Metroid Broke a Gender Barrier in the Video Game World

In the beginning, most video game characters in the hero division had male characters as the heroes and sometimes the female would play the role as the damsel in distress noting titles like the original Donkey Kong game or like the classic Super Mario Bros. franchise. A franchise that was created 20 years ago came in the form of Metroid. To add to the mystique of it, the manual never gave a hint that it was a woman and that it was a male cyborg. Much to the surprise of many players who played this when it 1^st came out, it was actually a female named Samus Aran. From personal experience this considering that I had never seen a game have a female hero and little did I realize it would become something of an innovator in the gaming market surprised me.

A female hero has been involved in some key franchises like Mario with the USA version of Super Mario Bros. 2 and there is a game where Peach is the star of a game. Castlevania has had at least one game with a female Belmont considering most have been male characters. Even in those awful Zelda games for the CD-I had Princess Zelda as the main character to be used in the game. The point driven is that the gender for a hero has actually become more universal than it was in the past looking back.

To illustrate that point, the series Tomb Raider came out for the PlayStation and had a female as the hero after the Metroid series started this trend. That game may not have come out if not for that franchise. It's interesting to look back on that series, which was ground breaking in its own right and deserves recognition as one of the most well known franchises known to the gaming community.

Speaking of Samus and her adventures, she has appeared and been the star of 10 Metroid games spanning from the NES up to the Wii skipping the Virtual Boy and Nintendo 64. In other media appearances she has appeared in the classic Tetris as a celebration for completing the Level 9 on a hard level, Super Mario RPG just sleeping. As far as other games, she is apart of the Super Smash Bros. franchise that has been very popular and will be apart of the 3^rd Smash Bros. game in regular and Zero Suit form.The point overall is that Metroid deserves recognition for doing something and daring. Had this not be done, there may not have been other games or series to try having a female hero.