Feature
1UP COVER STORY
1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF JUNE 18 | GENDER, SEXUALITY, AND VIDEO GAMES
Six Progressive Women of Retro Gaming
Cover Story: This group set the standard before the industry knew better.
T
he 8-bit era of gaming established one hard-and-fast rule, largely borrowed from adventure-based fiction: women are for saving. Donkey Kong in particular set a narrative standard that would be plagiarized for years to come: your adventure starts at point A, and girl exists at point B — get there. But, early on, designers began to subvert this trope in ways that went beyond slapping a bow and a beauty mark on Pac-Man and semi-fraudulently selling it as a new game. The following females showed us at an early age that women in video games didn’t necessarily have to take the role of the helpless captive — in fact, they could easily outperform their male contemporaries, and with style.
