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Ms. Pac-Man forged inroads to female gaming heroines with her red bow and devil-may-care attitude. She was in all ways the equal of Pac-Man. Progress was being made.
However, there was much more to be done. Ms. Pac-Man was generally a cosmetic change more than a social one. Her game was so strikingly similar to Pac-Man that many casual audiences wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Most of all, she had - and continues to have - no real character to speak of. She was and always will be a yellow ball that eats ghosts. When the Nintendo Entertainment System hit the scene in 1985, it was time for a change.
So to continue our look at female protagonists in March, Women's History Month, this series is moving on to some more complex characters of the gaming realm. Our next figure continued to go against the grain of the society she found herself in; and though her progress may seem small now, it was no laughing matter in the 80s. I give you Samus Aran, one of the great gaming heroines, a classic plot twist, and a character that continues to develop to this day.
"Samus is a Woman?"
It may seem ironic in the spirit of this article series, but when Samus was first introduced to the public in 1986, we weren't even immediately aware that she was a woman. Clad in a space suit that hid her identity, all that we knew was from the instruction manual to her debut game "Metroid," which was intentionally misleading:
He is a cyborg: his entire body has been surgically strengthened with robotics, giving him superpowers. Even the space pirates fear his space suit, which can absorb any enemies power. But his true form is shrouded in mystery.
In every way, Samus was presented to us as a male. With an ambiguous science-fiction name, no one thought to argue; that is, of course, until they met Justin Bailey.
Samus would be revealed as a woman (complete with bathing suit) at the end of Metroid if a devoted gamer could finish in less than an hour. Of course, most gamers instead relied on a password, inputting "JUSTIN BAILEY" in the password screen. This gave players all the tools they needed to beat the game, and had Samus running around in a leotard. The generally accepted explanation is that "bailey" is slang for a bathing suit, meaning that with this password she is "just in bailey."
Future History
The story of Samus is indelibly linked to the presence and existence of parasitic alien life known as "Metroids." There's a lot of detail to be found in its story, but for the purposes of this article, I'll simply summarize the most relevant information. Samus' parents were explorers killed by Space Pirates when she was a mere toddler. A bird-like people known as the Chozo found her and raised her as their own, infusing her with Chozo blood and building for her a Power Suit that would become her signature uniform. She left her adoptive parents to join the Galactic Federation military, but soon fell out of service when her commanding officer, Adam, died.
(Through the story gathered in various sources, there is some implication that Samus had a relationship with Adam; but as the plot has never specifically confirmed or denied this, I'll merely make note of it.)
When she left the miliarty, she became a bounty hunter. As news hit the Federation military that space pirates were breeding parasitic beings known as Metroids on the planet Zebes, Samus was called to put an end to the experiments. She succeeded in destroying the "Mother Brain" that was controlling the Metroids, but that's far from the end of her adventures. She was later charged with eradicating the species of Metroids on their home planet; but when her mission was nearly complete, a Metroid hatched. Upon seeing her it assumed she was its mother and connected with her, and she found herself unable to snuff out the life, instead delivering it to a research facility.
However, the facility was later attacked, and the Metroid was taken by the leader of the space pirates. Samus once again tracked them to Zebes. It was there that she again found the hatchling, now grown enormous, and it attacked her, nearly killing her before realizing its mistake and leaving in guilt. As Samus battled the Mother Brain once again, the villain unleashed a beam of energy that nearly killed her, until the Metroid stepped in and latched onto Mother Brain, draining her of power. It then attached itself to Samus, giving her the power it had absorbed while shielding her from Mother Brain's attacks, eventually falling. Samus, infused with the power from the Metroid's sacrifice, defeated Mother Brain once again.
Why Was She So Important?
Samus Aran wasn't presented to us as a female bounty hunter, or even one of many bounty hunters across the futuristic galaxy presented in the Metroid series. She was the bounty hunter, notably the best, treated with an awe-struck fear by those who might try to escape her. In this light, gender was insignificant to the character, as her proficiency surpassed gender boundaries. Samus was the best, period.
On the opposite end of the coin, gender played a very strong role in why she's so remembered among gamers today. By placing her in a suit and referring to her as a "he" in the manual, Nintendo gave us one of the first great gaming plot twists. They turned expectations and social norms on their head. In a hobby dominated at the time by prepubescent males, this can be seen as nothing short of an attempt to impart a valuable lesson on impressionable young minds. Samus is strong and capable, not in spite of her gender but simply because she is.
But more than that, her character is not merely the female version of a male character, as Ms. Pac-Man was. Samus has grown with time to express her own unique characteristics, many of which could be argued as feminine. Never is this more present than in her compassion for the Metroid hatchling that saw her as a maternal figure. She refused to complete a mission, and put herself at personal risk, in her principled refusal to destroy an innocent creature. This manifested itself later as the Metroid recognized her good nature and chose to protect its "mother" from harm, sacrificing itself in the process. All of this information was delivered in elegant, wordless method that is still seen as a high point in game fiction storytelling today.
On the Other Hand...
Even Samus, by the family-friendly Nintendo, has not gone through being a woman unscathed. From the first game, her unclad form was treated as a reward for especially good work at completing the game. Sometimes this has been completing within a set number of hours, and at other times a certain percentage of the game, Samus in her earlier days would often reveal herself (inexplicably) in a bikini, and now generally appears in a blue bodysuit.
Though none of the images were pornographic, and were even relatively tame, they were nonetheless rewarding players by sexualizing a woman who had proven herself already in other respects. Samus was and remains to be a strong, capable female; but to many players, her body is a priority.
This is indicative of not only the culture that created her but of the audience that plays video games. More women are playing games now than ever before, but it is still a male-dominated culture, and one that skews young at that. Samus' wardrobe has shifted to being more practical (her blue bodysuit actually relates to a story thread told in the game "Zero Mission"), but still accents certain body parts, as can be seen clearly in the recent trailer for Super Smash Bros Brawl.
Though we should fault Nintendo with exploiting a perfectly viable female character for her sexuality, we should also be looking at the society that demanded such objectification. Metroid had the potential to carry an important lesson about gender roles and assumptions to children in the 1980s, and there's little doubt that it did have an impact in that manner. However, by accentuating her sexuality, it as a presence became tied to her gender, threatening to undermine what had been accomplished.
Next Time: A Fighting Chance
Samus was a great character that skewed assumptions and flipped expectations, but was also marred by some amount of objectification. As gaming became more mainstream, female characters continued to become more utilized in storytelling, while simultaneously being used for eye candy. Next time, we'll explore one of the greatest Interpol agents ever to grace the World Warrior circuit.
