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Dad Hacks "Donkey Kong" - Now Pauline Rescues Mario
H_Fisher writes "What do you do when your daughter wants the girl to be the hero of your old video game? If you're Mike Mika, you hack the game ROM to reverse the roles. He even changed the 'M' at the top of the screen to a 'P.'"
You tell her to check her privilege and stop being a sexist! Oh, wait, wrong gender.
I hope he also fixed the final level bug.
There was a patch for DOOM that let you shoot Barney.
Maybe you shouldn't be taking your morality from Donkey Kong.
He did it so his daughter could play as the character she wanted to play. Not as some feminist statement.
Are other industries as bad, or is the gaming industry one of the worst?
Everyone's this bad. Nobody RTFA's and understands that Dad took a request from his kid and decided to go all-out on it. They all think it's a political-social-economic-whatever sort of statement. Dad isn't out to make a statement. He's out to love his kid.
My guess, with absolutely no statistics to back it up, is that many of the attackers are not parents themselves and simply do understand that such a selfless, political-message-free love exists.
Why not have those things? Maybe his daughter likes them? Just because they're traditionally female, doesn't mean they're inferior.
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If the daughter finds them OK, what's wrong with it? Maybe she likes "girly" things.
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
What about Samus, Yuna (FF X), Lara Croft (in 9 games), Aeris(th), Rayne, Jill Valentine, etc.
Face it, there are plenty of female characters. And since women play games maybe 10% as much as men, they are probably overrepresented.
Let the haters hate, and the lovers love. We know who's who by their comments.
If your daughter wanted it all princessy, and you loved her, you'd do it too. Remember (if you RTFA), she asked to play as not-Mario; we don't know what more she said beyond that. If my son asked for an elephant in the game, I'd make peanuts for him to use. And a little feather because of Dumbo.
Got my man-card, and my dad-card, and nobody's pulling either of them.
This ROM has the pie factory level, but it has the NES title screen. How's that work? TFA says the 2010 ROM, but what's that from?
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
I agree. Fuck the comments about sexism. This is 100% a dad doing something because he loves his daughter and was able to do something cool because she wanted something different.
He should have switched the big monkey at the top with the poor little oil drum at the bottom while he was at it, to reflect the full scope of societal changes that have occurred since the release of Donkey Kong.
In this new version, the girl fights to stop Big Oil at the top from throwing barrels at the cute little monkey at the bottom, while the guy just stands there watching the game. When she gets to the top, she's not rescuing Mario, she's stopping Big Oil from harming cute animals. Mario just happens to come out of his comatose state when she enters the room and feels compelled to feign excitement for her quest.
In college I had a roommate who felt very strongly that depressed people should not give in to pressure to take Prozac. So I "hacked" (I think I used ResEdit or something... nothing fancy) a Pong clone to replace the ball with a green/yellow Prozac capsule. That way he could "fight the good fight" by trying to deflect the Prozac in response to my repeated attempts to stuff it down his side of the screen. This made him a much more animated opponent in Pong, and I told him this only proved that Prozac does improve people's behavior. Which upped the ante as the game continued, in much the same way that Tetris starts throwing bricks at you with more attitude the further you get into the game.
sc2: heart of the swarm?
My sister agrees that the early tomb raiders were somewhat chauvinist but says of the very latest that it feels like a video game with high appeal for women to play.
Many of the final fantasy have sexy (but not sex object...) female characters that you can play. Female characters in RPG games are everywhere.
Still, I agree with the spirit of your point. Yet, I don't the think answer is to step down the objectification of women but to step up the objectification of men. We actually have a pretty hard time dealing with "sexual aggression" and not being heard.
Z
Let's try to switch it further: Mario as the bad guy, DK must be rescued. Maybe DK has a daughter?
Regina of Dino Crisis is a strong female role. If you dont know the game it's pretty much Resident Evil with dinosaurs
He said "that aren't sex objects"
While things like Zero-suit Samus can certainly be considered a bit of fan service, I wouldn't consider most of her outings as putting her in the sex-object position. I don't know if the GPP would agree.
Meanwhile, on the flip side, Lara Croft *definitely* is, except in her latest game (written by the excellent Rhianna Pratchett) where she's actually written like a real human being.
A little offtopic, I know, but it took me until just now to realize that she was Terry Pratchett's daughter. Apparently she will also get all the rights to Discworld and continue writing it. I certainly hope she is up to the challenge.
Oh, I wish I had mod points for you, my friend.
You seriously think Lara Croft isn't a sex object? .
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
What about gender neutral ones like Shepard from Mass Effect or the Warden from Dragon Age?
My daughter was once playing with ktuberling, where you drag little characters on the screen and create a scene. One day I caught her rotating the mouse horizontally, because she wanted the little penguin to lay down instead of standing, and she was complaining it was not working. I'm an electronic engineer, but I have not all that spare time! :-)
On the other hand, I think that Apple and others could gain millions by hiring a bunch of kids as designers...
With all the hard work beating Donkey Kong she'll find herself ending up with a short fatty with a funny moustache that dresses like a pervert...
Pauline is not a very feminine name, and P is not a very feminine first letter either.
I hope for this poor girl she wasn't named Pauline.
On the other hand, M is a fairly feminine letter and there are plenty of feminine first names with it.
Parenting - you're doing it right!
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Yuna is a typical Japanese Sex Object, the same can definitely be argued abouth Aeris.
Lara Croft, really?
Don't know about the other two.
making mario wear those at the top of the screen while pauline climbs up in a plumbers suit would have been a pretty fucking lousy hack.. just saying.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Nobody looks like that in real life.
No? I do ... look a lot like Lara Croft. Sure, it's an odd look for a man, but I think I pull it off nicely.
Since I have no reason to hate you with a passion, I won't suggest you watch Twilight but aren't the males in that drivel just as much sex objects?
What really is the difference between Lara Croft and Fabian? Don't know who he is? Google it and you will find he is a model who appears on countless romance novel covers and NOT because he is a novelist.
Sex... wasn't really all that much a part of the original Tomb Raider. yes, she had big polygons, which most of the time you don't see since the camera is behind her. Meanwhile the women in Planescape: Torment had FAR bigger tits but nobody complained about that. Because part of the reason to have big tits in low-rez games was so the tits would be visible at all.
In Israel right now there is a law banning thin models. To protect the feelings of the whales. Because the only thin women are freaks who don't eat of course, not just a normal percentage of women who just happen to not overeat and have a natural slender built. To protect one groups feelings, another group is excluded. For every a-cup girl supposedly offended by doubt D Lara, there is a double D girl offended by every small titted heroine. Can't girls with big busts be heroes or are they condemned like blondes to always be stupid whores?
HERE IS THE SECRET
Every personality you see in the media, is a role. Doesn't matter whether you like said role or not. It is a role. Every actor acts a role defined by the writer. Media can NEVER show reality (which is why people who take 1984 as a prophecy as such idiots) because the writer WROTE everything as if he/she was god. A personality is self-destructive or succesful because the writer made it to be like that. In Far Cry 3 and the new Tomb Raider the "hero" goes from a snivelling coward to lean mean well adjusted killing machine because that was what the writers put in the plot. A different writer could just as easily have written a plot showing how both lapse into insanity. When backdraft was made, fire departments around the world saw an increase in volunteers and Pretty Woman has been claimed to have caused an increase in girls thinking prostitution always has an happy ending... for the girl. Mind you, the postman always ring twice didn't see more people wanting to be postman. Because the writers made on proffesion seem heroic while the other... wasn't. And many movies have shown hookers in bad light. The role an actor plays is not real.
REAL people are often WAY more complex then can be put in a 1.5 hour movie. Lara Croft breasts are often the joke of back pains... and? This is well known among women and those who live in the same world as them. Breast reduction surgery does exist and STILL women with small breasts want to be sultry big bossomed and big breasted women want to be slender and cute. And men want big cocks despite most women not particularly liking to be stretched to wide or to deep while men with actual big penisses wish that girls wouldn't run out the door when they get naked. We all want what we can't have because SURELY the grass is greener on the other side, so we all climb the fence and never wonder why so many people are climbing the other way.
BUT it is NOT the media's fault, it is our own.
Take publicity shots for say Star Wars. You can probably find some of Carry Fisher in her metal bikini and say "fan service". That is because all the pictures of Harrison Ford strutting it, don't appeal to YOU. But they ARE fanservice to a LOT of women. You drooled over Leia, they drooled over Han. Or Luke. Or Obi-Wan... women are weird or Jabba... my gf picked me after all.
You might think that a Lord of the Rings does not have much fanservice but just search the net. So... does that make the characters sex symbols? YES! Just not to you, but if SOMEONE drools over it, it is a sex symbol.
Sex sells, it always has done and both genders lap it up.
Sexism is only seeing it in one gender. Note the Israeli law on thin models ONLY applies to females. Because everyone knows bulemia
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
.. a pink handbag and umbrella arn't the first things you'd pick. Not unless you wanted to ask him out on a date of course.
... dad had a convenient excuse to spend some quality time hacking.
Wife: Hey, why the fsck are you still sitting in front of that computer, its 1am! You love that thing more than me. I'm sick of it! Come to bed and treat me like a woman!
Dad: I'm giving matriachal empowerment to the characterisation of this game for the sake of our daughters self esteem.
Wife: Oh , well, ok then! Night!
Dad: Heh , sucker. Now, lets see what this ISR does...
Jade, from Beyond Good & Evil.
I guessed as soon as I saw her name mentioned as the writer for Overlord. It was a lot of the reason I even tried the game. Safe to say, I think Terry's sense of humour has rubbed off on her :)
which is totally what she said
This dad did what feminists can't be arsed to do, he worked long hours past midnight to change a game so it was more of her daughter's liking, instead of bitching about it for years without doing anything.
It would have been a better story if her daughter made the hack herself instead of having to manipulate a man to get her wish, but that can be excused by her little age.
They aren't buff like that to entice females or gay males to play, they're buff like that as a kind of ego fantasy for the males that buy those games. They aren't sex objects.
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
This is all anyone needed to say about this story.
The three characters are Pauline, Donkey Kong (now Cranky Kong), and Jump Man.
Now that is cool!
Agreed 100%
I am a bit doubtful about calling this a hack, this is reverse engineering.
A hack would have been: ... there you are, darling!
- Daddy but I want to be the hero!!!
- Ok! wait a sec... *puts fake mustache on girl*
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
I find it amusing that you assume people know who April Ryan is, but that they don't know who Chell is... I'd say that Portal was a *much* bigger title than The Longest Journey, not to mention that TLJ came out 14 years ago, and while it has a cult following it's still quite an old game that isn't very well known in the main stream.... (that said, you're right... TLJ and Dreamfall both present strong female leads as their protagonists)
You tend to find better written female characters in CRPGs. Bioware is especially good at writing female characters that ring true... Think Neverwinter Nights, Mass Effect, Jade Empire, and Dragon Age. It shouldn't really be surprising that Bioware is doing this, though... they're also about the only game developper that bothers to include gay/lesbian characters and romance options in their work, too. I'm torn on the Bioware issue, actually, between my desire to support them and what they're doing, and my utter loathing for EA and its business practices....
Unfortunately, as much as women vote with their wallets, a lot more people just don't give a shit, so developpers don't realize that there's a market for it... but a personal anecdote: the last time I bought a game that didn't give me the option of having a female lead (or an undefined gender for the lead character) was 1992 (Star Control II). I'm simply not comfortable playing male characters, or with all the fan service that men get in games. Perhaps the reason there aren't a lot of girl gamers is because the industry on the whole doesn't seem to give a shit about women?
Members of PETA hacked the game to make the human the villain and the monkey the hero.
Oh, wait...
Nariko and her sister in Heavenly Sword (both are playable characters).
There were also female lead characters in WET and Heavy Rain but can't remember their names off the top of my head, but yes they tend to be very much in the minority, probably because of the belief that men don't want to play as female characters.
The whole point of this story is to stir up the sexism shrieker shitstorm. You take that aspect out, and there's no reason for it to be posted.
It would just be a combination of headlines: "This dad loves his daughter" (Also not newsworthy to anyone other than the gender warriors) and "Guy does something only marginally more complicated than hex editing 'File Manager' title bar to display 'File Mangler'"
Forget that, he put Rayne on the list. To be more of a sex object she'd have to start taking off the stripper outfit she's wearing.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
In any sufficiently advanced feminism, every female becomes a sex object when observed by a male. Even a homosexual male.
I would argue she's not. Not a "strong leading female character" either (used as damsel in distress and then killed off early to create a sad moment for the leading male - and the player), but definitely not a sex object.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Chell barely gets mentioned in the game and I think the only place you actually see her in the game, is in the cinematic at the end of Portal 2 (or if you set up some portals like a mirror). Chell is more anonymous than Doom Guy, at least you can see his face in the status bar and there's a pic of him in the menu screen.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
And since women play games maybe 10% as much as men, they are probably overrepresented.
citation needed.
Do RPGs and similar which come with a character creator count? Like Neverwinter Nights, Drakensang and so on?
Or Jade Empire, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Star Trek: Elite Force (unfortunately only the first part).
You don't see Chell in the ending of Portal 2 (neither in Portal 1). If you want to see her in game, you have to look through portals, like in Half-Life, no cutscene and no cinematic leaves the ego-perspective.
There IS sexism in games. To claim otherwise is to ignore the reality of the world.
What is great about this story is that this is how sexism ENDS. It's about little steps that fathers take for their daughters, mothers for their sons, and people for one another.
This is a feminist act because all it does is try to make a girl feel happy about the games that she plays, so that she doesn't feel excluded or lesser just because she's a girl. That's all that feminism is.
The guy wants what's best for his daughter and he's willing to go to lengths to achieve it. He was able to do something, so he did. If everyone else did the same, we wouldn't need feminism--equality would already be here.
I say this with all sincerity, and as a father of a 3-year-old daughter.
Your post is a CMOH.
Posted anonymously cause I'm actually a little embarrassed about it.
If I see mod points in time, this is getting them!
You have 5 Moderator Points!
Which Helpless Linux zealot/MS basher do you want to mod down today?
Kerrigan is a great example. Yes, she is a bit light on the clothes, but that is pretty much an afterthought to the other facets of her character. A badass warrior, betrayed then sweet revenge, and she has had two games pretty much devoted to her. There are few better/more complex characters out there.
She's an attractive grave robber. :)
You're right. I was probably confusing it with a fan film recreation of the "cornfield" scene that showed her from the 3rd-person perspective.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I'd love to see more of Daphne in that see-through dress swinging her sword to save Dirk.... Of course, that's a bit more involved since it was all hand-drawn animation.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Despite what Rush Limbaugh might have you believe about what "Feminazis" look like, this dad IS a feminist pretty much by definition. Yes, some feminist are the shrill morons that you might picture, but most are just people (men and women) who stand by the belief that people should not be limited by their gender.
They aren't sex objects.
Speak for yourself. Kratos can dominate me any day *purrrr*.
Princess Toadstool in Super Mario 2 (though this character is powerless in almost every other Mario game)
Most others, yes, but she can hold her own in the various Mario RPG games.
And to add to that list:
Terra (FF6)
Celes (FF6)
Any of the female characters from Trails in the Sky.
I'm sure I could come up with a few more, but you are right that the number of strong male leads exceeds the number of strong female leads, though I don't think it's quite as dismal as you seem to think it is.
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
Link?
You realize, now that you have posted you cannot mod, even if you get mod points in time ...
"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." - Every fascist, ever
This remindes me of the mod my brother did for a company, Palm City Music many years ago. They wanted to make their own brand of Pac-Man. So they got Mark to reverse engineer the Pac-Man ROMs and modify the characters to look like the the head of Popeye and the energy pills to look like cans on spinach. The Ghosts? They became pirates.
Just a small nit-- Rush Limbaugh does not use the term "feminazi" as a general term for a feminist. By his own statements there are fewer than a dozen public figures in the country who would qualify.
You used to be able to purge your comments.. didn't you?
Been a relay long time since I was in that situation.
You have 5 Moderator Points!
Which Helpless Linux zealot/MS basher do you want to mod down today?
I've seen too many of them, might be this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4drucg1A6Xk
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Samus from Metroid Prime.
Van I have Vanellope von Schweetz from Sugar Rush in Wreck-it Ralph? Bit of a cheat I know.
If you did, it was before my time ;)
"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." - Every fascist, ever
I see gender roles are still alive and well, with Pauline using pink umbrella's and pink handbags in her quest to defeat Donkey Kong...
Has no one actually played Donkey Kong? Those were from the original game as the icons for bonus points. They were Pauline's items that she tossed for Mario to pick up. If he were going to really flip that aspect, he should change the color/style on the umbrella, and maybe make the purse a lunch pail or something. But that's more sprite editing.
He effected a bored affect.
stopping Big Oil from harming cute animals.
I know you love you some Sonic the Hedgehog, but I'm not sure it'd be so easy to hack Donkey Kong (Pie Factory Edition) for NES to correspond to your recommended plot changes.
Mario kidnapped the Princess (and the mother of the Koopalings), Koopa rescued her, and now Mario is running around killing everything in the Mushroom Kingdom.
If true, that'd confirm the theory I'd had all along: Goombas lived in peace, Toads invaded, Goombas hired the mercenary group Koopa Troop to freeze the Toads into blocks and take Peach as a POW, Mario had to meddle in this war and help the Toads.
One time I hacked Donkey Kong on Atari 2600 for a guy who wanted to propose using a message embedded in the game. The text in the screenshot looks funny because it's necessary to use a flickering trick to display text on the 2600 -- it looks better on the actual machine.
Download MAME Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. It's Available for Linux and Android platforms. Then Google around for a ROM set for your mame version number.
'Hope it was at least entertaining.'
No.
Chell in Portal (though you almost never see her)
I'd like to point out there are more ways to experience a character than directly seeing them.
Alyx Vance belongs on that list as well. As much as Gordon has done to save and protect her, she's done the same for Gordon and others. Judith Mossman would qualify as well though is a much more minor character.
Account -> Discussions -> Disable Sigs
I'm sure someone above has already asked this, but I'm surprised it wasn't the first post. People have been easily hacking NES roms to switch around or replace sprites for about fifteen years or so. There is already a HUGE body of Donkey Kong rom hacks that change the game graphics, and there is no doubt in my mind that a version of this exact hack has been around about that long. You can find even more hacks of the original Super Mario Bros, replacing Mario with a woman, a klansman, Mike from MST3K, or just about anyone. Why is this particular hack suddenly news?
I'm fairly sure that cheap "romance" novels aren't marketed at men... but the covers on those are fairly oversexualized as well.
As for the big bulky superheroes... my wife was pretty happy with the scene where "Thor" went shirtless, so I'd say that's not "just for men" either.
I always thought I was saving my big hairy, yet easily influencable lover from that blonde haired vamp who tried to turn him around.
I considered it a tragic ending when he finally fell.
Oh, if only I had modpoints and the score could exceed +5. You deserve to be modded infinitely high.
No, he's not (necessarily) a feminist. Indeed, he's destroying the man's role in society in favour of pushing a female superiority agenda.
Or maybe he's making his daughter happy. Sounds pretty gender normative to me; how feminist is _that_?
If the daughter finds them OK, what's wrong with it? Maybe she likes "girly" things.
According to the feminists, it's wrong to like girly things. She only likes girly things because men make her like them.
It's all awesome female free will and self determination, until she chooses the wrong answer, then it's only because she's abused by society and evil men.
This shows how bogus concepts like patriarchy really are. People are much more loyal to real things like their daughters than they are to virtual ones like their gender.
Given a choice any sane person would ignore pretty much any principle or law if following it would not be in their children's interest, because from an evolutionary point of view that is a very valuable trait - parents that don't will tend not to reproduce very successfully.
Once you work out you're basically a machine programmed to breed silly ideas like laws and morals all cease to have any real meaning.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Sarah Kerrigan
There IS sexism in games. To claim otherwise is to ignore the reality of the world.
What is great about this story is that this is how sexism ENDS. It's about little steps that fathers take for their daughters, mothers for their sons, and people for one another.
This is a feminist act because all it does is try to make a girl feel happy about the games that she plays, so that she doesn't feel excluded or lesser just because she's a girl. That's all that feminism is.
The guy wants what's best for his daughter and he's willing to go to lengths to achieve it. He was able to do something, so he did. If everyone else did the same, we wouldn't need feminism--equality would already be here.
exactly. just to give another example, as a 14-year-old male, I was greatly disheartened by the altogether realistic dimensions of Lara Croft's rack in the latest Tomb Raider. My dad heard my complaint, and a few hours of hacking later, those gazongas are so big they practically make the game unplayable. It's all about accommodating different people's needs and interests, and setting aside our lamentable tendency to judge one another.
how many pairs of boxer shorts should you own?
"That character doesn't count because she's not written as a real human being" would rule out many male characters as well. You don't really think Donkey Kong or any Mario game has a lot of literary merit as a story, do you? Likewise, ruling out characters who empower others would get rid of lots of male characters. Having a small handful of female characters doesn't look so sexist when your criteria are so strict that you're down to a small handful of males as well.
I didn't know that was her, but you're right
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2007/06/talking-with-rhianna-pratchett-writer-and-co-story-designer-of-overlord/2/
Personally, in my role as the writer, I also tried to have a little fun with the characters by making them into various manifestations of evil. For example, Rose (one of your possible Mistresses) is the practical face of evil; her role in an evil empire would be organizing things - making sure everything gets done - right down to checking the temperature of the lava pool and sweeping up the entrails after a torture session. She's a bit like a twisted Mary Poppins. Mistress Velvet, on the other hand, understands how evil should look. She is all about style. Given half a chance she'd be cracking a whip and shouting "More black lace, more black lace!"
You can see it here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGVktFkrDN4
The game was certainly a lot more memorable with someone to make the plot a parody of The Hobbit from Sauron's point of view.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
So you're saying just because she's cute she's not a kick ass adventurer? Or that only men can be adventurers?
What about a game with a male character that women players find cute? Would that be as bad?
It seems like if you have only male protagonists people will say it is sexist. But if you have female protagonists it is somehow still sexist.
Relax - they're just video games. Trying to read any deep cultural message into them is fundamentally futile.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
If Peach is a POW, better make sure nobody bumps her
How do you think the Koopalings got made? It appears to have been male Koopa Troop members (other than Bowser, apparently) bumping Peach.
I'm waiting for the release of "Tomb Raider: Quest for Luggage".
>"What do you do when your daughter wants the girl to be the hero"
Sorry, you can't without a sex change operation. But you can help her be the heroine!
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/heroine
Mario rescued first.
Sorry -- yes I omitted a word at 2 am. Thanks for the humorous way of pointing it out.
How did you leave out Ms. Pac?
Well TFA mentions she likes to play Princess Toadstool in Super Mario Bros 2.
I wouldn't say Yuna circa FFX was a sex object. She certainly decided to dress a little stripperiffic when FFX-2 came around though.
In any sufficiently advanced feminism, every female becomes a sex object when observed by a male. Even a homosexual male.
In sufficiently advanced feminism, feminists fight -against- rights for homosexual males because any males gaining rights is a disadvantage to females.
I'm glad you found at least one positive thing from having your testicles removed.
He might still have them, and still look like Lara Croft.
"It's a trap!"
The whole point of this story is to stir up the sexism shrieker shitstorm. You take that aspect out, and there's no reason for it to be posted.
I completely and utterly (vehemently so) disagree. You take that aspect out and it has even more of a reason to be posted: Dad hacks game ROM for kid. THAT is what this site is about. That IS News for Nerds.
We should be arguing over which hex editor was used and such, not the sexist aspect.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
How is he destroying man's role in society?? Is man's role in society to be the star of Donkey Kong? I think we will get by just OK without. How is making his daughter happy gender normative?? Making a child happy is not a gender specific activity.
Except it's not news. That's my point. People make romhacks all the time, usually doing a lot more than just swapping sprites (Asshole Mario, anyone?).
Slashdot doesn't waste its time with BS "human interest" stories. If Anita and the other Sirens of the Sex Wars didn't exist, this wouldn't have gotten a first look, much less a second.
He's taking Mario out of a role that would suit the athleticism of a man to replace him with a woman. He then portrays Mario as a helpless captive of an ape.
The emasculation of a strong male role model is not necessary to achieve gender equality, yet that is what he's done.
Regarding making children happy: I refer you to the phrases 'Daddy's Girl' and 'Mummy's Boy'. Like it or not, those are the stereotypical factions within a nuclear family and thus his actions are indeed gender normative.
What is great about this story is that this is how sexism ENDS. It's about little steps that fathers take for their daughters, mothers for their sons, and people for one another.
Dunno about that. That little girl still isn't going to grow up to be a football linebacker, or combat soldier. Litttle boys still aren't going to become mothers. (They can take on some motherly duties as a father, but they can't *be* the mother)
Men and women are equal in importance, but it doesn't translate into equal capabilities or potentials. I do like that the father did this to please his daughter; I just don't think you can "fix" reality by gender flipping a video game. Nor do I think that that reality needs to be "fixed". (If it ain't broke ...)
http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/1225/
It's a pity you got hit with offtopic. It is relevant to the discussions triggered by the story.
It was a nice nerd-ish thing for a dad to do for his little girl, but people seem to be reading more into it than they should.
How is a man accommodating a girl showing female empowerment? It would be if her mom did it, but all this shows the little girl is that her Daddy is cool. That's still a good thing, but it's a different kind of good thing.
Um, no.
The problem with the LEGO products for girls is that they are steriotypically feminized, and the themes of the sets reinforce the idea that girls and women can't do anything significant with their lives except shop and perform domestic chores. The Donkey Kong hack on the other hand, communicates the message that girls and women can perform the same feats as boys and men.
"Remember, there never were pineapple-almond cookies here."
Subject line says it all. I want this.
Mostly because she is so forward, the whole thing about the gorgeous girl doing all the flirting and that is enough is quite appealing to a lonely, shy teenager.
Depends a bit on what you mean by sex object, but she has very little personality other than flirty, kind and wanting to save the world.
In essence, she is defined by being a woman instead of being a character first and a gender second.
This is the essential basis for sex object, not in the "dresses slut" kind of way, but in the "Males are the norm, therefore females need less character to define themselves".
Simply put, female characters are usually foils, not characters.
You don't really think Donkey Kong or any Mario game has a lot of literary merit as a story, do you?
You're missing the point. It's easy to envision yourself in the role of Donkey Kong or Mario precisely because they don't have a lot of character depth; their only clear traits are 'powerful,' 'male,' and 'kinda goofy-lookin'.' The first two apply to most video game characters. A lot of them are stupid or annoying or overly buff, but they're still characters that most guys wouldn't mind using as an avatar in the context of the game.
Most female video game characters, what few of them there are, are not suitable avatars for the majority of female gamers. Quite frankly, I would rather pretend to be a man than play as Yuna or most of the other options available. By and large they aren't powerful warriors, they don't inspire fear in their enemies, and every time they open their mouths I want to punch them in the face. I kinda liked Lulu for the first ten minutes of FFX, but then she revealed that the most important thing to her was her crush on the stupidist character in the game and it kind of ruined her for me. Lara Croft I don't mind so much, but only because I'm a lesbian.
"All statements are true in some sense, false in some sense, and meaningless in another sense."