Wata Ridley

We are excited to bring you another Community Spotlight, this time with a Metroid fan called Wata Ridley, a Japanese Metroid fan on a mission to grow the popularity of the series in their country! Wata Ridley’s Twitter account as of Jun 2022 has over 10,000 followers, making them one of the largest and most notable personalities in their country!

Wata Ridley

Nice to meet you, I’m Wataridley. I’m a Japanese Metroid fan.

When I was a child, I played [Metroid] II, Fusion and Zero Mission and grew to love Samus. Before I knew it, I’d played the entire series. It’s a series that I love to death. Metroid is my life. Since becoming an adult I now have some money to spare so I have started collecting Metroid goods.

Metroid is very popular overseas (especially in Europe and America), but sadly it’s not so popular in Japan. The world is dark, the enemy characters are grotesque and Samus is the only character so it’s quite difficult to convey the series charms. (Although lately thanks to Dread the popularity in Japan is gradually increasing! This makes me so happy!)

I want to boost the popularity of Metroid in Japan, increase the number of fans and get people excited about the franchise! That way they’ll sell more of the goods that I love and release new games more frequently. All of the fans will be happy.

To do that I’ve been engaged in the following activities:

• Posting information about Metroid and fanart on twitter.
• Introducing Metroid to Japanese gamers via my blog.
• Along with the other fans I edit the Japanese version of Wikitroid (Metopedia).
• I used to post funny videos trying to convey the charm of Metroid (although I don’t do that now)

Going forward, I’m going to continuing thinking about the appeal of Metroid and re-double my efforts to convey it well. The battle of Samus Aran is not over! See You Next Mission!

Our Thoughts

Darren

When I created Shinesparkers in 2010, one of my goals was to try and increase the number of Metroid fans in the world, and encourage more people to participate in the community. Japan appears to be a region of the world where Metroid hasn’t had the success that it deserves, so any efforts to bring this fantastic series to more people is highly welcome and supported by me. Best of luck Wata Ridley!