Birdo, known in Japanese as Catherine is a character in Nintendo's Mario franchise. Her first appearance was as a boss character in Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic (1987), which was localized for English-language audiences as Super Mario Bros. 2 (1988). Since then, Birdo has been a recurring character in various Mario franchise games making several cameo and playable appearances.
Celes Chere is a character and protagonist in the video game Final Fantasy VI. She was created by Yoshinori Kitase and was his favorite character in the game. She struggles with allegiances between the Empire and the rebel group, the Returners before ultimately siding with the latter. She appears in other Final Fantasy titles, including the Theatrhythm series and World of Final Fantasy.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) characters have been depicted in video games since the 1980s. Throughout the history of video games, LGBTQ characters have been almost nonexistent for a long time, reflecting the overall heteronormativity of the medium. While there has been a trend towards greater representation of LGBTQ people in video games, they are frequently identified as LGBTQ in secondary material, such as comics, rather than in the games themselves. Often, LGBTQ characters and themes, when they are included, are underrepresented, minimized, or watered down. Queer games and characters have also often found themselves being the subjects of cultural crossfires or moral panics. In 2018, Sam Greer of GamesRadar+ found only 179 games commercially released games with any LGBTQ representation, only 83 of which have queer characters who are playable characters, and only 8 of those games feature a main character who is pre-written as queer as opposed to them being queer as an option.
Vivian is a character appearing in the 2004 role-playing video game Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. She initially is a member of the three shadow sisters, facing routine abuse from her sister Beldam. They serve as an antagonist group to the player character Mario, later joining his party after he helps her. In the original Japanese version and some European translations, she is a transgender woman, while the script in initial English and German releases was altered to remove any mention of her transgender status; in the 2024 Nintendo Switch remake, her transgender status is restored. Vivian is a popular video game character, identified as a noteworthy example of LGBT characters in video games.
TowerFall is an action indie video game created by Maddy Thorson through her company Maddy Makes Games. In the game, players control up to four archers in a multiplayer platform fighter. It was released on the Ouya microconsole in June 2013 and was later ported to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Linux, OS X, and Windows as TowerFall Ascension and to the Nintendo Switch under its original title of TowerFall.
Madeline Stephanie Thorson is a Canadian video game developer, known as one of the lead creators for the video games TowerFall and Celeste, developed under the studio Maddy Makes Games. Since September 2019, Thorson has worked as Director of R&D at Extremely OK Games.
Sickhead Games, LLC is an American independent game development studio founded in 2002. It is best known for its multiplatform turn-based strategy game ARMED!, its involvement with the MonoGame framework and Torque series of game engines, and the development of several PlayStation 4/5, PlayStation Vita, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch ports of indie games including TowerFall Ascension, Stardew Valley, Darkest Dungeon, Octodad: Dadliest Catch, Slay the Spire, and Axiom Verge. The studio has updated classic console and PC games from the late 1990s and early 2000s, including ExZeus, Enclave, and Grandia, to run on modern gaming systems.
Portrayals of transgender people in mass media reflect societal attitudes about transgender identity, and have varied and evolved with public perception and understanding. Media representation, culture industry, and social marginalization all hint at popular culture standards and the applicability and significance to mass culture, even though media depictions represent only a minuscule spectrum of the transgender group, which essentially conveys that those that are shown are the only interpretations and ideas society has of them. However, in 2014, the United States reached a "transgender tipping point", according to Time. At this time, the media visibility of transgender people reached a level higher than seen before. Since then, the number of transgender portrayals across TV platforms has stayed elevated. Research has found that viewing multiple transgender TV characters and stories improves viewers' attitudes toward transgender people and related policies.
Celeste is a 2018 platform game developed and published by indie studio Maddy Makes Games. The player controls Madeline, a young woman with anxiety and depression who aims to climb Celeste Mountain. During her climb, she encounters several characters, including Part of You, a personification of her self-doubt who attempts to stop her from climbing the mountain.
Natalie Wynn is an American left-wing YouTuber, political commentator, and cultural critic. She is best known for her YouTube channel, ContraPoints, where she creates video essays exploring a wide range of topics such as politics, gender, ethics, race, and philosophy.
Nia Nal, also known by her code name Dreamer, is a fictional superheroine from the Arrowverse television series Supergirl, portrayed by Nicole Maines. The character is based on, and depicted as an ancestor of, the DC Comics character Nura Nal / Dream Girl. She debuts in the fourth season of the series. Nia Nal is the first transgender superhero on television. Maines reprised the role in the ninth and final season of The Flash.
Abigail Thorn is an English YouTuber, actress, and playwright.
Erica Anderson is a fictional character in the 2011 video game Catherine. She is a transgender woman, and her portrayal was considered controversial by Western audiences. She is a confidant to the protagonist, Vincent Brooks, working for the Stray Sheep bar, who, like her, suffers from potentially fatal nightmares. She is portrayed by Erin Fitzgerald in English and Junko Minagawa in Japanese.
Tell Me Why is a 2020 episodic adventure game developed by Dontnod Entertainment and published by Xbox Game Studios. The game consists of three chapters released for Windows and Xbox One in late 2020. It follows a pair of twins, Tyler and Alyson, with the ability to communicate with each other through telepathy, who reunite after ten years in their hometown in rural Alaska and investigate the death of their mother. A recurring theme of the story is the fallibility of memory, as the narrative explores the twins' childhood trauma and how they may each remember pivotal moments differently.
The Last of Us Part II, a 2020 action-adventure game developed by Naughty Dog and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment, focuses on two lead characters: Ellie, who sets out for revenge after suffering a great tragedy, and Abby Anderson, a soldier who becomes involved in a conflict between her militia and a cult. The switch between the playable characters was a major point of the game's development, based on a similar switch in the original game, 2013's The Last of Us.
Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl's Confabulous Memoir is a 2016 Canadian book by Kai Cheng Thom. A surrealist novel, it follows an unnamed transgender woman protagonist who leaves home at a young age to live on the Street of Miracles—where various sex work takes place—with other "femmes". After one of them is killed, others form a gang and begin to attack men on the street.
Earthblade is an upcoming Metroidvania platform video game developed by Extremely OK Games. Its development began in 2019 and was first publicly announced in 2021. The game's footage was showcased at The Game Awards 2022.
Celeste 64: Fragments of the Mountain is a 2024 3D platformer video game developed and published by Canadian indie studio Extremely OK Games for Linux, macOS and Microsoft Windows. The game was developed during a week long game jam, in which it released in celebration of the sixth anniversary of the 2018 video game Celeste. The game released January 29, 2024, acting as semi-sequel to that game and a continuation to its narrative.
