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Games girls play
All of you there, waging hours of virtual wars, take time off gaming consoles and Wiis to answer this: How many of the characters you assume are women? How many girls in your games fight to win?
In Super Mario 64, Princess Peach invites Mario to her castle for a bite of cake. Mario arrives only to find that Bowser has imprisoned the Princess using her own Power Stars. As Mario, you battle for Princess Peach’s release. And eat cake.
In Super Mario Galaxy, stupid Peach once again gets caught in one of Bowser’s Machiavellian schemes. The “mustachioed mascot” must squash Goombas, hurl turtle shells and battle gravity – all ingenious stuff - to rescue her from the dino-baddie. EarthBound has a 13-year-old kid (boy) from the suburbs. A mysterious messenger tells him he’s destined to save the world. It’s a “way-ahead-of-its-time” video game, has a creative ending, but thank you, no girls, please.
“But a lot of video games do have women as playable characters,” said 11-year-old Naren, thumping for his favourite pastime. “Samus Aran, the main character in the Metroid series is female. Metroid Prime was once the most popular game! And yes, she wins.” But he has to agree it’s not true of all games. “In popular games like the Legend of Zelda series, the girl is always the damsel in distress. If women are allowed to join the Army in real life, why shouldn’t they be main characters in virtual reality?” “I have played video games throughout my formative years,” said Anjali. At age 8, she spent Saturday mornings trying to rescue Princess Toadstool from the evil clutches of King Koopa or indulging in Competitive Martial arts through Ryu from Street Fighter.
Her favourites are Playstation’s Tekken and Mortal Kombat.
With X-Box she switched to violent games like Halo and Grand Theft Auto.
“Gaming is male centric and male dominated,” she insists. “ The target audience is young males, but that’s not to say there isn’t a place for girls in this vast gaming world.
After all a major attribute of a good gamer is the ability to multitask, and we know which gender is better at that!”
GEETA PADMANABHAN
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Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
Madurai
Mangalore
Puducherry
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Thiruvananthapuram
Vijayawada
Visakhapatnam
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