it's a girl!

Meet Samus:

Our hero.

Samus is a bounty hunter, and more importantly, the protagonist of Metroid--a popular NES game that did so well, it later became a series of games for more recent platforms as well.

When we first meet Samus in the opening levels of NES Metroid, the only thing that really jumps out at the seasoned video game player to distinguish this character from other video game heroes is the ability to roll into a tiny ball in order to crawl underneath things, like so:

See that orange thing?  Still Samus.

Beyond curling into a perfect sphere, Samus has pretty common video game abilities:  Samus runs from things that drop from the ceiling; Samus jumps over things with spikes; Samus shoots at things that move.

Run, Samus, run!

What we don't know about Samus until well into gameplay is... wait for it...

Samus is a girl.

A large gun and flowing green hair.

I love this.  Here's why.

Apart from Ms. PacMan, there weren't a whole lot of female protagonists in video games at this point.  Lara Croft of the Tomb Raider games didn't make her first appearance until 1996; Metroid came out an entire decade before that.

How ingenious, then, to create a character with a bizarre, genderless name who kicks major enemy butt in typical action-adventure video game fashion, all the while allowing the human players to assume what they will?

Maybe I'm giving the makers of this game too much credit, but I like the idea that twenty-five years ago, they responded to reviews of this game with, "What do you mean there's a 'twist' in the game?  Why shouldn't Samus be a girl?  What ever made you think this was a man in the first place?"

The mid-game reveal allowed for the challenging of the "default" video game gender in such a way that having the character start out with a pink suit and feminine haircut would never have lent itself to.

My tendency to get lost in real life makes me really terrible at this game, but that's beside the point.  I love it for Samus.

My hero.