Dark Samus

Dark Samus (ダークサムス), known as Samus Oscura in Spanish and Italian and Samus Sombre in French, is a being of Phazon taking on the form of Samus Aran. She made a brief cameo appearance in the secret ending of Metroid Prime, was a central character in Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, and was the main antagonist in Metroid Prime 3: Corruption.

First battle
Samus first battles her doppelgänger in the Space Pirate base, after she absorbed some Phazon. For most of the fight, Dark Samus hovers around the room, firing a scattershot version of the Power Beam and firing missiles. She may also raise a Phazon energy shield to deflect attacks and damage Samus if she is too close. Dark Samus can be very difficult to hit, as she possesses greater speed than Samus, and the pillars around the room make aiming and moving somewhat difficult.

Once half of Dark Samus' health has been depleted, She will begin to glow with Phazon energy, rendering her temporarily immune to attacks. She will also utilize Super Missiles which can destroy the pillars around the room (She cannot be damaged while airborne). Samus should avoid contact with the flames left behind by the pillar's destruction. Dark Samus will also dive at Samus while encased in a ball of Phazon. After dealing Dark Samus enough damage, she will be defeated and disappear in a burst of Phazon.

Second battle
Samus battles Dark Samus again in an elevator at the Sanctuary Fortress. Unlike the last fight, there is more room to move around, and hitting Dark Samus is somewhat easier. Dark Samus retains most of her attacks from before, along with three new attacks. Dark Samus uses two variations of the Charge Beam: either as a thin, blue beam that she sweeps across, or an energy blast that will encase Samus in Phazon. She also utilizes a faster version of the Boost Ball, charging around the arena at blinding speeds (using a charged Light Beam on it will instantly stop her attack). Despite her name, Dark Samus is highly vulnerable to the Dark Beam (likely because she was born on a light world). Super Missiles and the Darkburst Charge Combo can deal heavy damage to the boss, though the former is preferred as the Darkburst is less effective against the speedy target. After dealing enough damage, the boss switches strategy.

Dark Samus now utilizes her stealth generator, rendering herself invisible to the Combat Visor, Samus must then switch to the Dark Visor to track her opponent. Dark Samus will fire Missiles while cloaked and airborne. Once she stops, she is vulnerable to attack. She will also use her dive bomb and boost attack. Once her health has been depleted, Samus will claim victory yet again, as Dark Samus goes to the elevator wall, destroys it, and falls through the chasm.

Final boss
Dark Samus serves as the final boss of the game, now supercharged with Phazon energy to the point where she is transparent. This battle takes place near the transport to the Sky Temple on Dark Aether. This battle proves to be the most challenging due to the fact that Phazon ore lines the walls of the arena, damaging Samus on contact. Compounding the difficulty is the countdown timer. Samus must defeat her dark counterpart in under eight minutes or Dark Aether will destabilize, resulting in a game over. Dark Samus attacks by firing a large beam of Phazon energy. She is still vulnerable to Super Missiles, however, her exposure to Phazon now renders her invisible to the Dark Visor, requiring use of the Echo Visor.

After sustaining enough damage. Dark Samus surrounds herself in a large shield of Phazon, transforming into a being of pure Phazon. The shield is invulnerable to all forms of attack save one: blasts of pure Phazon itself. Samus must use her Charge Beam to draw in and absorb Dark Samus' Phazon energy blasts. However, Dark Samus will also fire larger blasts that cannot be absorbed. If the shield expands and shrinks, Dark Samus will fire small, absorbable blasts. Once Samus absorbs enough Phazon blasts (her Charge Beam will turn blue), she can fire them back at her doppelganger, damaging her. By repeating this strategy, Dark Samus will fall for the last time, attempting to reach out and touch Samus, but disappears before she could do so.

Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
Dark Samus serves as the penultimate boss of the game. This battle can be challenging as exposure to Phaaze's atmosphere, as well as damage causes the energy bar to fill; when it becomes full, Samus will die from Phazon Corruption. If Samus collected a large number of Energy Tanks prior to the confrontation, this will become much less of a threat. In the first part of the battle, Dark Samus hovers around, using her trademark scattershot beam, firing homing blasts of Phazon, using a Phazon-based ground wave (similar to Ridley's), and creating large Phaazite pillars to slow Samus down. The latter attack can be predicted as she will raise her left hand and fire a beam of Phazon in the air. The pillars can easily be destroyed by Hyper Missiles, and often yield anti-Phazon orbs. Dark Samus will sometimes raise a Phazon shield to deflect attacks. All Samus must do is shoot Dark Samus while avoiding her potent Phazon attacks. After enough damage, Dark Samus switches to round two.

Dark Samus will now use Phaaze's energy to heal herself. Samus must shoot her down before she finishes. Samus must be careful as Dark Samus will summon Dark Echoes to confuse her when healing. Samus can easily distinguish Dark Samus from her Echoes via the X-Ray Visor; she will be colored red while the Echoes are colored grey. Samus can also look at their visors to distinguish them in the later part of the fight, as Dark Samus' visor is blue and the Echoes have no visors. Dark Samus will also leap into the air and slam the ground, creating a large shockwave of Phazon energy. Otherwise, this phase of the battle is the same as the first, just dodge her attacks and shoot. After another round of damage, Dark Samus switches strategy again.

In this phase of the battle, Dark Samus uses her Echoes to attack Samus. The Echoes possess all of Dark Samus's attacks. The number of Echoes summoned increases as the battle goes on (only up to two Echoes). Dark Samus and her Echoes attack in concert, floating in the air and shooting Phazon blasts at Samus, and using Ghor's plasma beam while spinning with another Echo. Dark Samus may also fire the Plasma Beam from the air and drops down and may or not produce a shockwave. The Echoes will also spin around the arena, trying to hit Samus. They may also charge Samus at full speed. The Echoes should be immediately destroyed, or they will merge with Dark Samus, granting her temporary invincibility. This also "overloads" the X-Ray Visor, making it appear a very light color, making it extremely difficult to see. So as long as Samus keeps the energy bar from filling and dodges the boss' powerful attacks, Dark Samus will fall with ease. However, this brings up the next fight: Dark Samus will merge with the Aurora Unit 313.

Powers and abilities
As Dark Samus, the creature utilized many abilities similar to Samus, in more powerful forms. It could fire two types of Phazon beams (which the scan mentioned to be altered versions of the Power Beam) at enemies in the form of either a continuous stream of small shard-like bursts (dubbed the "Shrapnel Beam" by fans), or a thin laser Beam which she shot in an arc. She possessed standard Missiles as well as Super Missiles to blast opponents into bits. Also, she used what appeared to be a Phazon-charged Ice Spreader attack. She could also do a powerful dive bomb attack (which could be a Phazon-based Screw Attack, Shinespark or a combination of both), a Phazon Boost Ball that generated vast amounts of kinetic energy in alarmingly short times, raise pillars of crystallized Phazon in this form, is capable of both flight and levitation, and can render herself invisible; it is interesting to note that her Morph Ball form contained an eyeball on each side of the sphere. However, when Dark Samus consumed too much Phazon, she gained the disadvantages she possessed as Metroid Prime: although she was eventually able to render herself invulnerable to all conventional weaponry, Phazon fired at her could overload and destabilize her, resulting in her generating very powerful Phazon attacks to discharge the used Phazon radiation from her body, including a massive beam of pure, highly concentrated Phazon.

In Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, Dark Samus' abilities are further augmented. In addition to most of her previous abilities, she can now produce near-perfect clones of herself (fittingly called "Dark Echoes") and is much more resilient to Phazon attacks (though Hyper Missiles are still effective on her). Combining with the Echoes temporarily also allowed her to form a purple energy shield around her body which rendered her invulnerable until she had to separate back into herself and the Echoes. After she unleashed the massive blast of Phazon at the four Hunters using what appears to be a version of the Charge Beam, the corruption within them seemed to be connected to Dark Samus; after the defeat of each hunter, a strange, black, wraith-like entity in the shape of Dark Samus would appear above the hunters, and fly off into space, presumably back to Dark Samus herself. This seems to be the manner through which she gained the Hunters' abilities, such as Ghor's Plasma Beam, Gandrayda's ground-based energy wave, and the ability to create giant Phazon pillars like Rundas could with ice. It is also possible that this entity was a form of Dark Samus herself interpreted as some sort of astral projection, which she used to possess the Hunters. She also has the ability to merge with the stolen Aurora Unit at the climax of the game, a technique which may have also been adapted from Ghor or connected with her apparent possession abilities. After this merge, the mutated Aurora Unit is capable of launching out holographic-like Dark Echoes from its eye; these copies will either shoot at Samus or enter Morph Ball mode and boost around the area in an attempt to ram her (reminiscent of her attack in the previous game). She is notably more agile in Corruption than in Echoes, able to perform graceful backflips and cartwheels.

In Echoes, Dark Samus seems to be somewhat incomplete; this is supported by the fact that she is constantly absorbing Phazon, looks slightly deformed, and has a range of chaotic attack moves. In Metroid Prime, Metroid Prime's tentacle was broken off of Samus prematurely, possibly not absorbing enough DNA to create a whole, stable Dark Samus. Dark Samus seems to act mentally unstable in Echoes cutscenes, even laughing maniacally in several instances. In the same game, Dark Samus also became physically unstable due to excessive Phazon exposure. While her physical body continues to be unstable in Prime 3: Corruption, she is surprisingly calm and attacks in a more organized and orderly method, suggesting she has absorbed sufficient Phazon to reach a stable mentality; this also explains how she was able to brainwash the Pirates, plan the coordinates of the Leviathan impact locations, and steal Aurora Unit 313.

Dark Samus is a very durable life-form, able to regenerate from any injury short of massive destabilization, and traveling unaided through space and freely between the Dark and Light Dimensions of Aether, and even showing immunity to the caustic atmosphere of Dark Aether. She can survive in the vastness of space, travel through it, and survive the explosions of planets, even dimensions. This is how she has constantly been able to regenerate herself after defeat and fly to another planet for Phazon absorption. Metroid Prime 3: Corruption reveals her to be sentient and capable of long-range planning, as noted through a series of Space Pirate data logs that record the fanaticism she inspires among the mind-warped pirates. They detail her plans and how she reacts to certain events, and credit her with being something near a deity whose rule of the galaxy will be great. She might have been and may still be the greatest threat ever to the Galactic Federation, and Samus's most powerful opponent to date.

Personality
Dark Samus, as her name implies, is shown to be cold, vengeful, calculating, and merciless. The lives of her opponents hold little to no value to her. When necessary, she uses her opponents as she sees fit. A prominent example of this is when she corrupts Rundas, Ghor, and Gandradya and uses them to battle Samus, only to absorb their powers upon their defeat. Her ability for cruelty is described in one of the Pirate Logs, where it is said she ordered her Pirate forces to jettison the surviving crew members of the G.F.S. Valhalla raid into space.

Dark Samus seems only to experience compassion toward Metroids like herself. In Echoes, she takes an interest in and frees Metroids being researched by the Space Pirates in the Agon Wastes area.

Dark Samus is also very greedy for Phazon, as throughout the entire Prime series her goal is to consume said substance. She will also steal from and even kill anyone in the way of her greed, as the Space Pirate Logs in Echoes mentions that Dark Samus repeatedly took Phazon from the Space Pirates and murders only those who denies it to her.

Her personality undergoes a great change between Echoes and Corruption. In Echoes, she is portrayed as somewhat insane, evidenced by her fits of maniacal laughter and her chaotic attack patterns while fighting. In Corruption, she is significantly calmer. She is shown to be very cunning and capable of long-range planning and remains tranquil even when her plans are not going accordingly, as evident in how she was able to plan a massive invasion against the Galactic Federation, and would have succeeded if not for Samus Aran.

Super Smash Bros. Brawl
A "Dark Samus" appears in "Co-op Event Match 7: Battle of the Dark Sides". This one looks more like the Legend of Zelda series's Dark Link (whom she is partnered with), in that the character is only a black silhouette of Samus.

Dark Samus also has a trophy based on her Echoes appearance, which reads:

"A twin image of Samus, encountered near the beginning of Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. Dark Samus is identical to Samus in every way but color--she even uses similar attacks. There are many theories on the origin of Dark Samus, but none are proven. Dark Samus uses Phazon for energy and can absorb it to heal damage. Samus encounters Dark Samus a number of times."

Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, 2004

This trophy description is slightly erroneous, as Dark Samus' appearance does differ quite a bit from the original Samus'. While her origins have been confirmed, this occurred after Brawl's release.

Trivia

 * Dark Samus utilizes attacks belonging to the corrupted bounty hunters during her battle against Samus on Phaaze. Dark Samus most likely acquired the hunters' attacks from absorbing them with her ghost-like form.
 * Interesting to note is that if Samus were to succumb to the Phazon corruption inside her while in Corrupted Hypermode (as was the case for the other Hunters), she transforms into what appears to be a "new Dark Samus", or something resembling it, leading to an alternate Game Over screen; this cutscene likely refers to Samus falling under the complete control of Dark Samus (becoming 'one' with her, as seen with Rundas) instead of literally turning into her. Also in Corruption, Dark Samus takes on a more heavily armored shape that more closely resembles Samus's Light Suit from Echoes, somewhat losing her more skeletal look. This change may refer to her failure to steal the authentic Light Suit from Samus in Echoes.
 * Andrew Jones did a 1,000 self-portrait series of himself and later claimed that "my portraits are quite a departure from my metroid concept work, but I think you would be surprised that there are a few of the portraits that were the inspiration behind the final bosses in prime 1 and two."
 * Mad AI was the intended final boss of Metroid 1.5, the early draft of Echoes.
 * Kensuke Tanabe had not considered making a sequel to Metroid Prime until having seen the game's final scene.
 * Dark Samus freeing the Metroid specimens in Metroid Prime 2: Echoes is the only act of compassion she expresses during her existence. It is believed she felt pity towards the caged creatures, seeing how she was and still technically is, a Metroid herself. Her imprisonment by the Cradle on Tallon IV may have had an effect on this as well. However, she does not seem to have a problem with imprisoning Phazon Metroids for research on Elysia and on the Pirate Homeworld during her brief time leading the Pirates.
 * Dark Samus is one of five beings to ever best Samus in a fight by canon. The others are Ridley and Mother Brain in Super Metroid's opening and ending, respectively, along with an SA-X and an Omega Metroid throughout Metroid Fusion.
 * It is possible that Dark Samus is composed of Space Pirate DNA, as the Phazon Suit contained strands of the Omega Pirate's DNA. However, she attacks other Space Pirates. This could be explained in the Space Pirate Log 06.362.2 in Echoes, which state that she only kills those who deny her the Phazon. This might explain why she attacked the Dark Pirate Troopers before the second battle in Echoes, as there was Phazon behind them.
 * Although Dark Samus usually glides across the floor, she is seen walking in the cutscenes prior to the first battle in Echoes, as well as in the ambush in the Control Tower in Corruption, and finally, in the above animation videos by Alejandro Roura.
 * Contrary to popular belief, Dark Samus is not vulnerable to the Light Beam. She is in fact weak against the Dark Beam (and by extension the Darkburst) as she is a life-form that was born in the normal (light) dimension. The reason for this erroneous belief is the fact that her name contains the word Dark, which is shared with the names of all Darklings naturally weak to light, and the misconception is made that Dark Samus is a Darkling Samus.
 * In all of her battles, Dark Samus will always attempt to deflect a Missile by bringing up an energy wave. It is possible to bypass this by forcing her to use the same shield (either by shooting a Missile at her or going very close to her) and then firing the projectile right after the shield vanishes. If hit by a Super or Hyper Missile, Dark Samus will recoil and scream and/or groan in pain.
 * Although Dark Samus is said to be wearing a version of the Varia Suit in Echoes scans, the suit she is wearing is technically the Phazon Suit. However, Samus' Phazon Suit is only a slight variation of the Varia Suit (much like the Gravity Suit), and Dark Samus' a variation over that.
 * In each of her physical appearances, resemblances to the Metroid Prime are visible. In Echoes, Metroid Prime's face and organs can be seen inside her in the final battle. In Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, her chest area is an alteration of Samus' that resembles the creature's face. Interestingly, unlockable artwork in Echoes depicts her as having organs similar in shape and look to spiral galaxies.
 * Dark Samus and the SA-X, both main antagonists in the Metroid series, were both created from Samus' DNA. Other duplicates of Samus without her DNA are the Space Pirate Battle Simulation 'Samus Aran', Gandrayda's Samus-G form and NSamus.
 * According to promotional storyboard designs, the scene where Dark Samus points her arm cannon and fires Phazon at Samus in their first encounter in the beginning of Metroid Prime 2 Echoes is based on the climax of Aliens: "D.S. points a gun at Samus. When camera is fixed, Samus slightly twists her neck. * Refer to the scene in "Alien 2" climax when Ripley points flame gun at Mother Alien."
 * Dark Samus' first form also resembles the Alien creature slightly, due to her predominately black coloring, clawed fingers and skeletal feet.


 * In Echoes, Dark Samus's arm cannon greatly resembles Samus's, but in Corruption, Dark Samus's arm cannon has a strange outgrowth that extends past the end of the barrel. This extension slightly resembles a hand as there are five points on it with glowing lines of Phazon leading to the tips.
 * Although Dark Samus never speaks in-game, she has strange echoing laughter and cries of pain that are consistent in sound during her appearances in Echoes and at points during the battle in Corruption. Strange whispers can be heard in cutscenes prior to battling Dark Samus as well as some cutscenes afterwards. Her lack of sound in Corruption may be attributed to her more resilient and stable nature. However, she does scream when she dies in Corruption, having a voice quite similar to Samus.
 * As she dies in Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, the camera pans to her raised left fist. She opens it quickly, mirroring the scene of her "birth" in the ending of Metroid Prime where her open hand clenches into a fist. After her death, the scene cuts to the bubbling Phazon seed within Samus disappearing, completing the imagery of the festering pool of Phazon that Dark Samus was derived from.
 * Dark Samus was partly inspired by the Ruins Test in Metroid: Zero Mission, during which Samus fights a mirror version of herself.
 * Dark Samus's Morph Ball form resembles the enemies Glire, Glice, and Glunder from the Super Smash Bros. Brawl adventure mode. All of the mentioned subjects are round, with a central "eye" on each side of them.
 * The eye on the back of Dark Samus' hand bears striking resemblance to the open pupil of a Gadora.
 * Dark Samus is referred to as a class Platinum-AAA threat level by the Space Pirates in Echoes. How much this increased by Corruption is unknown.
 * Another Side Story seems to indicate that Dark Samus acted as a god to the Pirates, and her Phazon was a holy blessing. She is referred to as the Dark One, Black Demon, Esteemed One (similar to Samus being called the Entrusted One in Chozo Lore), and Dark Samus is also implied to have called Phaaze the "Promised Land".

List of appearances

 * Metroid Prime (100% ending & concept art.)
 * Metroid Prime 2: Echoes Bonus Disc
 * Metroid Prime 2: Echoes
 * Metroid Prime: Episode of Aether
 * Metroid Prime 3: Corruption Preview
 * Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
 * Super Smash Bros. Brawl
 * New Play Control! Metroid Prime (100% ending & concept art.)
 * New Play Control! Metroid Prime 2: Echoes
 * Metroid Prime Trilogy

Music

 * Music from Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, titled "Darkness":
 * Music from Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, titled "Dark Samus":

Darkness is a remix of the Zebetite theme in Metroid and Metroid: Zero Mission. During the final battle in Echoes, the Escape! theme was played because she is fought while escaping Dark Aether. Darkness is remixed once more in the battle against the AU 313, which further resembles Zebetite.

Gallery
For concept art, see Dark Samus' Gallery.