Well...lemme explain my reasons. Ok, there's a blue line through the explosion, I personally don't like the way the explosion looks, and the Metroid 2002 in the middle seems out of place. Maybe that's what Maynard meant by blending. Besides that it's all pretty good. So seven. If you want me to I'll change it to 8 though. Cause the explosion doesn't really look fake, just out of place. So yeah, or 8.
Explanation: -The images don't really stand out from the BG, and they somewhat blend themselves with it, especially Samus with the fire behind her. -The fire seems as if someone cut a part of it on the left, and it loos really weird that way. :? -You could have cleaned the M2k2 logo a bit, instead of leaving that black background. -The M2k2 logo is WAY too small, you could have made it a little bigger, and it'd just barely fit, but also would give the appearance of being A LOT bigger.
[Somewhat senseless reason] -Blue doesn't go with Metroid. :P [/Somewhat senseless reason]
Each of my down points substracts a point from your final score. If you have Photoshop, I can teach you how to improve yourself creating backgrounds, and cleaning sprites and images. :)
...To the point that I'm gonna create a thread to help people with cleaning and creating imagery right now. :P