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Forums - Gaming - Most Badass Women/Girls in Gaming?

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.

This is a brilliant idea. I'd love to see this as an article on the main page!
And recently I read that Koei was founded by a married couple and Keiko Erikawa still runs the company with her husband now that the company is Koei Tecmo. She also created the first all female writing team in games as far as I can tell (maybe just the first in Japan). She did this purely with the aim to change the industry and this led to their range of Otome, adventure, dating sim & visual novel games.



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Ada Wong and Jill Valentine off the top of my head.



Those are some of the strong female characters that I’ve experienced in video games and loved:

Jesse Faden from Control


Aloy from Horizon Zero Dawn


Lara Croft from Tomb Raider


Chloe, Elena and Nadine from Uncharted


Nariko from Heavenly Sward


Senua from Hellblade


Ellie from The Last of Us


Kat from Gravity Rush


Abigail Walker from inFAMOUS First Light


Madison Paige from Heavy Rain

Kara from Detroit Become Human



CaptainExplosion said:

Thought of this since today is International Women's Day.

Women, for those who don't know, can kick as much ass as any men, but who among them kicks the most ass?

Well, let's start off with the most likely candidates.

Samus Aran (Metroid franchise):

Joana Dark (Perfect Dark):

Bayonetta (Bayonetta franchise):

Chun-Li (Street Fighter franchise):

Rouge the Bat and Blaze the Cat (Sonic the Hedgehog franchise)

Fio and Eri (Metal Slug franchise):

 

Orchid (Killer Instinct franchise):

Lara Croft (Tomb Raider franchise):

So who do you think are the most badass women and girls in gaming? :)

I feel like most of those are bad exsamples? or is it just me?

Sonic characters? Metroid (tbh you can barely tell its a woman, and could just as easily have been a male character).

Bayonetta is pretty badass though.
Lora Croft used to be badass, now shes like a heartless killing machine, bordering on madness. She barely feels like a protaganist anymore.
Orchid from killer instinct is a major babe, my favorite character from older KI games. Newer design isnt as good though.


I think Ellie from Last of Us, is looking pretty badass.
Shes a badass that just happends to be a woman, instead of the otherway around.
Which seems to be a fault alot of female character designs have.



Good list so far.

Mara Sov bows to no one (Destiny)



PS1   - ! - We must build a console that can alert our enemies.

PS2  - @- We must build a console that offers online living room gaming.

PS3   - #- We must build a console that’s powerful, social, costs and does everything.

PS4   - $- We must build a console that’s affordable, charges for services, and pumps out exclusives.

PRO  -%-We must build a console that's VR ready, checkerboard upscales, and sells but a fraction of the money printer.

PS5   - ^ -We must build a console that’s a generational cross product, with RT lighting, and price hiking.

PRO  -&- We must build a console that Super Res upscales and continues the cost increases.

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Aloy is the star of probably my favourite game this gen. It's an awesome arch. Great character. And if I can embrace my rich ape heritage momentarily,....girl has an effortlessly sexy walk. The hip swivel. My goodness. You could get seasick if you focus for too long.





Last edited by COKTOE - on 08 March 2020

- "If you have the heart of a true winner, you can always get more pissed off than some other asshole."

JRPGfan said:

I feel like most of those are bad exsamples? or is it just me?

Sonic characters? Metroid (tbh you can barely tell its a woman, and could just as easily have been a male character).

I think Ellie from Last of Us, is looking pretty badass.
Shes a badass that just happends to be a woman, instead of the otherway around.
Which seems to be a fault alot of female character designs have.

Well Blaze is a pretty competent character in the Sonic Rush games, a queen from another world that gets the job done.

"Shes a badass that just happends to be a woman, instead of the otherway around."

How can you tell that apart?



Cortana from Halo

Alyx Vance from Half Life 2

Senua from Hell Blade

Johana Dark from Perfect Dark

Last edited by Azzanation - on 08 March 2020

ARamdomGamer said:
JRPGfan said:

I feel like most of those are bad exsamples? or is it just me?

Sonic characters? Metroid (tbh you can barely tell its a woman, and could just as easily have been a male character).

I think Ellie from Last of Us, is looking pretty badass.
Shes a badass that just happends to be a woman, instead of the otherway around.
Which seems to be a fault alot of female character designs have.

Well Blaze is a pretty competent character in the Sonic Rush games, a queen from another world that gets the job done.

"Shes a badass that just happends to be a woman, instead of the otherway around."

How can you tell that apart?

comes down to how you judge the character design, and beliveability of background story, and how the character acts I guess.

Sometimes its clear, they had the character was designed, they went, we want her to be sexy.... and a badass.
Like its some checkbox situation, where they just check down a list and then fill in the character from that.

Then you have a character thats wearing like a bikini in a middleage set war era, where everyone else is wearing plate mail armors ect.
Theres no justification for her being powerfull or acting like a badass ect.

I prefer them to put some thought into the character design and story/backgrounds.



Angelus said:
Morrigan from Dragon Age is probably my favorite female character, at least off the top of my head.

I was quite captivated with that character, to the point I was actually more invested in the romance aspect than was the norm. Was soooo looking forward to the DLC, one of which I believe focused on Morrigan, but a friend I trusted told me it was pretty bad, so I never continued with the game beyond the main story, although I did complete it.....three times? Four? Its been almost 11 years so I can't remember for sure.



- "If you have the heart of a true winner, you can always get more pissed off than some other asshole."