Random: Nintendo rejected Samus Voice’s performance in Metroid Prime as “too sexual and sensual”

Podcaster Reece Reilly – AKA: Kiwi talks – has been discussing the development of previous Metroid games with the people who created them for some time, having previously chatted with the likes of Mike Wikan and Bryan Walker. Most recently, he sat down with Clark Wen, who was an audio director at Metroid Prime and Metroid Prime 2: Echoes.

As you can imagine, there is a lot of ground to cover, because the Metroid Prime trilogy has become very influential when it comes to shaping the soundscape of the entire Metroid series. Wen reveals that almost the entire soundtrack was done with synthesizers, while elements like Morph Ball and Echo Visor were inspired by magnets and sonar respectively. The Space Pirates, on the other hand, originally spoke Russian, but Wen eventually settled on Yorùbá (one of Nigeria’s main languages) and reversed the dialogue, as well as emphasizing the syllables.

One element that turned out to be particularly difficult to pin down was Samus’s voice – well, her growls, to be specific.

Wen explains:

I think the voice was kind of touchy with Nintendo, because we had originally made some recordings for Samus’s voice, more like a temporary placeholder type of sound because we really wanted to make sure that the impacts when Samus suffered damage were recognizable in the game. . . So we got one of the designers to do some placeholder grunting and screaming. It was never intended as a final audio pass, but a few weeks after we included them in the game, we heard feedback from [Nintendo] EAD about Samus’s voice, and they said it was too sexual and it sounded too sensual. [laughs] They are very, very particular in regards to vocal sounds in general so I was glad to let them take the reins and they ended up recording several actresses for Samus’ voices, and we brought them back a few months later and ended up choosing. the voice we thought worked best.

Wen also discusses whether it is Jennifer Hale (from Massive effect fame) who voiced Samus in the Prime games. Hale never received credit for the role, but many fans think that it is his vocal talents that we hear in all three Prime games, as well as Metroid Prime Hunters. Wen admits that it is not completely sure that’s the case (it’s 90-95% sure), since the only initials in the audio files were ‘JH’. The Voice of Death, he reveals, was recorded by a different actress (with the initials ‘VM’), due to the fact that she wanted it to sound more like the sound in Super metroid.

It’s interesting to note that while Nintendo clearly had the biggest say in directing the game’s audio, Retro Studios was able to back off when it had to. Metroid composer Kenji Yamamoto released a soundtrack that was very guitar-based, something Wen describes as “Steve Vai Satisfies Sun RaRetro Studios rejected this initial release.

Wen now runs his own award-winning audio studio. Sound of exile and has worked on issues such as Guitar Hero and Obligations in recent years. When asked about his reaction to the latest Metroid entry, Metroid DreadWen admits that he initially thought the audio and sound design was “terrible”, but after playing it for a while, he realized exactly what the team was looking for and now feels the end result is more enjoyable.