Question: Who are the main villains of Metroid?

Ridley (Metroid)

Ridley (''Metroid'')

Ridley,[lower-alpha 1] also known by his aliases Geoform 187 and The Cunning God of Death, is one of the main antagonists of the Metroid series. An extraterrestrial dragon, he became Samus Aran's archenemy after leading a Space Pirate raid on her homeworld that killed her parents. Despite having been destroyed numerous times by Samus, he is always resurrected, thanks in equal part to Space Pirate engineering and his natural regenerative ability, which allows him to swiftly recover from what would otherwise be fatal wounds as long as he is able to consume enough biomatter from his fallen adversaries.[1]
Originally appearing as a subordinate of Mother Brain, another primary antagonist, he returns in Metroid Prime and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption in his cybernetic Meta Ridley form, commanding the Space Pirates himself. He is fully sentient, and is even shown to be capable of speech in the Metroid e-manga, though this is only ever implied within the games themselves rather than being depicted directly.
Often considered one of the most memorable Nintendo villains, Ridley has been a mainstay of the series, having appeared (through various incarnations) in almost every Metroid game to date (all but Metroid II: Return of Samus, Metroid Prime Hunters and Metroid Prime 2: Echoes). He has also appeared in the Super Smash Bros. series, however, he had not been made a playable character until Super Smash Bros. Ultimate in 2018, making it also the first game overall to have Ridley as a playable character.
Characteristics
Throughout the series, Ridley has undergone a variety of changes in appearance. In the original Metroid title, he was roughly the same size as protagonist Samus Aran and sported a more alien appearance (particularly in official artwork, which depicted him with eight eyes running down the length of his head and a small, lamprey-like mouth). In Super Metroid, he is larger than in the original title several times over, sporting purplish-brown skin, glowing yellow eyes, chameleonic abilities (possibly explaining his inconsistent skin tone across different games and even within different parts of Super Metroid), and an overall body shape that heavily resembles a European dragon. Later games depict him as larger still, and Other M departs from previous depictions by giving him a bulky, muscular form in contrast with his skeletal appearance in previous games, along with completely purple skin and flattened jaws resembling a pointed duck bill with a noticeable underbite. Ridley's vocalizations were first depicted in Super Metroid and took the form of a predatory screech; later 2D titles instead gave him piercing, high-pitched wails, while 3D installments such as the Prime games and Other M had him perform monstrous roars. His cybernetic form during the events of the Prime series is referred to as Meta Ridley and incorporates various ballistic weapon systems, while a robotic duplicate, Ridley Robot,[2] appears as the final boss in Zero Mission. While he did not originally appear in Metroid II: Return of Samus, in the 3DS remake Metroid: Samus Returns, Ridley returns as the game's final boss in a new cybernetic form called Proteus Ridley in an attempt to steal the last living Metroid before Samus can deliver it to the Galactic Federation, though he is defeated once more. In the new title of the Super Smash Bros. series, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, he is shown as he was in Super Metroid, with a darker, purplish tone to his skin and with a size scaled to his original appearance in the first Metroid title, although he has an alternate costume resembling Meta Ridley.
The instruction manual for the original Metroid claims that Ridley is "the original life form of the planet Zebes,"[3] though the continued canonicity of this is disputable given the lack of any subsequent corroborating information and the frequency with which story elements from the original games have since been retconned. His trophy description in Super Smash Bros. Melee confirms Ridley's gender as male. Both Ridley and Meta Ridley appear in Super Smash Bros. Brawl as bosses that must be defeated.
Ridley's status within the ranks of the Space Pirates is unclear, with some sources stating that he is the leader of the entire Space Pirate race, whereas others portray him as simply the Pirates' military commander or even a mere enforcer within the Pirate military ranks, subservient to Mother Brain or Space Pirate High Command. Regardless, he is consistently depicted as a ruthless and cunning tactician who never passes up an opportunity to bring his considerable ferocity to bear on the battlefield, opting to overwhelm his opponents with an unwavering onslaught of attacks from his mouth, claws, and tail. He is also incredibly cruel, actively taking pleasure in the killing and torment of others; at one point in the official manga he taunts Samus by claiming he may have devoured her mother's corpse after killing her, and a Space Pirate log entry in Metroid Prime notes that being the mainstay of the Pirate security force is "a job he will certainly relish."
Ridley was named after director Ridley Scott, who directed the first film in the Alien series, which was a huge inspiration for the development of the first game.
Appearances

Ridley originally appeared in the Nintendo Entertainment System video game Metroid as one of the two Space Pirate figureheads charged with protecting Mother Brain at the base on Zebes, where they are cloning Metroids with the intention of converting them into biological weapons. Both he and his counterpart, Kraid, are defeated by Samus. Ridley's remains are collected from the ruins of the base on Zebes and taken aboard the frigate Orpheon, where he is cybernetically reconstructed as "Meta Ridley". As shown in Metroid Prime, Samus confronts him aboard the ship and pursues him to the planet Tallon IV, where she hampers his operations to exploit the planet's widespread contamination of Phazon, fighting and leaving him for dead a second time. Mike Sneath, one of three senior character artists for Metroid Prime, was responsible for designing the Meta Ridley version of Ridley seen in Metroid Prime. It took him about "20 to 25 days" to model and texture Meta Ridley, citing the wings as having taken a few days of his time, commenting that it took him a while to get the shaders to work to give his wings the appearance of having a "holographic energy." He was not involved with designing the battle with Meta Ridley, which was left up to the game designers. Andrew Jones, the lead concept artist for Metroid Prime, had little to do with the design of Ridley. The initial design submitted was rejected by Nintendo, while the second design the artists submitted was approved.[4] Steve Barcia, the executive producer of Retro Studios, called Ridley his favorite enemy from Metroid Prime due to the quality of the battle and his fan appeal. He added that such a battle was rare for a first person shooter, which helped to set Metroid Prime apart.[5]
Ridley returns in his Meta form once again in Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, where he, along with the Space Pirate legion under his command, are corrupted by Dark Samus. He encounters and battles Samus on Norion, a Galactic Federation-occupied world, and the two fight while free-falling down an air shaft. Ridley is later supercharged with Phazon, becoming "Omega Ridley", and is charged with guarding the Leviathan Seed on the Space Pirate homeworld. He is confronted once again by Samus, and despite being defeated, he survives the fight and is later cured of his corruption after Dark Samus' defeat later on. Between the Prime trilogy and Metroid II: Return of Samus, the Space Pirates reorganize on Zebes and hatch another plan to clone and weaponize the Metroids, while Ridley gradually begins to regenerate from his past injuries, gradually shedding his cybernetics. In the remake of the second game, Metroid: Samus Returns, Ridley, in his semi-regenerated form of "Proteus Ridley", attacks Samus on SR388 to steal the last remaining Metroid. Samus and the baby Metroid work together to defeat Ridley.
In Super Metroid, Ridley fully regenerates his original organic form and pursues Samus to the Ceres Space Colony, where he steals the baby Metroid and flees with it to the rebuilt fortress on Zebes. Samus follows him there and confronts him once again, this time actually killing him for good.
Clone Ridley
After the destruction of Zebes (and subsequent annihilation of Ridley's body) in Super Metroid, a clone of Ridley was unintentionally created by a rogue group within Galactic Federation during an illegal top secret program to engineer bioweapons, many of which are deliberately based on the Space Pirates. He first starts off as a small, furred, bird-like creature whom the Bottle Ship scientists had named "Little Birdie." During the game, Little Birdie/Ridley undergoes metamorphosis twice; first into a large, lizard-like "Mystery Creature"[6][7] and finally into his traditional form.
It is revealed by MB (a human android modeled after Mother Brain and the main antagonist of Other M), posing as Bottle Ship director Dr. Madeline Bergman, that Birdie/Ridley was cloned from some of the genetic material recovered off Samus' Power Suit following the destruction of Zebes, and that the team of scientists had unknowingly revived Ridley (thought unsuitable to be a bioweapon) and kept by the Bottle Ship researchers like a pet. Despite its small size, the infant Birdie retains Ridley's dark intelligence and cunning. By playing dead in its cage, Birdie/Ridley managed to lure one of the scientists into its cage, where it brutally attacked and killed him. His body is later discovered in Ridley's enclosure by Samus, who senses a dark intelligence at work. Samus later runs into the clone in the Pyrosphere and manages to defeat it after suffering an emotional breakdown that led to the apparent death of one of her squadmates, Anthony, at Ridley's hands.
One of Adam's final missions to Samus is to finish off Ridley, whom Adam fears might be more dangerous than the Metroids if left unchecked, and claims Samus is the only one capable of stopping him. However, Samus later discovers his corpse after he is killed, having had his energy drained by the Queen Metroid on the Bottle Ship. His mummified corpse turns up again in Metroid Fusion on the BSL station, after having apparently been removed from the Bottle Ship by the Galactic Federation and placed in a sub-zero storage room for further research (potentially into further bioweapon applications). It is later infected by an X Parasite, allowing it to gain the ability to transform into Ridley's likeness, known as Neo-Ridley(ネオリドリー,Neoridorī).[8][9] Samus later defeats the Ridley mimic and absorbs its Core-X, regaining her signature Screw Attack. What was left of the cloned Ridley's remains were destroyed along with the X when the BSL station crashed into SR388.
In other media
Ridley has made multiple appearances in the Super Smash Bros. series. He first appeared in Super Smash Bros. flying across the background of the Planet Zebes stage in his Super Metroid incarnation, followed by an appearance during the opening sequence of Super Smash Bros. Melee and as a collectible trophy. He appears in a more significant role in its sequel, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, where he appears as a boss battle during the game's singleplayer Subspace Emissary campaign mode in both his regular and Meta Ridley forms.[10] He returns as a stage hazard for the Pyrosphere stage in Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, this time as his depiction in Metroid: Other M.[11]
Many fans believed that Ridley would be a playable character in Melee, and it was rumoured that he would appear along with Toon Link and Bowser Jr. in Brawl.[12] The director of the Super Smash Bros. series, Masahiro Sakurai, stated in an interview with Nintendo Power that the development team considered including Ridley as a playable character in Super Smash Bros. Brawl but decided against the idea due to creative difficulties. His boss battle theme was included as stage music in Brawl as well.[12] Unused Assist Trophy data for Ridley also exists in the coding of Brawl, suggesting that Ridley was originally meant to have a different role before being placed into the Subspace Emissary mode. In an interview with IGN about Ridley's exclusion from Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U, Sakurai argued that reducing Ridley's size, wingspan, or mobility to include him as a fighter would not be true to the character, who is supposed to be a "truly threatening presence" that could only be correctly portrayed as a stage boss unencumbered by a fighter's size and balance restrictions.[11] Nevertheless, Ridley continued to be one of the most commonly requested fighters for inclusion in future titles among the Super Smash Bros. and general gaming communities. Ultimately, it was announced during the unveiling of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate that Ridley would debut as a playable character.[13] Meta Ridley also appears as an alternate costume for Ridley in the game.
Ridley also appears in Dead or Alive: Dimensions as part of a Metroid: Other M-themed stage, capable of shooting fireballs at the arena and physically attacking combatants who get too close.[14] A mechanical version of Ridley appears as a boss during the Metroid Blast minigame in Nintendo Land, along with an alternate version called "Ice Ridley."
Ridley appears a few times in the Captain N: The Game Master comics from 1990. In these comics, he looks almost exactly as he appears in the NES version manual and is depicted as an individual of a full-fledged species of identical creatures, an attribute he employs to impersonate a judge of the same species as him.[15] Nintendo Power featured two Metroid adaptations. The Super Metroid comic follows the plot of the video game of the same name over the course of sixty pages,[16] while the Metroid Prime comic does the same across eighteen pages.[17] In the Metroid e-manga created by Yoshio Sakamoto, Samus first meets Ridley as a child as he leads the attack on her home colony of K-2L. As Ridley observes the destruction of the colony, Samus approaches him.  Her young mind overwhelmed by the carnage but having recently been taught by the Chozo elder Old Bird that even unsightly creatures can be decent, she tries to befriend him, desperate for assurance that everything will be all right.  Ridley appears to display a moment's pity toward her before abruptly revealing his true nature by preparing to annihilate her, out of either bloodlust or mercy. Samus' mother Virginia, however, arrives in the nick of time amidst the confusion of the Pirate raid and pushes her daughter out of the way of Ridley's fiery breath, dying instantly in the process.  This memory scars Samus for life, and she summarily vows to avenge her parents and destroy Ridley and all the Space Pirates.
Reception
Throughout the history of the Metroid series, Ridley has received positive reception as the series antagonist. He is widely considered one of the most renowned and best Nintendo villains of all time and is regarded as a favorite amongst both the Metroid fandom and the series's developers.[18] Nintendo Power listed him as their sixth favorite Nintendo villain, citing both his involvement in the death of Samus's parents as well as his determination, dying at Samus' hands many times yet always coming back.[19] Computer and Video Games editor Mike Jackson described Ridley as a "fan favorite."[20] GameDaily called him the 16th greatest Nintendo character, commenting that he "beats Mother Brain by a mile as the coolest Metroid villain."[21] IGN editor Jesse Schedeen called Ridley the real villain of the Metroid series, commenting that he would have to be included in a Metroid film if one were made due to him being too important to leave out.[22] 1UP.com editor Nadia Oxford described the Nintendo Comics System version of Ridley as being more of a "squashed bug" than a "fearsome reptile."[23] WatchMojo.com ranked Ridley at #3 in their Top 10 Nintendo Villains list. The 1UP.com staff listed the battle with Ridley in Super Metroid as among the most iconic in Nintendo history. They stated that his appearance in Super Metroid is more memorable than any other appearance in the Metroid series, and that his return from the original game added some familiarity to Metroid fans.[24] GamesRadar listed him third on their list of video game villains who will never stay dead, calling him Samus's "great white whale" that, even while he has tormented her throughout her life, she just cannot seem to kill.[25] Gaming Nexus criticized the lack of fellow Metroid villain Kraid in Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, but stated that the developers made up for it by adding the best Ridley battle in the series's history.[26] IGN editors Phil Pirrello and Richard George listed Ridley as the second most deserving Nintendo character for inclusion in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, stating that Samus was the only playable character in the game to represent the Metroid series (despite it being one of Nintendo's most famous and revered), and that the inclusion of Ridley would broaden the series's range.[27] Overall, he is seen as one of the best Nintendo characters in general. In 2018, Watchmojo.com ranked him #1 on their "Top 10 Most Anticipated New Characters In Smash Ultimate" list.
However, Ridley's role in Metroid: Other M came under widespread criticism for the scene in which Samus is too immobilized by memories of her childhood trauma at Ridley's hands to fight back even after he attacks her, not snapping out of it until this episode seemingly results in the death of a longtime friend of hers. Abbie Heppe of G4's reaction to the scene as a sexist portrayal of one of gaming's greatest female icons and narratively incongruous with the plentiful instances of Samus engaging Ridley head-on without issue in previous games[28] typified the response from critics and many longtime fans of the series. Defenders of the scene claim that the message of the scene is about empowerment rather than weakness and cite a subplot within the official manga wherein Samus's first encounter with Ridley leaves her afflicted with symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder,[29] while its detractors counterargue that this plot point was resolved later on within said manga and that its abrupt reintroduction was nonsensical after years' worth of battles with Ridley combined with the fact that most players wouldn't be familiar with an element of backstory presented in an obscure piece of supplementary material that is left unexplained within the game itself. Although the Ridley scene has since become emblematic of the polarized critical and commercial reception with which Other M was met upon release, the subsequent boss battle against Ridley is often regarded as one of the game's biggest highlights.
Notes