> Samus’ underwear are a reference to what Ellen Ripley wears at the end of Alien, but Alien had a reason for it.
A little OT, but I believe Alien and Aliens may be the only popular movies we'll ever get in which the heroine whose gender isn't treated as anything more than a matter of fact. In both movies, she has nearly zero amount of dialogue relating to romantic interest, and acts and is treated as just someone, not specifically a woman, on the crew...which makes sense given that the character was originally written for a man. Even her climactic victories arise organically from her character background, not in a cartoonish let's-see-women-kick-some-ass, as with the Bride in the Kill Bill series...Early on in Aliens, she is shown proficiently operating a Power Loader because of her past work experience, which foreshadows the final confrontation...in fact, it's funny that Ripley is sometimes referred to as a kickass gunslinger, when it is her inept use of flamethrowers and grenades that inadvertently lead to the final fight.
Anyway, this is just a long way of saying that Alien and Aliens are still not only two of the best action/sci-fi movies out there, but perhaps the only times in a major movie in which the woman is so asexual (the closest comparison I can think of is Marge Gunderson in Fargo)...So when that she does appear in her underwear at the end of both movies...it feels logical (she's getting into the cyrochamber), and not as a contrived way to capitalize off the sexiness of the actress. I guess it was "cool" that Samus was revealed to be a woman at the end, but the race to beat the game to see more of her underwear was an unnecessary bit of game design, IMO.