Quick Buying Options : You’ve got a few options. BBTS, third party sellers at Amazon, Ebay, and Entertainment Earth.

Coming in at just under 12 inches high, limited to 750, and with a MSRP of $299.99, I figured this would be more popular than it was. It’s still available at a variety of stores (as shown above) and at discounted prices, $200-$225. That gives me hope for getting the new one at a sweet discount but it makes me wonder if they’ll continue this line, though after Echoes and the Prime gunship, would I need anything else? Hmm.

First4Figures continues its tradition of awesome light-up work. The ship has lights along the base, lights on the front viewport, and different sorts of lighting in the engines. When you hold down the button to turn the lights on, lights rotate around the base. When you turn it off, they gradually dim. Bright, very impressive effect, the statue would’ve felt lacking without them.

The sculpting is top notch and looks exactly like I remember the ship. I checked some screenshots from the game to make sure and it matches! The base could have been sculpted a little bit smaller but it’s simple and gets the job done. It also has a swivel joint so you can rotate the ship how you want. You may notice it’s a little uneven in some of my shots. My swivel joint was a little sticky and I had to mess around with it a bit. You may also notice there’s a chip on the front near the front viewport. I didn’t notice that until the review but I haven’t heard of any other people having them so I assume it’s an isolated case. I’ll touch it up with paint later.

The painting is spot on. Quality accurate colours, good detail work on the lettering, no issues!

4/5. A great start to the gunship line. The base could be improved and the MSRP was a tad high (though the sale prices are just right) but a worthwhile addition to any Metroid fan’s collection.

Buying Options : You’ve got a few options. BBTS, third party sellers at Amazon, Ebay, and Entertainment Earth.

Update : Zero Suit Samus up for pre-order at $82 and Samus Aran Figma for $40.

If you’re ordering it direct from them, use the code RG2NP8 to get $25 off. More pictures under the cut.

Metroid is easily one of my favourite franchises, ranking just below Zelda, and maybe a tiny bit below Mass Effect at this point. It’s been with me for a long time and almost always delivered. Zero Suit Samus? Hellllllo, don’t mind if I do. It’s a great design, but obviously one that’s easy to screw up because attractive females are difficult to sculpt. Want a great example? Look at the original sculpt from 2007.

Ugh, UGH. She looks kinda tarded there. When the statue looked like that, I wanted nothing to do with it. I’m sure they heard a lot of that, because they significantly revised the statue, especially that head sculpt. Let’s look at what we actually got. The regular edition clocks in at 2500 or so units, the exclusive comes in at 250 and a higher price tag. The exclusive has a light-up base, not nearly as elaborate as the light-up Phazon (or was it Dark Phazon? whatever) suit, but still.

The body sculpt on this is superb, as I’m sure you can tell. It’s appealing, attractive, and not a bad pose. I have zero issues with any parts of the body. I’m sure most people won’t either. The colours, especially on the back-end (and for once, I don’t mean that in a pervy way) are vibrant where they need to be, muted where they should be. The suit itself is a skin-tight warm blue that from what I remember, is exactly how it should look.

The base wasn’t as nice as I was expecting. The black part is fine and it has a switch that you press to light it up. However the top of the base looks cheap. It’s fine in photos but in person it looks like a flimsy metal cut-out so they could shine lights through it. The area where they drilled the peg hole for the statue was a little jagged on mine and the peg didn’t fit comfortably, I had to jam it in there.

Now we’re all up in the face. You can see that it’s vastly improved over the original design. But it turns out I’m still not the biggest fan. She looks a little bored to be here. She doesn’t look strong, sexy, or confident, which is what you’d expect from a badass woman that’s saved the galaxy multiple times, right? The hair is cut a little strange, I don’t remember her haircut looking like that, but it might have. On the plus side, the eyes and everything else are painted just fine, though the hair could’ve used more shading.

Here’s two shots of the exclusive feature, the light-up base. I shot this in pitch-black and my lighting conditions almost replicated how it looked, if anything, my picture is a little brighter than it was. Keep in mind this is inside a light-box, so that’s why the back is lit and shows more of the silhoutte. In a dark situation, I think that’s the best you’ll get. It’s a little disappointing to say the least. I was hoping the lights would be more powerful and better replicate the shots found on their product site. I think if you had some partial ambient lighting, it would produce a more dramatic effect.

3.5/5.

Buying Options : The exclusive was only available through First4Figure’s site and Ebay.

When I first saw shots of this, despite being a HUGE fan of Metroid, I thought it looked kinda crappy. The pose really didn’t do it for me, and considering the pose is so important to the piece, that was a major turnoff to the statue as a whole. For some reason, I kept looking at it, and over a few months, I broke under the impulse buy pressure and got a sweet deal on it.

Imagine my surprise when it arrived, and it turned into one of my favourite statues. The pose, which seemed so awkward in press photos, is really solid and comes off fairly powerful and iconic. Iconic enough to make 2 additional variant statues based on the same pose? I dunno about that, but since I’ll probably be buying the gravity suit version, apparently good enough to sucker me into wanting to waste more dough.

The paint job is fantastic. It represents the varia suit very well, it’s as bright and colourful as it should be, and while the base isn’t the best, it works well considering you’re in hallways the majority of most Metroid games. Just from eyeballing it, I’d say it’s about 7-8 inches tall, maybe 11-12 inches long. The footprint is a little larger than most statues simply due to the pose. It’s hard for me to find flaws with this piece. Maybe a slightly different base, but that’s it. One of the upcoming variants of this does have a different base, but it’s a somewhat lame mirrored finish instead of being themed to the franchise.

If you like Metroid, this is the best collectible I’ve seen for the franchise. In addition to the varia suit and gravity suit, they’ve got a phazon suit coming out, which has a bunch of LEDs, two versions of the zero suit, and a scaled replica of the dropship. But those were both slated to come out like 6 months ago so we’ll see if that ever happens.

Overall, I’ll give it a 4.5/5.

Buying Options : Long sold out at retail, it still pops up on Ebay from time to time. Also available at Amazon.