If we ask you who the first female protagonist in a video game is, you might answer Samus Aran in ‘Metroid.’ But there were many before that Nintendo post-credits surprise. Truth be told, the first female character was Ms. Pac-Man in 1981, but since it involved putting a bow on a yellow ball, we won’t count it, sticking to human characters. Yes, I know there are people in love with Ms. Pac-Man on the internet. If not, it wouldn’t be the internet, after all.
To farm
Actually, the first playable female character appeared in 1977 in a game called ‘Score,’ a lost arcade game of the “romantic” genre: men chasing women and women chasing men. When someone of the opposite sex was caught, a heart appeared on the screen, and the game continued, with the hearts turned into obstacles. Yes, viewed with eyes 46 years later, it’s one of the most terrifying things we can think of. The times are changing.
Sadly, there are only images of the cabins where the game was played and no screens of the game itself, which was also the first in history to allow choosing the player’s gender. On the other hand, we do have evidence – and the complete game – of the next time video games dipped their toe into the female world: ‘Wabbit,’ from 1982, for Atari 2600.
It was a farm simulator in which Sue, the farmer, had to chase rabbits away from her field by throwing rotten eggs at them to prevent them from taking the carrots. It was a critical success and marked the first console title where you could play as a woman who wasn’t sidelined in the visuals. It’s interesting to note that it came out in the same year as the controversial and explicit ‘Custer’s Revenge,’ where women were merely objects of desire for the main character.
Fortunately, even in the 80s, things were already changing, and titles like ‘Barbie,’ ‘Jenny of the Prairie,’ or ‘Ninja Princess’ paved the way for ‘Metroid,’ ‘Tomb Raider,’ and ‘The Last of Us Part II‘ to thrive. Always with the complaints of those few who never understood that this hobby was not made exclusively for them. It’s been almost 50 years since the first woman in a video game. It’s about time to evolve.
