In the first Super Smash Bros. game, released in 1999 for the Nintendo 64, there was, out of twelve playable characters, just one woman: Samus Aran. 1)I’m excluding characters like Jigglypuff that are typically perceived as female but aren’t humanoid. That’s 8.3%. In Super Smash Bros. Melee, released in 2001 for the Nintendo GameCube, the total characters goes up to 25 (if we count Zelda and Sheik, who we’ll call male, as separate) and the women went up to 3 with the addition of Princess Peach and Princess Zelda. We’re up to 12% now!
Super Smash Bros. Brawl for the Nintendo Wii upped the playable characters to 39 (again, counting characters that can change mid-battle as separate) but only added one woman: Zero Suit Samus. Seeing as Zero Suit Samus and Samus Aran are exactly the same person, just with different gear, I choose not to count her as a “new” character. That brings the percentage down to a paltry 7.9%. Yikes.
Things are changing, though. Pardon me for throwing more math and numbers at you, but out of the eleven new characters that have so far been announced for Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U, seven are women. 2)This counts Wii Fit Trainer, Villager, Mii Fighter, and Robin, whose gender can be selected by the player. That right there is a whopping 63.6%. So, out of the 36 playable characters confirmed so far, and counting Zero Suit Samus and Power Suit Samus as separate characters because the game insists we’re now at 30% of the game being women. 3)ZSS offers a lot of pros and cons. It’s good to see she can kick ass without her Power Suit but does her Zero Suit have to be so…form-fitting? Not a majority but it’s getting closer to the percentage of people in the real world that identify as women.
Okay, we’re done with numbers now. Here’s what all that means: they know. Masahiro Sakurai, Nintendo, Bandai Namco, everyone who’s working on this game knows. They know that making everything pink and gendered isn’t the cheat code to make games women want to play. Who knew! Continue reading Super Smash Sisters
Notes
| 1. | ↑ | I’m excluding characters like Jigglypuff that are typically perceived as female but aren’t humanoid. |
| 2. | ↑ | This counts Wii Fit Trainer, Villager, Mii Fighter, and Robin, whose gender can be selected by the player. |
| 3. | ↑ | ZSS offers a lot of pros and cons. It’s good to see she can kick ass without her Power Suit but does her Zero Suit have to be so…form-fitting? |
