Saving the Princesses: How Yesterday’s Girl-Gamers Became Today’s Feminists

by Liz Wride

William Warby

Thanks to a redhead in a Union Jack dress, many people see the 90s as the decade that defined “Girl Power,” and I’m not one to disagree. While The Spice Girlscoined the phrase, they weren’t the first ones telling girls they could be whatever they wanted to be. That message didn’t come from a girl group, or even a human being, but a bundle of computer chips in the form of 8 and 16-bit games consoles. I’m talking about the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System), its upgrade (the SNES — Super Nintendo Entertainment System), its pocket-counterpart (Game Boy), its rivals (The Sega Megadrive) and the plethora of P.C. games that burst onto the 90s scene.

What did these consoles do for feminism? They put young girls on the same platform as boys.

The 90s were a time when girls didn’t (routinely) play sports like football and cricket in school. You were given a hockey stick or a netball skirt; and your team-mates and opponents were exclusively female… until video games placed us all on the same Sensible Soccer pitch.

For me, it was the cutesy-aesthetics of the games at the time, given their 8-bit/16-bit renderings, that drew me into the male-centered narratives. (Let’s not forget, I was still a kid, playing with Barbies, at this point.)

I wasn’t mad that I was playing games where the narrative told me a woman had to be saved by a man — Mario having to save Princess Peach; Link on a quest to save Princess Zelda; Aladdin saving Jasmine in the movie tie-in game — I just liked the fact that Tanooki Mario sprouted a raccoon-tail and flew; or that the tomatoes in Aladdin made a squelching sound as you threw them at the bad guys. This meant that I never actually engaged with the core message of the narrative, narratives that today would be called anti-feminist.

Of course, when “Girl Power” really came to the fore, the games truly reflected it. The Buffy the Vampire Slayer game for Game Boy Color showed that girls could literally kick-butt (but in a more palatable fight-the-undead way, as opposed to Chun-Li in Street Fighter and its overall beat-people-senseless-in-the-street aesthetic). Lara Croft, too, proved herself to be more than the “shake-those-polygons-baby” headlines from gamer magazines. After all, in an industry based on save-the-princess narratives, who saved Lara Croft? The answer? Lara Croft.

But 90s video-game culture was such a future-feminist paradise, for more reasons than the Tomb Raider franchise. With the internet still far from a staple in many homes, there was no such thing as online gaming. If you wanted to go head-to-head with your opponent, they had to sit right next to you.

This did limit girls in the 90s. Their opponent-pool was pretty much just friends/siblings/cousins. What it did mean, indirectly, was that 90s girls were free to display their game-related emotions directly in front of their opponents.

Wanted to fling your controller on the floor when Sonic lost all his rings? Go for it.

Wanted to celebrate when Yoshi in the stroller got you to pole position? Dance around the room. Could you only get a cheat-code to work by pressing the buttons with your foot? Do what ever you need to, to get to the end of that game!

For many girls, this would have been the first time they could display these competitive behaviors. For all I know, these early experiences gave them the confidence to pursue careers in male-dominated industries. (If you know, or you did, let me know!)

90s video games not only taught girls it was ok to play against the boys, it also taught them something else: It was OK to cheat.

I grew up, not only in a world of video games, but in a world of magazines. Newsstands were awash with publications from the big name consoles, and in this pre-Internet world, they had the low-down on how pressing all the right buttons, in exactly the wrong order, allowed you to finish the game early and save the Princess. I’m not saying they set out with the intention to show little girls how great it was to bend the rules (it was probably more of a marketing ploy — finish one game quicker, get bored of it sooner, and beg Santa for a new game at Christmas), but it still meant I got to do what the boys did.

My defining moment of it’s-ok-to-play-against-and-with-the-boys was the Mario Kart tournament my school organized when I was 12. My time had come. Of course, my proficiency with a Nintendo controller (and years of practice on Mario Kart) meant Yoshi and I sailed through the first Mario Kart race. I walked around like I owned the school (pride comes before a fall, kids — video games taught me this, too) and then promptly came last in the next round (at least I was spared the shame of falling off Rainbow Road).

Even after my Mario Kart tournament loss, I still came away with the lesson that it’s ok to compete against the boys. Over the years I upgraded my consoles. I switched up dusty game cartridges for CDs or CDs for online games — but the lessons of those 8 and 16-bit worlds stuck with me.

But has everyone else forgotten?

Remember Gamergate?

Ever been called a Fake Gamer Girl?

Ever tried to buy gamer merch in a woman’s size, or have you just had to buy from the men’s section?

In a world where gaming culture is arguably more mainstream than it has ever been (think Fortnite, Lego Batman console-crossovers, Ready Player One) has the platform for girls been eradicated?

That’s less of a question, and more of a challenge.

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Liz Wride is a writer from Wales. Her short fiction has appeared in Okay Donkey Magazine, Milk Candy Review, Riggwelter Press, and others. Her short horror “Read this Story Out Loud” was published in trampset in 2019.