Most Badass Women/Girls in Gaming?

[Bofferbrauer2]

Landale_Star said:

I think I could list plenty, but instead of focusing on the characters, I'll give mention to some of the women who had a major impact on videogames. There are far too many, but these are some that come to my mind. Some of my favourite games throughout the years owe much to these real videogame heroines.

Yoko Shimomura has had a long career composing music for countless games including the iconic Street Fighter 2 themes, Mario RPG, Parasite Eve, Final Fantasy XV and Kingdom Hearts, among many others. Truly one of the greatest videogame composers.

Reiko Kodama has a long career at Sega, doing art for many of their early games such as Alex Kid, Sonic and Phantasy Star. Eventually she moved up to direct Phantasy Star 4 and lead development on titles such as Skies of Arcadia, 7th Dragon and the Sega Ages range on Switch. In the early days of her career, most devs still didn't use their real names so she went by the name Phoenix Rie (with variations on spelling) in game credits.

Kazuko Shibuya started early at Square and was responsible for art in games such as Final Fantasy, Mana and SaGa. She is responsible for much of the iconic sprite work throughout Square's history as well as other design. Arguably of similar importance to the early art as Yoshitaka Amano. Although I can't confirm it, there is a chance she was responsible for introducing Nasir Gebelli (the programmer for FF1,2,3 and Secret of Mana) and the legendary Nobuo Uematsu to Square. It was probably either her or Hiromi Nakada, as far as I know the only other woman at that time working at the computer cafe turned game developer. Hiromi Nakada also appeared in the secret developer room in FF4 as both an NPC and special monster, based on the lamia enemy design.

Michiko Naruke has worked on plenty of games but is best known for providing the memorable music in the Wild Arms series. Like Yoko Shimomura, she has also contributed to Smash Bros. While Wild Arms is fairly niche, her compositions are outstanding and beloved by fans. 

Not very famous, but Carol Shaw made my favourite Atari 2600 game, River Raid, when Activision split from Atari. One of the earliest female programmers in video games and possibly the first to get recognition. Back then game developers weren't given credit and either just weren't mentioned at all, or used pseudonyms. However, one of Activision's main goals was to give recognition to developers and included credit on the box and in the manual, along with a short bio and picture, like the one above.

There really are too many to mention so I'll just list a few more. Much of Castlevania's music is owed to Michiru Yamane, Kinuyo Yamashita and the art to Ayami Kojima. Tomb Raider's early games had level design by Heather Gibson and you can't mention classic PC graphic adventures without Roberta Williams.

Great idea to list real life women from the videogame business instead.

Two women I need to add to your list:

1. Jade Raymond, the creator of the Assassin's Creed series

2. Brenda Romero (née Brenda Garbo and known as Brendo Brathwaite until John Romero made her his b... erm, married her), who was one of the creators of the Wizardry series, which went on and became the biggest influence for JRPGs. And she did so as a teenager no less, as she was still 14 when the first Wizardry hit the shelves in 1981!

And would you believe that she's 50 in this picture?

Last edited by Bofferbrauer2 - on 09 March 2020