Most mistreated woman in classic gaming?

[shopkins]

That monkey with the funny name just wanted some loving when he stole a carpenter's girlfriend and climbed a construction site, but started a trend that lasted for decades. With a few notable exceptions women in classic games spent a lot of time getting kidnapped or otherwise abused as motivation for the heroes to go on adventures, stomp on turtles and punch people in the face. Which female classic game character do you think got the worst of it?

I guess Princess Peach is an obvious choice because it happens to her so much, but I really feel the worst for Marian/Marion. The first Double Dragon opens with her getting punched in the stomach and carried off to give her boyfriends Billy and Jimmy (they're both her boyfriend so, yeah, that's awkward) an excuse to grab guys by the hair and cave in their skulls. In the end who she really has no choice who she ends up with, it's just decided by violence like so many things in her life when Billy and Jimmy fight for her.

In Double Dragon II: The Revenge they up the ante and just kill her. The NES version changes things so she gets resurrected at the end, but this just sets up a sequence in the NES version of Double Dragon III where she gets possessed so the Double Dragons can finally beat on her themselves. :)

We never find out much about Marian except that she has questionable fashion sense and attracts brutal violence. She becomes a cop in the Super Double Dragon manual, but she's still a cop who gets kidnapped and I don't think she's in the actual game IIRC. She becomes an asskicking warrior in the later NEO-GEO fighting game version, I guess she finally got fed up. :)

[Ravenswood]

Medusa.

I mean seriously, she's been beat up by every Belmont for the last 500 years.

[Smashed Brother]

You can 'change your pitch up, smack some b**** up' in the NES classic, "Who Framed Roger Rabbit", just for the simple crime of walking past your character. You can lightly paste them one just by tapping the B button once, or you can repeatedly tap on the B button to build up power and let loose with a screen-shaking punch of such Chris Brown-like force that sends these hapless hens sliding backwards on their heels with their heads violently twitching side-to-side.

Unbelievable that Nintendo would let such wanton violence against women happen on their system back in the day...

[Voliko]

Who is that?
Just a girl.
Get out of here!

-Ninja Gaiden

[shopkins]

Who is that?
Just a girl.
Get out of here!

-Ninja Gaiden

Ah, Tecmo. You and your terrible misogyny.

[NayusDante]

Samus Aran

How can she wear that heavy suit for hours and hours?! It certainly can't be comfortable, especially in the fires of Norfair.


Roll (MM TOS)

Dr. Light must have a thing for child-like robotic maids, because that seems to be her lot in life.


Any of the potential wives in Harvest Moon

From what I recall, they never get to do ANYTHING after you pick them.

[Thrashdance]

Two words......Custers revenge.

[Gameguy]

Jennifer from the Splatterhouse series, just going by the Japanese plot that was poorly translated for the North American versions.

She gets kidnapped in the first game, she gets possessed by evil and gets killed by her boyfriend while attacking him(she's begging him to help her the whole time). After three months she gets rescued from the land of the dead by Rick. Five years later she gets kidnapped again and has a boreworm planted in her body so her life is in danger again, her son also gets kidnapped.

[dbiersdorf]

Two words......Custers revenge.

I think a Native American woman tied to a pole (or was it a cactus?) that is surrounded by dropping missiles and ultimately raped by Custer takes the cake here.

[Damaramu]

Chun Li

[Dire 51]

Jennifer from the Splatterhouse series, just going by the Japanese plot that was poorly translated for the North American versions.

She gets kidnapped in the first game, she gets possessed by evil and gets killed by her boyfriend while attacking him(she's begging him to help her the whole time).
If you go by the arcade game (which, since it's the original, is what everyone should be going by, story-wise), she's not just begging Rick for help, she's begging him to kill her because of what the creatures in West Mansion have done to her. Her final words to Rick are "Thank you, goodbye."

This piece of Japanese fanart sums the whole thing up perfectly:

http://splatterhouse.kontek.net/jp02_1.jpg

[Icarus Moonsight]

Grand Theft Auto Prostitutes? O_O

[kupomogli]

Any of the girls that people put into hentai drawings.

[swlovinist]

Growl comes to mind for the Genesis.

[mobiusclimber]

Laura from the D series. She's "forced" to eat her mother and kill her father. I'm not sure, given the story, that you could say she's "mistreated" exactly, but... ugh?

[skaar]

There was a bit in Ocarina of Time where you go inside a whale... I recall using the person you're supposed to rescue as a rather fearsome weapon.

[Sonicwolf]

Natalya in GoldenEye. She is jailed, kidnapped by Ouromov and constantly gets shot at by James Bond because she is just so damned annoying. LOL

Sometimes I will just blow her up so I do have her following me around, Especially in the archives mission where she is, for some reason, afraid of guns being fired yet a few missions before when you free her in the bunker, she is fine with it. So fine with it that she usually stands right in front of you while you are killing people... Her included.

[Arkhan]

Laura from the D series. She's "forced" to eat her mother and kill her father. I'm not sure, given the story, that you could say she's "mistreated" exactly, but... ugh?

post-game interviews had her saying she thought her mom tasted good and she would do it again if she could!



I think Chun Li is a good one. She gets beat on by dudes all day. They dont even take her out for dinner before they slap her around.

[k8track]

Well, I'm gonna have to go with Ms. Pac-Man. She's constantly being pursued, doggedly and endlessly, by four bloodthirsty, carnivorous wraiths who always ultimately capture her and consume her flesh, over and over, ad infinitum, like a jaundiced, ectomorphic Prometheus (with a bow). Very disturbing.

[Smashed Brother]

who....ultimately capture her and consume her flesh, over and over, ad infinitum, like a jaundiced, ectomorphic Prometheus (with a bow). Very disturbing.

How long have you been waiting to bust that one out? ;)

[EColeman24]

Grand Theft Auto Prostitutes? O_O

LOL and the motivation to beat them...? You get money from them as you do so...

[exit]

Jill Valentine is up on that list. First she barely escapes the mansion in RE1. Then in RE3 she gets chased around Racoon City by a super beast that was created to kill her, gets infected and miraculously is able to not only get cured, but escape the city right before it's blown off the map. Then in RE5 she gets captured and put under mind control by Wesker, which leads to her literally getting the sense beaten back into her by her former colleague.

So yeah, she's definitely in the top 5.

[mezrabad]

Adding a vote for the indian maiden in Custer's Revenge.

I was moved to weeping by the piteous tale of Ms. Pac-man, so I'd add her as second.

I'd add Lara Croft to the list because of all the back problems she's going to have when she's older...

[DDCecil]

I've got to go with Time Gal (Reika Kirishima) for this one.

Just about everything bad has happened to her from getting her bra bitten off by dinosaurs to being whipped by slavemasters to being sucked into WWII airplane propellers.

[Nebagram]

I'd add Lara Croft to the list because of all the back problems she's going to have when she's older...

...Particularly when you get frustrated and stuck on a level, decide 'fuck it' and hurl her off the same ledge 20 times in a row just to hear what it sounds like when all her limbs simultaneously snap.

Same also goes for Faith from Mirror's Edge (with even more explicit sfx), but she isn't strictly speaking 'classic gaming' and therefore doesn't count. :)

[XYXZYZ]

I've got to go with Time Gal (Reika Kirishima) for this one.

Just about everything bad has happened to her from getting her bra bitten off by dinosaurs to being whipped by slavemasters to being sucked into WWII airplane propellers.

True, but that's only if you suck at Time Gal. And I'll wager most people do. (like me!)

[starsoldier1]

Zelda for sure. She gets a game named after her but it's some fruity dude in elf costume that steals the spotlight.

[exit]

I'd add Lara Croft to the list because of all the back problems she's going to have when she's older...

I'll second that because of all the times I ended up killing her, both by accident and purposely. Nothing felt better than having her do a nose dive off a rather large ledge into the ground in the original Tomb Raider, it really did help relieve the stress sometimes.

[NayusDante]

Maggie Robbins in LucasArts' The Dig had it pretty bad. It's rough enough having your asteroid recon team sent across the universe (and somehow becoming left-handed in the process), but she's stuck with the worst position out of the three as they try to survive on an alien planet. The archaeologist dies, revives, and gets addicted to resurrection-crystals, so he's off getting reanimated most of the game, and the commander is Robert Patrick, wandering around playing with the aliens' public transit systems and mumbling about how he misses steak and beer. All the while, poor Maggie Robbins, esteemed writer and reporter, is stuck poking around alien computers covered in vines until she can somehow learn the alien language. To make matters worse, she gets kidnapped by an alien spider the moment she figures out some alien words. Then she dies before getting back home, and if you revive her she's so disgusted that she jumps off a cliff.

[Arkhan]

Jill Valentine is up on that list. First she barely escapes the mansion in RE1. Then in RE3 she gets chased around Racoon City by a super beast that was created to kill her, gets infected and miraculously is able to not only get cured, but escape the city right before it's blown off the map. Then in RE5 she gets captured and put under mind control by Wesker, which leads to her literally getting the sense beaten back into her by her former colleague.

So yeah, she's definitely in the top 5.

When they say "You have to get that device off her chest!" , was I the only person whose first instinct was to shoot her in the tits with a maxed out sniper rifle, only to instantly kill her, and then go WELL WHAT THE HELL. I GOT IT OFF DIDNT I.

[GarrettCRW]

I've got to go with Time Gal (Reika Kirishima) for this one.

Just about everything bad has happened to her from getting her bra bitten off by dinosaurs.

As long as the dinosaur bites off ONLY the bra and not her boobs, there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.