Samus Aran
Samus' Zero Suit was ranked by ScrewAttack as fourth on their 2010 list of the top 10 sexiest outfits in games on GameTrailers, while Sarah Warn of AfterEllen ranked Samus as the "tenth-hottest" female video game character. In 2011, GameFront featured her twice on the list of the "best boobs in video game history", at 40th spot for her reveal in the original game and at sixth place for her modern appearance in "a ridiculously form-fitting jumpsuit." That same year, Lisa Foiles of "The Escapist" ranked the Zero Suit Samus as number one "hottest blonde chick" in video games. In 2012, "Complex" ranked her as the "24th-hottest" video game character, also ranking her as the fourth-top "hot female killer" from video games, while Nixie Pixel from Revision3 placed Samus on top of her sexiest "game girls" list. In 2013, Steve Jenkins of CheatCodes.com declared Samus the "tenth-hottest video game girl" of all time. "Thanh Niên" ranked her as the tenth-most sexy female character in 2015, in particular for her Zero Suit.
Samus Aran
The series' co-creator Yoshio Sakamoto recalled, "We were partway through the development process when one of the staff members said 'Hey, wouldn't that be kind of cool if it turned out that this person inside the suit was a woman?'" The developers voted on the concept, and it passed. The game's instruction manual refers to Samus as if she were male to obscure her real sex until the end of the game. Sakamoto noted that during the course of the "Metroid" series, developers constantly try to express Samus' femininity without sexually objectifying her. Samus' image was based on actress Sigourney Weaver in her role as Ellen Ripley from "Aliens", and actress Kim Basinger from "9½ Weeks" and "My Stepmother Is an Alien". Sakamoto and Kiyotake said that the character's last name "Aran" was taken from Edson "Aran"tes do Nascimento, the birth name of the famous football player Pelé.