With March drawing to a close we also have the end of Women's History Month, in which the role of women in various aspects of society are celebrated and highlighted. We previously shared a somewhat quirky effort at participation from Nintendo of America, highlighting a range of characters that have played vital parts in their games or franchises.
Quite a few of the Nintendo examples were actually decent - if not all - but an area that's often tackled is the design of women in games. An argument is sometimes made that the accentuated body shapes of women in games are similar to muscle-bound, six-packed male characters, yet that surely doesn't discount the validity of an argument that game characters can be more realistic and suitable for their purposes. If a woman in a game is supposed to be a fighter, for example, how is a thong practical?
In an interesting article on muddycolors.com in early March - hat-tip to Tiny Cartridge for the spot - we see a host of characters re-imagined by artists. Many of these cover graphic novel and comic characters, as examples, but we've picked out some game-related art below. As a note, the Zero Suit Samus artwork is a reaction to the Super Smash Bros. high-heeled design, so is designed in isolation from the idea of using the Power Suit.
Check them out and let us know what you think - we've included the descriptions from the original artists.
[source muddycolors.blogspot.kr, via tinycartridge.com]
Comments 80
I'm... not a fan. The art is gorgeous, but the design choices are... not for me.
I love the Great Fairy redesign. It's beautiful!
...The Zero Suit figure scares me. lol
Watch Peach still get kidnapped by Bowser...
Zero Suit has too much gadgets, that irritates the eye and pulls away from the character herself. And to say Samus was wearing nothing is dumb, otherwise she would be naked or are divers naked as well?
Peach is so OoC, that it hurts. She looks so ugly.
Chun Li... oh boy, where to start. It could be a guy, for all reasons, wearing women clothes and make-up. Sorry, if this is a direct strike, but this is what I see when I look at the picture.
The Great Fairy is okay, even though the lips are a bit too big for my taste. But it comes close to the original.
Eh, this kind of thing is just pointless. If you want "realistic" or "practical" character designs, make your own characters.
Peach: this is pretty badass, and a well done picture. It shows a post-apocalyptic version of Peach with a huge bazooka. But it's only barely influenced by Peach's original design and personality.
Zero Suit Samus: The armor is pretty well-designed, and at least it knows what statement it's trying to make, unlike the Peach one: less sexy, more "practical." (No fun!)
Great Fairy: Not bad I guess, but doesn't really fit the style of Ocarina of Time. I do prefer it to the original, since those fairies are the most terrifying characters in the game. 0_0
Chun Li: No complaints about the new outfit. But that face is pretty ugly.
I like the Peach one if just because I never pictured her being a bomb expert before. XD The Samus is, well, I don't like what she's wearing on her head.
"If a woman in a game is supposed to be a fighter, for example, how is a thong practical?"
Golden Axe's Ax Battler swans around in tight little man-panties with a big ol' bulge in the front and little else. That's not really practical either. And it doesn't have to be practical, it's fiction. Fantasy. Some would say it's male 'sexual' fantasy and not something for women, but that's taking a very broad brush to things in my view.
A bazooka, really, so out of character for peach. Look i am a woman holding a giant male centric phallic shaped object, arent I just so progressively feminine. Bazookas do not make a strong female character. The only one even remotly decent is the Great Fairy, actually, thats really good. Sorry, but chun li looks the same, wow she isnt wearing a thong, ok, cool shorts, because cartoon characters are concerned about confort.
People try harder to create ur own characters. dont like how characters u like not precieve ur own personal values, well create one that reflect ur personality and stop infringing on the artistic integrity of others.
I thought the whole point of Samus's Zero Suit was she wore it under her much more awesome armour? it's silly to just ignore that in the redesign. It's nicely drawn but the design itself isn't well thought through. I know she's all sexy in her Zero Suit but it's also pretty practical and not dissimilar to the outfits worn by professional sports women and gymnasts. Practically naked? The only skin it exposes is her face! It seems basically the main objection is the zero suit is so figure hugging (again, it needs to be) and Samus has a very well toned figure (as she would given what she does for a living). I wonder if it was a muscley guy would it be an issue?
I agree her Smash heels are stupid though.
Peach with a bazooka, really love the art style but it's such an obvious reimagining I feel I've seen it so many times before. Still, really do like the style on that one!
Chun Li, fair play, it's a decent costume and it makes sense. I'd have kept the swishy skirt thing as well though, layered on top or something, because it makes for a nice dynamic movement as she fights.
The Great Fairy. Yup, much better! The original ones kinda freak me out, especially the way they scream as they appear (I know it's meant to be laughter but there's something unsettling about it). Really amazing art and a really nice redesign.
The Peach one I love, the Samus one I like but it sort of defeats the purpose of the zero suit (does that guy even know his Metroid), the great fairy is just a head and the Chun-Li one is SJW parfait.
While I don't care for the redesign, I do have to agree that Samus's Zero Suit is pretty ridiculous.
The whole article is nothing else than butt kissing with the SJW to be PC as possible and not to risk anything. As if this will help anything but stagger the people and fans.
Great Fairy redesign is awesome!
They're more awkward than anything, honestly. I mean, Peach has a bazooka for crying out loud. And though I know the drawing was made as if the Zero suit was Samus's usual outfit, that really doesn't make sense. The Zero suit was tight because it went under her armor. What the artist drew here wasn't the Zero suit at all. It was more like Combat Samus, but the armor already fills that role.
I like them all but the Chun-Li.
I like the first and third pictures.
The second one just revolves around the pointless idea that a character can't have tight, scarce clothes because she's female, despite that being far more appropriate for things such as the infiltration on Ridley's pirate ship and such, part on which the Zero suit was actually featured in the game as her only piece of clothes on. I'd like to see her not making noise as she sneaks and crawls around with those giant metallic plates on her legs. EDIT - Also, what @TrueWiiMaster said.
The fourth would be A-OK, but I just don't fancy the art. Sorry.
The biggest issue with the Other M platform heels was the fact that they clearly wouldn't fit inside the boots of the Power Suit. This design takes that even further, there's no way any of that would fit inside the armor. Not to mention that it does not look futuristic at all.
The Zero Suit design is fine as long as you use the original design from Metroid Zero Mission (which even has concept art specifically warning not too make the heels too big).
I don't know how I feel about the Chun-li redesign. With the height and speed her kicks reach I feel like she will split those pants in no time.
Edit: Also why does everyone want to redesign zero suit samus? The outfit is skin tight (or swimsuit) since she is wearing armor over it. it would be like throwing shoulder pads all over tony stark.
I think sometimes people get caught up in trying to make something fit a mold its not supposed to. Take Peach for instance. She is usually not a frontliner but when she is given the nature of the mario universe her clothes make just as much sense as the overalls the bros wear. I love positive role models but I like them to make sense in the context of the their character. Like Jade from beyond good and evil. If you feel that you have to shoehorn a character into a role then its time for new characters to be created that actually fit your requirement.
I've got to say the Samus redesign completely misses the point. Is her famous orange armour supposed to be worn over that?
@MrKenta Your talking about a game where a person is turned into energy and put in a ball. Platform heels fitting inside the suit shouldn't be a concern. They're just ridiculous.
I don't know what to say about this article,so i'll just say eh.
Zero suit Samus reminds me of the Aeon Flux cartoon, and also looks awesome !
Peach and the Great Fairy both have looks I like. There's an atmosphere about both of them that is perfect and jarring at the same time. I'm not really feeling the Chun Li one, mostly because it's a slight change in cut of garment rather than a reimagining. I don't know where to start with Samus, other than she looks like a futuristic rugby player. I would have thought reimagining her normal armor would be cooler.
@MasterGraveheart Same here. To me, it looks good to a certain extent, but it just feels like it doesn't represent the character's true personality (mainly Peach).
The designs are pretty terrible, though the art is mostly good. Problem is, these "artistic" recreations completely disregard characterization and design choices just to shoehorn their decisions in. I really hate that kind of stuff.
The peach one is good. The rest are mehh.
I think there's room in gaming for fans to reimagine characters through fan art, particularly women. I don't understand why when things like this come up, gamers get in such a frenzy to tear it down. Things on this site are generally civil, but elsewhere it quickly gets degrading. No one is suggesting that Peach should carry a bazooka, but the Mushroom Kingdom is also not dealing in a post-apocalyptic aesthetic. It's a reimagining! For fun! Men do it all the time, it's how a lot of fans like to interact with their favorite characters, so why is it such a problem when it's from a female perspective? Are you surprised that some women would reimagine characters differently than men? Sure the Samus drawing misses the point of the Zero Suit, but so what? If you're honest with yourself, there's a reason why Samus' zero suit is a popular image and it's not because of it's perfect ergonomic fit into her armour. Men like it that way!
This is all to say that we need a broader tent as gamers, and not act so threatened by different perspectives on popular characters. Some women like the sexy renderings and some enjoy more realistic representations. There should be room within gaming for everyone.
Samus is already a weoponized badass.
Is this going to be a new trend ?
"Racist this, female redesign because reasons that" ?
Because im honest here, thats the moment im out.
I was glad that NL was one of the last save havens from stuff like that.
Yeah. So, um, artistic...
I'll go with the Zero-Suit Samus one makes little sense. That would never fit into her Power Suit. It is like they are trying to make her into a Star Wars fighter pilot instead of an intergalactic bounty hunter that her enemies use to scare their children into behaving.
I also don't get the Peach redesign. They basically removed everything feminine and replaced it with the masculine. To me it just seems to be them saying, "So, to fix Peach we need to make her a man...." Maybe they should look at some of Nintendo's Zelda artwork for how to make a princess look tough while still being a princess.
While I agree that women's attire in video games needs a little bit of a rethought, I don't agree with the nitpicking of the Samus Zero Suit. The way I have always looked at it, it was the body suit she wore while inside her armor. It makes sense that anyone, male or female, would wear a similar body suit while wearing the much heavier battle armor... if not you would chaff something awful.
I hope the Zero Suit Samus Amiibo looks better than that. Hair is derpy.
The only one I enjoyed at all was Peach, just because the militarized look is such a drastic and needed change (Peach presumably defending herself).
Samus looks awful and misses the point of the Zero Suit; she lost all of her armor and now has the mobility of someone who isn't wearing any armor.
Obviously, everyone has their own opinion, but the redesigned Great Fairy looks like she'll need a second makeover to rid herself of the horrors from the first one.
As for Chun-Li, I simply don't like it all around. Nothing wrong with the artwork itself, but the design choice and what she is doing is bad.
Isn't the whole point of the zero suit that it's what she wears to provide a layer of coverage between her body and the power suit? Why would you strap all that extra junk to it?
"Zero suit is right...she was pretty much wearing nothing at all."
Kind of the point. The Zero suit is what Samus wears underneath her more recognizable battle armour. Its basically like Under Armor.
Btw Thongs are jocks straps, jock straps are thongs. Actually a thong could be benificial in sports, dont sumos wear thongs when wrestling. I think thongs have been around for thousands of years and worn by men and women for thus many centeries. I guess a designer sports thong is just seen as exploitation of women tho. Also fluffy shorts would not be advisable durig battle. Athleticism, is often performed better with clothes that are close to the skin. Its actually pretty natural to be near naked when praticipating in sports. I guess over sexualizationnof the thong is exploitation of women, but I do think thongsmare important to sports.
@indienapolis yeah, but its stupid when men put character out of place to. I ama sick of all the reimaging down by fans. Most of the time they just take classic character that have clean images and villify them. The original are cool but its been so over done now. It better be exceptional art, because I sen some women and mens fan art that just puts these revisionings to shame.
The thong, like its probable predecessor the loincloth, is believed to be one of the earliest forms of human clothing and is also thought to have been worn mostly or exclusively by men. It is thought the thong was probably originally developed to protect, support, or hide the male genitals. The loincloth is probably the earliest form of clothing used by mankind, having originated in the warmer climates of sub-Saharan Africa where clothing was first worn nearly 75,000 years ago. Many tribal peoples, such as some of the Khoisan people of southern Africa, wore thongs for many centuries. Much like the Japanesefundoshi, these early garments were made with the male genitalia in mind.
A descendant of the loincloth and thong is the jockstrap,[citation needed] created by Chicago sporting goods company Sharp & Smith in 1874.[citation needed] The first historical reference to the thong since then is in 1939 when New York City Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia ordered nude dancers to dress more appropriately.[citation needed] Jacques Heim's and Louis Réard's original bikinifrom 1946 (that introduced the term bikini) had a culotte with a thong back.
WikipediaR so certain fighting techniques may actually benifit from a thong, not chun lis thong but a thong isnt out of the realm of sports.
@Shirma_Akayaku ...Actually, Peach's was the one I liked the most... ^^;;
Peach now starring in Call Of Duty: Mushroom Kingdom Under Siege
The Chun-Li one is pretty bad, the other ones are decent.
"Zero suit is right...she was pretty much wearing nothing at all."
Had to be done
Ridley: "Stupid sexy samus"
Left: Japanese-style Waifu Peach (Cutesy ponytail version 1)
Right: Amurica! F@#% Yeah!
I think Daisy would make a better in-the-trenches redesign. Heck, even the name Daisy sounds like she should be sliding across the hood of the General Lee!
Neat.
(bursts out laughing) .......Aaahhhhh, I'm sorry, but these are trying way too hard. The Great Fairy one is fine, and Chun Li just looks dorky, but Peach and Samus are very cute.
Peach is like, "Bazookas and trench-coats are manly, and if I become manly, that'll make me equal, right?"
Hey, "Non-sexy" Samus! Try wearing that bulky crap under your Power Suit! You look like you got downgraded to the local S.W.A.T. team.
I'm not trying to be rude, but this "de-feminization" really needs to stop. It's basically saying that women can only be strong if they stop looking like women, and that's incredibly demeaning.
Yeah, girl power.... n stuff.
Kotakulife, people. Kotakulife.
All of these drawings are terrible, characteristics or not.
Peach could use a little toughness, but then she wouldn't be getting kidnapped so darn often.
Peach: cool, but too damn OOC
Samus: totally missing the point (please tell me how you're going to shove all that obnoxious gear into her Power Suit
Great Fairy: that one is actually nice.
Chun-Li: like the Samus case above (I see that outfit actually limiting her movement)
Seriously, some people should do some basic research on characters before touching them.
Nintendo Life what are you doing? This is just random SJW fanart. No need for a article.
The pose in the Chun-Li picture looks pretty stiff.
Princess Peach reminds me of what Princess Daisy would look like if the Super Mario Bros. movie was slightly updated for the new generation.
Okay, Peach just looks ridiculous. Just the image of her with a bazooka...I can't even take it seriously. Great Fairy looked cool, though.
Those who haven't should check out the original article; the Storm redesign is fabulous.
Wow, it seems a lot of people don't know what fan art is. Unrealistic or defeats the purpose? Yeah I don't think that really matters, fan art is just suppose to be cool, fun and/or creative and made to the artist liking. And specially when the characters aren't real or realistic themselves.
But then again, there are always going to be critics.
This is what happens when you got a group of artists who know how to draw, but have no video gaming experience to properly make artistic references. On that note, I must agree. Zero Suit Samus looks ridiculous.
LOL these are ridiculous!
@BoobooMama It's Samus wearing a hat. How did that suddenly make you feel she didn't need a man? Are you threatened by hats?
@NintendoFan64 Ugh, i KNOW. Her game about talking mushrooms, kidnapping snapping turtles, murderous pipe plants and flying cloud monsters I've been fine with, it's totally serious, but.... a GUN?! Just like the thousands of bullet bills already in the game, or the bazookas the toads talk about? THAT'S the line where I can't take it seriously anymore!
Hats burned my village to the ground. I'm now seeking revenge.
@Einherjar I know right?! Ugh, eff those OTHER websites, that are against racism, and the laughable depictions of women in 95% of video games. Where's the lonely, unloved, single white supremacist extremist going to get his video game news NOW, with out all those icky races or women's?!
@TheRegginator I saw a woman wearing pants.
So make peach a bit skimpy when before she was completely covered and then complain about samus being practically naked?....
I consider myself a feminist gamer, and I do my best to walk the walk. I purchase a lot of games, and nearly all of my dollars go to games that offer an option for non-sexualized playable female characters, either as the primary character or a customization option, even imperfect indie titles that I buy primarily to support devs willing to make such games. Still, I can't say I would really prefer any of these redrawn protagonists (I'm excluding the fairy, since it's a low fidelity N64 model).
I'm not going to criticize these drawings, though. I do appreciate artists who do things like this because I see a need for deconstructing female video game character design. Even if actual development character designers don't make these same choices, having images like this within the zeitgeist creates a broader palette of design ideas to be chosen from. Sometimes introducing alternatives into the collective unconscious accomplishes a great deal.
I would like to respond to a few specific lines of commentary, though. First, regarding Zero Suit Samus being "nearly naked" and innately sexualized. It feels horrible to hear things like that. The same way that not all gamer guys are fat neckbeards, not all gamer girls are inactive homebodies. That outfit isn't suitable for action? It's innately slutty? I count myself as a serious cyclist and swimmer. I trained as a dancer for several years when I was younger. I was stronger and faster than nearly every gamer guy I knew. What kind of clothes do you think I wore while doing those activities? It wasn't stuff designed to hide my build or obscure my silouette, since those things aren't innately sexual. Was I nearly naked?
Please remember the importance of context. If the Zero Suit wasn't a full bodysuit, I might understand. But in that outfit, as long as she's still doing Samus things, all I see is Samus in a practical unarmored outfit. Please be wary of criticisms which perpetuate female body shame.
@russellohh I'm not terrified. I don't think anyone here is terrified that Peach doesn't have Mario next to her or that she has a bazooka (its actually kind of silly). Its just fanart; there are plenty of pictures like this all over the internet. No need to compare people to militant radical Islamic groups and religious nut cases just because they don't like a piece of art.
this article seems like a slow day at NL offices lol
I don't know much about clothes, but would Chun Li's redesign make her less agile and more sluggish at kicking? Cause i have a feeling that it would.
Anyway no opinions over great fairy, and peach's one looks great but amazing. Samus and chun li in particular however feel like redesign for sake of redesigns wither or not it makes sense in the context of their games.
@Resh straw manning is the only tactic sjws know how to use it seems.
@CharlyDunst I've never read anything by anyone that is so pathetic and negative, so whiney and so complaining about something so creative by obviously very talented people.
There's a difference between feminism and just plain silly. These drawings invoked indifference from me.
Gee, what people are complaining in the commentators field! This is good and creative fan art of redesigned characters from video games. Just enjoy the art!
i was expecting some really amazing art and also more then 5 characters but we got this so SO much disappointment.... even as a artist myself that is just bad the only one i thought that was cool was the peach one
I'll make a recreation of E. Honda from Street Fighter, he's clrearly uncomfortable wearing a thong so I'll draw some ugly shorts for him. Should I add a shirt too?
Anyone else think that the one of samus could be buzz lightyears daughter? Lol
@starman292
haha yeah. She looks like she's part of ta ragtag army after zurg's army won against Starfleet command.
We can discuss how the pictures look, but I will not stand for inappropriate comments. Keep it civil here folks
@DESS-M-8 Sticks and stones, my dear. Don't like what I said, tough luck. I stick to my opinion.
@mjc0961: The problem with this is, everyone sees the skin-tight suit and tries to cover it at best. However, they forget that Samus is wearing a mecha-suit over it, which makes all the stuff useless and would possibly crush her once the armor gets back on. But yeah, waste of breath since they won't listen and only see what they want to see.
@DdFixen: There will always be criticism, whether you like it or not. You can't just put something up and expect that everyone smiles and says "Oh, how lovely", that's not how life works.
@CharlyDunst (sorry for the late answer, hasn't been here for awhile) True, everyone doesn't feel the same way. That's the very reason these drawings were created, because some of us gamers don't think "oh, how lovely" of all video game characters, hence we redesign them.
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