WI Super Mario Bros. (1985) had a female protagonist?

The game itself is almost exactly the same: Eight worlds, you keep going right, avoid dying, grab the hammer, drop Bowser into the lava and save the Mushroom Kingdom. However, instead of a man saving a princess, you play a woman saving a prince. That means changes to some of the sprites and box/cartridge art, but other than that, it is very much the same game.

I know, it isn't the biggest difference never made, and it has been demonstrated that videogames have as much effect on a persons brain as a movie or a painting, but I think it would have at least some interesting consequences.

It's fair to say that, at present, the videogame industry has a certain amount of bias towards male gamers, and far less than 50% of people involved in the design of games are female. The same was even more true back in 1985, when there weren't even any female player-characters, at least none starring a hit fanchise (true, Samus got her first game in 1986, but since the entirety of the game has you thinking she was a man, she doesn't really count).

But, one little change in what is often called the Greatest Game of All Time might've done a lot to change that. Mario (along with Link) came to dominate gaming and produce a huge franchise that is still going strong. Would the same have happened had the star been a girl, and would that have had an effect different to OTL?

Partly inspired by the story of the dad who hacked Donkey Kong so his daughter could play as Pauline saving Jumpman (go read it, it's really cute!).

A lot of it depends on how the character is portrayed.

If people, in general, don't find her as funny, the game is less successful.

If people love the character, it's possible that more girls might be interested. However, it's not at all clear that any increase in interested girls would offset any potential loss in boy followers. That is, is it enough to make more girls go hang out in arcades? Probably not.

Now, of course, it could take a more "modern" turn and the girl character could be portrayed as a seductive, big-breasted, kick-butt babe. Then, you might have gotten as many, or more, boys interested, but wouldn't likely reach any more girls.

Well why not have Mario and Maria so people who care can choose? (So no Luigi necessary)

As you say it's a fairly cosmetic change at this point so wouldn't take much effort.

Having them equally represented in the marketing should be easy enough too.

jahenders said:

Now, of course, it could take a more "modern" turn and the girl character could be portrayed as a seductive, big-breasted, kick-butt babe. Then, you might have gotten as many, or more, boys interested, but wouldn't likely reach any more girls.

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I was imagining something along the lines of what a real woman would wear if she was a plumber. It was decided to give Mario a hat and overalls to help distinguish his sprite while he was moving, the same would happen here, though the mustache might be gone...

It makes at least some sense from a business perspective. They had two golden eggs (Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda), either one would easily qualify as the hottest game of the year, so why market to only boys when one of the heroes could be a girl?

ddtim said:

Jack Thompson says that video games not only encourage violence but victim blaming. A wave of support from all sectors of society forces video games underground. Today, you can only find games like Doom, SMAC or assassins creed in the dark net, and you'd better be using Tor to access them, 'cause the NSA is on the look out for people playing terrorism simulators.

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I'm sorry, I'm having trouble connecting the dots between 'NES killer-app starring a girl' and 'videogaming literally becoming illegal'. I'm hoping you could help me out with that.

Again, in early videogame that even care? my mother and sister played with mario just fine as would have been female, but again, having a RPG protagonizing a female in revenge quest(phantasy star 1) and one action game when the galactic bounter hunter were female(metroid) were called revolutioanry, maybe as you say, that would improve more the interest of videogame for females(boys as girl can equally be the hero)

But how pulling it? using a female sprite, maybe saying both are the sons of the jumpman? Mario and Maria would be interesting(poor Luigi)

Nivek said:

Mario and Maria would be interesting(poor Luigi)

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As a younger sibling I always got Luigi and Tails... So would change my childhood somewhat

ddtim said:

yeah, it was a bit mad. essentially, Maria means that the feminists get involved earlier. The backlash, along with Thompsons insanity, makes the proto gaming culture one of the most despised groups in America. Clearly, their hatred of women is due to violent video games, or "murder simulators" as Mr. Thompson referred to them, and so these get pushed to the periphery, if not made illegal. Farmville and other non violent games would of course still be legal.

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Well, I reckoned feminists (i.e. women who take try to mask their disgust of men with words and cheat society out of every penny they can get, not the normal, sane women who genuinely want to see a world shared equally between the sexes) would grab onto Super Mario Bros. (Super Maria Siss.?) eventually, inevitably attacking it in some way (Prince Toadstool is leading her on a leash! Why does she have to cause such insane damage to the world she lives in? etc.). However, I wouldn't think the damage they could bring to gaming would amount to much, considering the fact that much of OTL gaming was very much a 'boys-only club' anyway. Does anybody actually listen to Thompson at all, or ever?

Drunkrobot said:

Well, I reckoned feminists (i.e. women who take try to mask their disgust of men with words and cheat society out of every penny they can get, not the normal, sane women who genuinely want to see a world shared equally between the sexes) would grab onto Super Mario Bros. (Super Maria Siss.?) eventually, inevitably attacking it in some way (Prince Toadstool is leading her on a leash! Why does she have to cause such insane damage to the world she lives in? etc.). However, I wouldn't think the damage they could bring to gaming would amount to much, considering the fact that much of OTL gaming was very much a 'boys-only club' anyway. Does anybody actually listen to Thompson at all, or ever?

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You may have a point. I imagine that this would be happening in the 90s rather than now, so Thompson was more influential, but a gamergate analog is less likely.

I just read that story - that's one awesome hack. Though some of the comments on the YouTube video... Graham Stark was right, if one harnessed the stupidity (and sheer vitriol) of YouTube commentators, the energy crisis would be solved.

In answer to your WI, I'd like to think that having a flagship character of one of the major gaming corporations be female - though the Mario and Maria approach would be the more viable one, I think - would lead to an earlier influx of girls and women gaming (and I do know that there have always been girls and women who gamed, but they'd have become visible earlier). Which might have meant none of the awful, awful misogynistic nunf***ery that's happening at the moment, because gaming would never have been seen as a male-dominated activity to begin with.

Mind you, I'm probably the wrong person to be answering this realistically. I'm a guy, but I've never objected to playing female characters in games - heck, Metroid Prime and the new Tomb Raider are two of my favourite games ever, and my Mass Effect character was a FemShep.

One possible idea is too have character selection like SMB2

There was, the game was called Great Giana Sisters.

Nivek said:

But how pulling it? using a female sprite, maybe saying both are the sons of the jumpman? Mario and Maria would be interesting(poor Luigi)

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Remove the mustache pixels from Luigi sprite, dress him in pink instead of green. Done. It's an 8-bit console, you can't expect much more.
Fast Forward 30 years and feminists would be complaining about stereotyping women with the color pink.

As for girls playing, I doubt a pink sprite and a character named Luigia instead of Luigi is going to make a difference, at all. This is the eighties we're talking about. None argued that there were toys for boys and toys for girls. Mattel didn't cater to boys by making Kent nor girls were expected to play with Gi-Joe dolls. The same applied to videogames, which were a boy toy back then. Otherwise, Street Fighter II would have been a hit with girls, and it wasn't.

juanml82 said:

Remove the mustache pixels from Luigi sprite, dress him in pink instead of green. Done. It's an 8-bit console, you can't expect much more.
Fast Forward 30 years and feminists would be complaining about stereotyping women with the color pink.

As for girls playing, I doubt a pink sprite and a character named Luigia instead of Luigi is going to make a difference, at all. This is the eighties we're talking about. None argued that there were toys for boys and toys for girls. Mattel didn't cater to boys by making Kent nor girls were expected to play with Gi-Joe dolls. The same applied to videogames, which were a boy toy back then. Otherwise, Street Fighter II would have been a hit with girls, and it wasn't.

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The thing is, Nintendo isn't aiming to attract just boys or girls, the ideal situation is them selling games to both.

"So, what do we get the kids for Christmas?"

"How about this thing, the "Nintendo Entertainment System"? It's some Japanese thing with a toy robot, but it looks good."

"We're not spending $200 on a present just for Billy."

"Nah, I looked at some of the games for it, look here, a game for girls, perfect for Sue. The both of them'll love it, I swear."

What it does is improve the chances of any one girl making contact with a truly good game, which might then encourage them to try some other games, maybe try to convince her brother to play it, and so on. You never know, she might then grow up to make games herself.

True, videogames in the '80s were definitely boys toys, but if somebody could rescue games from being limited to 50% of the human race by 1990, it was Nintendo.

Drunkrobot said:

Well, I reckoned feminists (i.e. women who take try to mask their disgust of men with words and cheat society out of every penny they can get, not the normal, sane women who genuinely want to see a world shared equally between the sexes) would grab onto Super Mario Bros. (Super Maria Siss.?) eventually, inevitably attacking it in some way (Prince Toadstool is leading her on a leash! Why does she have to cause such insane damage to the world she lives in? etc.). However, I wouldn't think the damage they could bring to gaming would amount to much, considering the fact that much of OTL gaming was very much a 'boys-only club' anyway. Does anybody actually listen to Thompson at all, or ever?

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Did you actually take a video game discussion and use it to make an anti-feminist rant?

Why the hell would you do that?

Keep politics in Chat.

But the thing is, the character's gender doesn't make a toy a boy or a girl's toy - see Ken, for instance. He represents a guy but it is still a girl's toy.
Ice Climber's second player is red. Does that make it a girl's game? Did it cater more to girls than Battletank? What happens with RPGs, in which characters were often female? Or fighting games which, while newer than SMB1, often figure a few female characters?

Marketing directors might have tried to cater videogames to both genders in the '80s (or might not. Barbies are a hit product and they do target half the children - you don't need to aim for everyone), but one does not simply use a pink sprite to market videogames to girls.

ddtim said:

yeah, it was a bit mad. essentially, Maria means that the feminists get involved earlier. The backlash, along with Thompsons insanity, makes the proto gaming culture one of the most despised groups in America. Clearly, their hatred of women is due to violent video games, or "murder simulators" as Mr. Thompson referred to them, and so these get pushed to the periphery, if not made illegal. Farmville and other non violent games would of course still be legal.

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I can not even begin to understand the logic here. I know it is an excuse to rant about "feminists"

Keep politics in Chat.

CalBear said:

Did you actually take a video game discussion and use it to make an anti-feminist rant?

Why the hell would you do that?

Keep politics in Chat.

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I apologise, I don't mean to swerve off of a topic when I start it myself, but I did in part ask what the public reaction of a videogame would be, which is going to let ugly feelings bubble to the surface. 'People wanting to ban it' or 'people wanting to prove a point with it' isn't just politics, it's art, and videogames are art.

Drunkrobot said:

I apologise, I don't mean to swerve off of a topic when I start it myself, but I did in part ask what the public reaction of a videogame would be, which is going to let ugly feelings bubble to the surface. 'People wanting to ban it' or 'people wanting to prove a point with it' isn't just politics, it's art, and videogames are art.

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Violent video games weren't banned after Columbine. "Maria" would just be an earlier version of Samus Aran (without the stuff at the end, probably) and won't affect anything in relation to video games being blamed for anything- if anything, feminists would promote Maria as a positive role model who teaches girls that they can do the stuff that boys do, too, especially since the game probably won't have the sexy ending that Metroid had in OTL...

Puget Sound said:

"Maria" would just be an earlier version of Samus Aran (without the stuff at the end, probably) and won't affect anything in relation to video games being blamed for anything- if anything, feminists would promote Maria as a positive role model who teaches girls that they can do the stuff that boys do, too, especially since the game probably won't have the sexy ending that Metroid had in OTL...

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Hopefully, ITTL, there won't be a 'Super Maria - Other Mushroom' where Maria starts with fireballs, wing cap etc. but they have to be approved by Prince Toadstool before she can use them...

Why yes, I'm still bitter about Other M.

In all seriousness, that'd be pretty cool. Especially if it was presented as 'Of course she can do this stuff. Why not?' I'm of the opinion that games (and other stuff) need less angst-ridden heroines who have everything weighted against them but triumph regardless. Strong female characters should just be presented without fanfare, like it's just taken for granted that they can fight and triumph. Sort of like how in Starship Troopers the movie the football team is mixed, but there's no fuss made about it - it's just how things are. Does that make any sense?