80s Video Game Heroines

[tbb]

Regarding this line in the Gauntlet entry "Unfortunately, Thyra the Valkyrie is generally agreed upon as being the weakest of all four characters"

Really? There are people that don't "know" the Wizard is the worst character? In my area, almost everyone always wanted to play Thor, but if someone else already had him, Thyra was the general second choice, though if you happened to play enough to realize Thor's slow speed was disadvantage, she'd usually become first choice. Some kids just liked the Elf, for his speed, but no one, no one, ever played the Wizard unless the other three were all taken.

[starscream]

Re this from the Jenny of the Praire paragraph:

Rihannon Software intended to put out an entire series of games with different themes by creators Elisabeth Stott and Lucy Ewell. The others where titled Cave Girl Clair, Chelsea of the South Sea and Lauren of the 25th Century. It seems only Jenny of the Prairie was ever published, but at least Cave Girl Clair was also in a playable state and reviewed by Infoworld in the April 30, 1984 issue.


Cave Girl Clair, IBM PC version:




This was possibly only recently dumped.

Chelsea of the South Islands is listed here among others.



Haven't located Lauren yet, the games are definitely not common. Educational games aren't just that well preserved or documented.

[Discoalucard]

To add later! Someone on Twitter suggested Cocona World:

strategywiki.org/wiki/Cocona_World

[drpepperfan]

The picture of the Tropical Angel girl exposing her front just shows the same picture as the main one, of her backside.

[Discoalucard]

Also! Lorna

[derboo]

IIRC, Lorna is based on a Spanish comic book and thus outside of the requirements.

Aug 2, 2015 16:52:44 GMT -5 drpepperfan said:

The picture of the Tropical Angel girl exposing her front just shows the same picture as the main one, of her backside.

Not anymore.

[Scylla]

I've always felt a little weird about this article, to be honest. I feel like its heart is in the right place, but in execution, to make an article to gather every 80s game heroine (within the rules of the list), it just sort of paints the inclusion of a female lead out to be some kind of "oddity" to draw attention to. Like obviously there would never be a male equivalent of this list (which, yes, would be a lot more work because there are so many more games, but even if there was a way to magically make such a list require an equal amount of effort, no one would bother to create such a thing because they wouldn't see any reason to do so). While I can appreciate a game having a type of lead that's underrepresented, I'd really like to live in a gaming world in which games with female leads are just seen as "games", no different from any others, rather than "games with female leads". I don't know if what I'm trying to express here will make much sense to anybody, probably even less to male gamers, but yeah, I just have mixed feelings about it.

It probably doesn't help that the intro sort of makes the list out as counterargument to lack of diversity in gaming, as if these titles deserve to be elevated and praised for giving us heroines even as far back as the 80s when, frankly, a lot of the examples are really gross. I mean, the very second entry "honors" the inclusion of female characters in Mystique/PlayAround's porn games, including everybody's favorite retro rape simulator, Custer's Revenge. I'd feel bad for any female gamer who stumbles across this list in an attempt to find more games representing her gender because it's just plain depressing when you see what kind of "representation" we got. I think it's say to safe that the only reason a lot of these games had heroines was to give male gamers some eye candy. It's more a list of shame than pride. It's kinda sad when Samus Aran is among the more respectably designed characters, and even then, the ending of Metroid is all about how much you can make her strip.

[drpepperfan]

It's not so much it's saying "female leads are a oddity", because it's focus is on the 80's. If the list was "female protagonists of the 00's", then I'd understand why you would think singling out the female leads to be a bit patronizing. But the focus on the 80's is why the list exists, because back then a female lead WAS a exception rather than the far more normal thing it is now. After all, after months of research and suggestions, there are only 4 pages of games, with only like 10 games on the whole list that are actually any good/famous.

I can't really see how you see the list as trying to honor and praise all the games listed in it though. Like 95% of the descriptions of the games listed criticize the games for how they portrayed their protagonists, almost to a excessive amount in some cases. And the article even agrees with you on the "most of these are just for eye candy sadly", saying so frequently throughout.

[Malev]

As infamous as the Ninja Gaiden dialogue header is, I looked up the Japanese original line and noticed it was softer due to an added sentence that was cut and the lack of a exclamation point.

The Japanese original can be translated as "Just a woman. This matter doesn't concern you. Now go.", which I believe meant Ryu didn't want what he thought was an innocent bystander butting in after he killed the axe-wielding boss. I understand space constraints with old translations, but not sure why they made the change more aggressive. The surrounding dialogue was left intact okay with no omissions, but that one change made that line stick out.

[Scylla]

Mmm, I wouldn't say it's a matter of being patronizing. And even now female leads are far in the minority, even if there are some AAA games with female leads like Tomb Raider and what have you. I dunno, like I was saying before, it's a hard sentiment to convey, and one that I feel will largely be lost on male gamers. To guys, a list like this is just a matter of stats, of grouping together a bunch of games with something in common, but for a female gamer, it's more personal, when it comes to how the industry views and represents women and how they treat/value/acknowledge female gamers.

You're totally right that the writing on the individual games is pretty scathing on many, but the article does open with this:

"Between Dontnod Entertainment's reports about how hard it was to convince publishers of their reasonably proportioned lead woman in Remember Me, and Ubisoft's claims that athletic female characters are just too difficult to animate to even bother, the video game industry paints a rather sad picture of its diversity. Imagine how bad it must have been back in the 80s, when all game developers were bearded overweight nerd dudes... or was it? Well, let's take a look at all the forms female protagonist have taken in the infant years of gaming, there are quite a few true surprises to be had. But don't take this as an argument to deny that severe gender imbalance among game heroes does exist - never forget that for every single game listed here, there were literally hundreds of bulky barbarians, brash boy wonders, sly spy or ninja dudes and mustachioed plumbers... well, maybe not that many mustachioed plumbers, but you get the point."

It 1) is presenting an argument that diversity in games perhaps isn't as bad as one may assume, even back in the 80s, when I'd say the "representation" back then was still pretty damn pitiful and awful, and 2) suggests that the only problem was a matter of numbers (fewer female leads than male), as if the quality and kind of representation is all equal. Sorry, but a bulky barbarian designed as a self-insert male power fantasy is not comparable to a scantily-clad heroine that was not remotely designed as a self-insert for female gamers. It's all designed for male gamers at the end of the day.

[wyrdwad]

Aug 2, 2015 23:08:21 GMT -5 Scylla said:

Mmm, I wouldn't say it's a matter of being patronizing. And even now female leads are far in the minority, even if there are some AAA games with female leads like Tomb Raider and what have you.

While this is a true statement, it does seem like every other indie game these days has one or more female leads, and they tend to be written exceptionally well. So even though games with female leads are in the minority now, I feel like the gap is starting to close, especially with indie games going more mainstream. We're definitely doing better, as a medium, than we ever have before, so we're at least headed in the right direction! We just need more games like Knytt Underground, Freedom Planet, Crypt of the NecroDancer, etc. to balance out the stats a bit more.

-Tom

[Scylla]

I wouldn't really know myself since I'm not into indie gaming, though the fact that a more underground form of gaming has to be turned to for representation all the more emphasizes that games with female leads are viewed as some kind of "Other" and not as "normal" games.

[derboo]

Aug 2, 2015 23:08:21 GMT -5 Scylla said:

It 1) is presenting an argument that diversity in games perhaps isn't as bad as one may assume, even back in the 80s, when I'd say the "representation" back then was still pretty damn pitiful and awful

Fair enough. I didn't want the intro to be too judgemental, as the article as a whole is more an outlook of what was there rather than any kind of coherent argument for anything, and there are quite a few interesting cases, regardless of all the issues even those have.

Aug 2, 2015 23:08:21 GMT -5 Scylla said:

2) suggests that the only problem was a matter of numbers (fewer female leads than male), as if the quality and kind of representation is all equal.

That is not the intended drive at all. That part is not there to make it a numbers game, but to prevent idiots from making it a numbers game and use the article as "proof" that gender inequality does not exist ("How can there be inequality when there are 100 games with female protagonists in the 80s alone") - it still happened at least once, despite the explicit instruction against it.

Overall, the intention is giving an historic outlook, and it only takes an ever so slight "feminist" stance in the margins. It's just not what the article is trying to be, but I can understand that what it is may not enough / too much for some.

[wyrdwad]

Aug 3, 2015 0:40:56 GMT -5 Scylla said:

I wouldn't really know myself since I'm not into indie gaming, though the fact that a more underground form of gaming has to be turned to for representation all the more emphasizes that games with female leads are viewed as some kind of "Other" and not as "normal" games.

I kind of disagree, mostly because I don't see indie gaming as "underground" anymore. Indie gaming is basically the AAA gaming of the future -- these are the developers who are going to rule the industry in 5-10 years' time. AAA budgets are getting too big to manage and AAA game sales are dropping, while indie game budgets are razor thin and are seeing a huge boost in sales, with some titles (Shovel Knight, Retro City Rampage, etc.) basically making as much if not more money than a lot of AAA games. Even AAA studios are starting to create little "indie game" subsidiaries of themselves, with small Ubisoft divisions popping up to develop indie-style titles using the Ubi-Art engine, and even Nippon Ichi going the indie route with games like Firefly Diary.

We're also starting to see a lot of major players in the AAA industry really hurting nowadays -- Konami, Sega, and Capcom, to name a few -- so I definitely believe the "indie revolution" is well underway. And if strong female protagonists are becoming more normalized within the indie scene (which I think is hard to deny), I personally believe that means we're going to start to see more strong female protagonists in the AAA gaming scene in a few years' time as well, since the indies are basically driving the future of this industry right now.

That's just my take on matters, anyway. Maybe it's a little overly optimistic, but I genuinely feel there's a lot of cause for optimism at the moment. Gaming has never been as diverse and open to change as it is right now, and in most regards (censorship notwithstanding), things are only getting better.

-Tom

[Kishi]

I noticed this doesn't have Ptolemy from Taito's The Fairyland Story (1985).