different from the odinary pirate trooper.

The Pirate Commandos in Echoes and the Commander boss in Corruption have similar helmets to those, actually, especially the latter.

In the end, the only real anomalies are the aerotroopers–Prime 1 stated that they were those of lighter frames and bodies, but 3 shows them as being identical to normal pirates but with jet packs.

Perhaps this is explainable because phazon-powered jet packs could lift heavier, more combat-toned pirates, though, so the third army just used tougher aerotroopers than the first two.

Very interesting…Nice observation, Daz. It would appear that Jones had the right idea, and Retro/Nintendo disregarded it a couple times…

Indeed. The real question is thus why Brawl uses Prime 1’s ingame pirates instead of one based on its art (or 2’s if they were feeling lazy).

In one of Prime 1 scan, it said that phazon increase muscle size, that may explained why they weren’t fully armored, but there were those armored aero troopers.

The Aquatic version in Prime 1 on has a very long beak helmet. I notice that in Super Metroid, the pirates have beaks and in Zero Mission and Fusion as well.

They maybe lazy after all they put into a game they must have got tired and so Prime 1’s pirates are used.

Beck? Do you mean back or beak? 'Cuz aqua troopers have long back helmets and also have beaks, so it could be either. >_>;

As for the laziness issue–the other trophies that were in both Prime and Echoes got its Echoes version. Varia Suit, Hunter Gunship, and Dark Samus (if you count her hand from P1, anyway). Plus there was the Dark Suit and Luminoth, so using an Echoes pirate woulda fit a lot better anyway. >_>

I think he meant beaks.

That is interesting. So Brawl used Prime 1’s Pirate, but Echoes Varia…Hm. It might be that they were trying to give you more than one perspective from the series, but even that seems like a bit of a stretch. I mean, you look at Wolf, all of the trophies and stickers I’ve seen of him were from Star Fox: Assault. Quite interesting.

Once again, nice find.

Oh!! my bad I should have look at spelling, (coming a 2 year spelling bee champ can’t spell beaks) :angry: :blush:

Bullshit.

Show me a single Zelda trophy that isn’t from TP or WW. There’s NOTHING from LTTP, OOT, MM, LA, FSA, Z1, Z2… all those classics, completely ignored. They went purely TP and WW, because TP and WW Links were playable.

Yet we get SM/ZM Samus, with… MP1/MP2 trophies? Why no MP-based moves or outfits (recolors don’t count)? Or ZM/SM trophies? Okay, so there’s the Fusion Suit, and the Metroid is based on the ZM model instead of the Prime one. Big whoop. They barely changed anyway.

Hm…I believe some miscommunication took place right there…Here, let me rephrase my statement. It seems like an awful stretch, but it might be that they wanted diversity in the trophies. That’s what I meant. You are completely correct in every possible way.

I don’t know. Maybe they just were being lazy, and ripped what they thought looked cool. No idea, just a guess. Nevertheless, sometimes little things are what annoys me, cause the more I think about the indecisiveness of it, the more it angers me. Nintendo should’ve kept the original idea, which was expressed in Echoes (Partly).

Sheik and Deku Nut trophies are from OoT, and the Bunny hood from MM. (And technically OoT as well)…

Or did I misinterpret your post. <_<

As is the Ocarina of Time trophy.
And Tingle (assist trophy) at least looks like the one from Majora’s Mask. I don’t even know if he’s in wind waker…
But that’s all I can think of…

Sheik is actually based on unused TP concept sketches, and I was discounting item trophies. >_>;

And yes, Tingle was in WW, and that’s the one that appears as an assist.

Dazz, do you have picture examples for the statements, because while some of them are clear in my head, I need a refresher on the MP1 pirate art.

Anyway, really interesting finds.

I just wanna know why they fucked up the MP3 commandoes. >_>

http://mdb.classicgaming.gamespy.com/mp/ar…ace_pirate.jpg

http://mdb.classicgaming.gamespy.com/mp2/a…pace_pirate.jpg

And yeah, 3’s Commandos were pretty weird. >_>

Ooh, where can I find those unused TP sketches?

I’ve not personally seen them, but Sakurai’s update alluded to their existence.

I actually despise MP2E’s pirates (except the commandoes and darks), but thats just a personal opinion.

Prime 1’s were meh in my opinion and like an experiment, echoes were the best as far as imitating SM and MZM and thus were my favs and Corruptions were just plain fuck in my opinion and deserve praise in being fuck ugly asstards.