Morning, Metroid Maniacs! I'm back with another pair of cool customs! As I've mentioned, this week (month, general time span, whatever) I'm posting loose ends before moving on to my official (in the loosest possible terms) second series of figures. First on the block: a Space Pirate Soldier from Metroid Prime!

Metroid is one of the few game series in existence that one can honestly say has never released a bad game. How many series can boast that? Mario? Sure, the main series is consistently awesome, but he's released one or two dogs in his sports sub-series. Zelda? They're all great . . . unless you count those evil CDi games (I don't, but still). Halo gets great reviews, but it's a much younger franchise. Same with God of War. To find a game series that dates all the way back to the 80s, yet has maintained its greatness through every iteration is truly a rarity.

But even among the Metroid games, there are some that stand out above the others, and some that don't quite stack up. For me personally, Super Metroid is the pinnacle of the franchise. On the other end of the spectrum is the Metroid Prime trilogy. Don't get me wrong, I love the series, but there are a few factors that drag these games into a lower slot. First, I'm not much of a first-person gamer. I like to see my girl Samus, not see through her. Second, Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. I like the classic-style controls. Motion control is fine, but I'm not sold quite yet. Yeah, I'm old! You kids get off my lawn! And third? Consistency. The Prime games totally threw the series a curve ball in every imaginable aspect, from storyline to gameplay to character design.

Take my Space Pirate Soldier here. I based this figure off of the official game artwork. However, playing through the first game, you quickly discover that the actual in-game pirates look very little like this design. In fact, each type of pirate (Grunts, Flyers, Troopers, Elites) looks completely different from the others. And when we move to Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, we find the species has been completely redesigned, and look nothing like those in the first game. Same with Prime 3. And NONE of the pirates in the Prime games look like the established designs of the 2D games, Super, Fusion, and Zero Mission!

Nevertheless, the designs from the Prime series are visually interesting, and I intend to do a series of all of their many designs at some point (may happen, may not, we'll see). For now, this guy is a straggler in limbo. He was made using a Legendary Comic Book Heroes Judge Death, to give him that lanky, spindly, insectoid appearance. I cut his limbs and torso short to shrink him down a bit (he was TOWERING over Samus), and I added a pair of joints into his knees to give him the digitigrade (toe walker, double knees, like a dog) leg structure as seen in the game. I sculpted over every inch of his body using Loctite Epoxy Putty, and I Dremeled a plastic picnic knife to make his energy sword.

I built this figure some years after I first played Metroid Prime. Had I gone back and played through the game again and realized he didn't actually appear in the title, I probably wouldn't have gone with this design. It's the only figure in the series thus far that's based exclusively on concept art. I prefer to work from in-game models. He just feels out of place. Nevertheless, I made him, so here he is. Maybe you'll like him better than I do.

See you next mission!