21st May 2010, 9:49 PM
(This post was last modified: 21st May 2010, 10:44 PM by A Black Falcon.)
Weltall Wrote:Sexist? The company which basically invented the badass female video game protagonist?
Oh, right, I forgot. You hate Metroid because you're a communist.
I don't hate Metroid. Metroid wasn't originally an EAD series though, which is what I mostly would focus on, the first three Metroid games were from Gunpei Yokoi's R&D1. R&D1 are also the ones who made the only non-dream Mario platformer starring Mario where you don't have to rescue the princess, Mario Land 2... and the Wario Land series, which has no princess-rescuing (the Wario-Syrup relationship is entertaining, but definitely doesn't involve rescuing), and more. The Metroid games obviously do emphasize Samus' attractiveness, with the bikini endings, which I'm sure some people take issue with, but she always is depicted as a quite strong character, certainly.
Intelligent Systems is also a bit better on that stuff, the Fire Emblem games all have plenty of female party members for instance... not many have female main characters, but major ones, yes, and party members, certainly. They also did Panel de Pon, etc. Paper Mario... um, Peach does get kidnapped, unlike Square's Mario RPG, but you do play as her in those little interlude scenes, which was a nice touch (and Bowser too, in The Thousand Year Door... Bowser in SMB World 1-1 was pretty amusing... :)). I didn't mind it in the first Paper Mario because they took a unique tack with it with the interlude scenes and such, but I was hoping that the next one would do something different... but instead, they just had someone else, those X-Naut people, kidnap her instead of Bowser. Great. That was one of the reasons why TTYD disappointed me. I know that both Bowser and Peach are playable in Super Paper Mario though... I know it's considered disappointing, but I will have to play that game eventually anyway... (As for the Mario & Luigi games, I never really played those, so I don't really know.)
HAL, yeah, can't think of much bad to say about them either. Kirby's obviously pretty inoffensive. SSB... um, it did annoy me that SSBB added like nine new male characters and zero female ones (no, I don't count Zero Suit Samus as a new character), but other than that I can't think of anything bad to say.
But Miyamoto's EAD? Most of his games involve rescuing helpless princesses. The Mario games (starting from Donkey Kong) helped define that as one of gaming's most popular plots. I know that he got the idea from movies such as King Kong, but still, the fact remains, he's still using it, much more so than anyone else.
Of course, Miyamoto has said many times that he doesn't think story is that important. Creating a world, yes, but plot, no. So it's not exactly something he cares much about, obviously. But I do think results matter, and, well, almost all Mario platformers involve rescuing princesses... there are a few exceptions, but they are just that. The Zelda series is only different in that the games have more plot and Zelda is more likely to actually do something than Peach, but almost all still involve rescuing princesses.