Who’s The Boss?

It’s hard to forget the first time that you managed to jump past Bowser and make your way to safety in Super Mario Bros. Watching as the bridge crumbled and Bowser plummeted into the lava below was a deeply satisfying experience. Some of gaming’s most memorable moments are the result of a finely tuned confrontation with a hulking brute of a boss.

The boss battle has been around nearly as long as games themselves. The first game to feature a boss was Phoenix, an arcade shmup released in 1980. After completing four stages of top-down, space shooting action, you were pitted against an alien mother ship piloted by a diminutive space creature. To get to the pilot, you first had to weaken the ship’s hull, getting through a layer of armor and avoiding a barrage of missiles.

Since that auspicious debut, boss battles have gone on to serve a number of different functions and have expanded to appear in nearly ever genre. What is it about bosses that have made them such an enduring feature? Why, exactly, do games need them?

Read the complete article at The Escapist.

Too Gay for the U.S.A.

It started out innocently enough. A bipedal lizard that shot eggs out of his mouth wanted nothing more than to be a girl, so he wore a bow on top of his head.

According to the instruction book for Super Mario Bros. 2, released in 1988, the mini-boss Birdo “thinks he is a girl and spits eggs from his mouth. He’d rather be called ‘Birdetta.’” It seems like a harmless distinction, but this simple act of cross-dressing was soon erased from the history books. In all subsequent Mario releases, Birdo is referred to as a female, completely ignoring his gender confused roots.

Birdo isn’t alone, though. He’s just one of a long line of Japanese videogame characters forced to hide their true sexual identity when their games are localized for a North American audience. While Japanese gamers have been exposed to characters of various sexual orientations, the practice is only just starting to catch on in the West. In the past, games have been changed or censored if they contained such content. Some were never released in America at all.

Read the complete article in The Escapist.

The Greatest Shame of All

There is much about my life that could be considered “geeky.” I write about videogames and comic books professionally, my office is littered with a motley assortment of action figures and my idea of a good Friday night often involves a few dungeons and even more dragons. But in spite of all of this, there is only one aspect of my media consumption that embarrasses me: I read books based on videogames.

Read the complete article at The Escapist.