Girl on Girl Games: Lovely Lisa

I'll admit it: I usually come down on the side opposite staunch feminism, because I feel the extreme view robs femininity of its inherent value in favor of masculine attributes. I celebrate the things about womanhood that enrich our lives and, in turn, the world. I like skirts, nail polish, and sewing. I generally do all the cooking here in the Electric Frankfurter kitchen. But, I also salute the strides made by women throughout history that have made it possible for me to also enjoy things beyond that sphere--like job opportunities, generalized education and birth control.

I think I usually give "girl games" more of a pass because I know there are bigger battles out there. If a girl likes a Barbie doll, what's the harm? Barbie has had all kinds of careers and drives a Corvette. She's had lots of wedding dresses, but somehow, she's never settled down. Barbie is practically an independent woman. 

Then, there's Lovely Lisa. No game, not even Chronotrigger, has so successfully pulled off time-traveling in such a thorough way.

Lisa appears to be a doll, but a thirty-five second internet search only revealed other dolls and a few porn websites, so I'm forced to assume this doll doesn't exist in this country. She, and her doll-like family are here to help young girls, ages 5 and under, learn to be nice young ladies. That's not my choice of words: it's the game's own parlance.

Lisa's world is represented as a town. From the town, you may access Lisa's home to perform household chores, the "career center" to try out "fun jobs", or the "charm school", where you can learn ladylike talents. Other options from this screen allow you to buy or design outfits for Lisa with points earned in the other activities.

 First, home. Lisa's mom looks a little tired to me, like perhaps she's been downing a lot of little yellow pills while running for the shelter of her "mother's little helper." And who could blame her? She's been busy, what with having six children under the age of 6, buying them all matching outfits with ribbons and bows. Dad seems like a nice guy, though; a little young for the father of a large family, but what the heck? I'm sure he can afford it.

From here, Lisa can choose various household tasks that are appropriate for a girl to do. When she helps mom, she can do the laundry, the cooking, or the shopping! Helping out with her younger siblings yields cleaning and babysitting chores--and finally, helping Dad allows her to build furniture. This is Dad's only possible chore.

Girl on Girl Games: Style Savvy

Once upon a time, your humble contributor (me) was just a little girl. Actually, I was this girl:

Adorable, yes?

But, as time went on, and my mom stopped doing my hair and picking my clothes, I turned into this girl:

I'm the one on the left.

And now I'm reviewing a fashion game.

All jests aside, I really do enjoy fashion. I read InStyle on airplanes just like anyone else; I have whiled away many a rainy Saturday watching marathons of What Not To Wear. When the occasion arises, I have no problem putting together an outfit that doesn't make me look like a mental patient. Now, I don't have a ton of money to blow on clothing, so I don't get a lot of practice at looking fantastic.

Luckily for me, there's Style Savvy.

 The game is simple. You are a young fashionista on the go, and you've taken a sales job at one of the hottest boutiques in town. You work your way up to the top, get your own store, and the rest is history. Well, actually, the rest is just serving customers, managing inventory, and competing in fashion contests.

You start in your apartment, your launchpad to fashion stardom. You apparently get to keep all the vendor samples (and you apparently fit into vendor samples ...ahem...) and so you are able to make outfits for yourself out of anything you've bought for your store. You can do your make up, also. And, like all apartments, it is from here that you can adjust your identity and volume level.

A very metro-girl apartment. I feel like I'm in Ikea...

 In case you're wondering, here's me:

Faaantastic.
(keep reading, fools!)

Girl on Girl Games: Metroid: Other M

...Or, Samus Aran is a whiny crybaby with daddy issues. Yes, that's right. Samus, the unapologetic female protagonist of the Metroid games has been downgraded from a bad-ass bounty hunter to a touchy-feely pacifist that lets a MAN tell her what to do. I'm not sure which side of the feminist argument this article puts me on, but politics aside, let's take a nice long look at why Samus' character was ruined the minute she opened her mouth.

The Metroid series has been historically low on story. You're a bounty hunter, exploring strange alien compounds/planets/spaceships. You fight aliens and unstoppable monsters, you get missiles and you turn into a ball that can drop bombs. At the end of the first game, you are revealed to be a woman. After twenty-three years of Metroid games, the people at Nintendo discovered that women have feelings.

Let me see. What kind of feelings do women have? Well, they like small, baby animals--hey, remember that baby Metroid that imprinted on Samus in Super Metroid and then saved her life? Why don't we have Samus, a hardened bounty hunter who kills things for a living, become absolutely obsessed with it?

If you think that's a terrible idea, you might want to hum through the cut scenes as you play Other M.

Ok, so maybe she doesn't become absolutely obsessed, but she does talk about it a great deal, in her new-found soft and feminine voice. The effect is somewhat creepy, leaving me to wonder if Samus' attachment to "the baby" (as she calls it) is really her trying to work out the classic career-versus-family puzzle that confounds so many a modern woman.

What other kinds of emotional baggage do women have? Another ten seconds of stereotyping later reveals that many have issues with their fathers. Since this iteration of Samus is an orphan, she struggles with daddy-issues that focus on her former commanding officer, Adam Malkovich. As the only woman in a male-centric military outfit, Samus recalls Adam singling her out by her gender at every staff meeting. Samus is shown in flashback as a willfully defiant malcontent who disagreed with Adam at every turn, eventually rebelling so far as to leave the military altogether. In retrospect, Samus says she appreciated that Adam referred to her as a "lady". What?

And finally, what would a woman be without...more women.

Women understand other women, correct? It's one of those things like where all us women go to the toilet together and like to shop, and say things like "oh my god, I have to have those shoes" or "Jim just doesn't understand why the toilet paper holder should match the faucet!" When one of us becomes hurt, especially by some man, we get together and watch romantic comedies in our PJ's while eating ice cream. Or something. The point is, women are supposed to have a lot of empathy going, especially for each other. Because we alone know how hard it is to be a woman. Samus, an independent bounty hunter without a mother, who joined the all-male military at a young age, is not immune to this. In fact, she completely understands the motives of the female NPCs without fail, empathizing with their plights.

I'm just going to lay it all on the line. I have no idea why this particular woman is a bounty hunter and not, say, a high school guidance counselor. I'm not at all saying there's something wrong with a character who is complicated and emotional. I'm certainly not saying it's wrong for a woman to have feelings like Samus'. But what I am saying is: why would a hardened, grizzled orphan, who was an excellent soldier but not a good follower, who travels alone as a one-woman robotic killing machine, ever, ever care this much about whether or not she fits in with the military group she initially abandoned?

More emoting after the break!

Girl on Girl Games: Barbie

Girl on Girl Games: Barbie for NES

Barbie in full early 90's regalia

It would be pretty easy to dismiss as a standard girl game but for one thing:  this game is not terribly easy. Barbie is only a girl game because it is themed in accordance with the Barbie doll franchise. Underneath the veil of pink emblems, charm bracelets and shopping malls, it's really just a standard platform-er, with all the usual trappings.

Barbie takes us on a trip through Barbie's dreams, most of which center on her plans for the next day. While she's not exactly planning to turn the world upside down with her daily errands, they seem like pretty reasonable errands for a teen-age doll in Southern California. She needs to go to the mall and buy a new outfit, go swimming, have lunch at the soda shop, and then meet Ken at a party. Barbie recounts all this to us as she nods off to sleep reading a book about mermaids.

She may be a vapid blond doll, but at least she's reading a book. Enjoying it, even!

As previously stated, the game works as a standard platform-type. You play as Barbie (who is very obviously a pixelated doll) in the game. Her sprite is very tall and thin, and is always depicted in different outfits appropriate to the venue. For example, in the first level, she's wearing a plain athletic top and pants, but after the first mall level, she picks up a new ensemble (the one from the title screen). During the soda shop level, she wears a poodle skirt and sweater. And so on. Complaints about this should probably be directed to the doll line rather than the game about the doll line--after all, Barbie is a fashion doll. Why wouldn't she have lots of clothes in a game?

More after the jump!

Girl on Girl Games: Introduction

Ok, so every once and a while, people start talking about video games and gender roles. They discuss whether or not violent tendencies are reinforced in males, and so on... and then they begin turning a hard eye toward a genre known as "girl games". You've seen them; usually pink, often sporting a "z" where an "s" rightfully belongs, and always based around a stereotypical female pursuit, like fashion, unicorns or baskets of kittens. Because games of this nature can be so irritating to many independent women, it is easy for them to overlook a wide sector of gender neutral games, which I call "games", and announce for all to hear that "girl games" are what they want us to play!

Dead or Alive, while once a rather unique fighting game, is now built on the wobbly foundations seen above.

Let us be completely honest for a moment. There are some pretty stereotypically male games out there, which, I believe are just as ridiculous as the so-called "girl games." Why doesn't anyone get worked up over this? Because it's too easy to catagorize all games without pink labels as "male" games--and we can overlook garbage like rasslin' games, hunting games and games about ladies with huge tits. Those, naturally, are not aimed at the lowest common male denominator. Right.

The cross-promotional outing of the Cabbage Patch Kids on the Colecovision.

Let's face it: those steaming pink piles of ribbon and rainbows are very easy to target. Those are not for burly men with tattoos. They aren't even for skinny men with antique furniture collections. Those games are for little girls who (of course!) aren't any good at playing video games. This is where the gender debate turns ugly. "This is what they expect our daughters to play?" Sometimes this collective female voice harkens back to the very beginnings of "girl games" and blame them for impacting generations of girls.

Just one problem with that: many of these games suck, or are percieved to suck, and no one plays them. And with a few notable exceptions, especially with the advent of the all-gender-popular Nintendo DS, they aren't very popular. Even among girls. The games are too easy, people complain. They aren't relevant, they cheapen the potential of girls... you get the drift. Because games like WWE Smackdown vs. Raw really help Johnny realize his full potential.

In short, I've decided to play some girl games. Yes, I dare say, I'm going to try to play all I can find. Because it's too easy to glibly dismiss these games as mere garbage, to read that a game is about glitter hairspray and determine that the game has no value, sight unseen. In the interest of fairness, I'll be reaching as far back as the Atari for vintage girl games and looking to the most current contributions whenever possible.

Why, you may ask? Because I am (or was) the main target demographic for these games. I'm not a child any longer, but I still remember what it was like to play video games back then. I truly don't believe all of these games are terrible...and I definitely don't believe all of them are as detrimental to girls as we all fear. Oh, I've no doubts that some will curl my hair--figuratively, that is (unless the game is about curling hair.) But I think many more can be relegated to the heading of "harmless".

Yes... Even this kind of thing.

In this series, I will examine a different "girl game" every few weeks (to the extent of my patience) and attempt to assess its potential dangers, values, and basic fun factor.