Nintendo’s digital event went live this morning, and they showed off an array of games including the first footage of the upcoming Zelda game, Smash Brothers, and Yoshi title.
As we discussed during last year’s E3, Nintendo has really been upping the amount of female protagonists in their recent titles. They are continuing this trend this year by announcing several games with playable protagonists who are female.
-Hyrule Warriors currently features 3 of 4 female characters as protagonists, including Impa, Midna, and Zelda.
-More female characters in Smash brothers than ever before, including new entries such as Palutena, Wii-Fit Trainer, and a female villager.
However, the biggest news seems to be coming out of one of Nintendo’s biggest franchise: The Legend of Zelda. While unconfirmed, it seems as though we may be a Link whose gender is up for customization. I…can’t tell. Link has a ponytail and is certainly looking a lot more feminine than in previous entries. It could honestly go either way: is Link becoming more androgynous, or can you change the character’s gender? With the news of the gaming being more open world, it’s not unlikely that Link will be more changeable than ever before. Guess we’ll find out as more details about the game come out.
Last year Nintendo responded to a glitch found in their popular Japanese 3ds Title “Tomodachi Collection” that allowed players to enter into same-sex relationships with a patch. 
One feature lacking is the ability to change or choose your characters skin tone. Gamers of colored have asked “Why can’t my character’s skin color match my own”?
As I mentioned, Doc Lewis and several of the punch-out casts were characters of color, so it was certainly possible. Even McKids featured a non-white playable character. Is Nintendo really unable to do what McKids can? Regardless, Nintendo has had 20+ more years to make more characaters, and with expanding universes like the Zelda universe there’s no reason why Nintendo can’t create more diverse characters.
Kirby can obtain abilities anywhere from wielding a sword to turning himself into a laser; if you can steal it, you can do it. Some may say he’s a down right dirty stealer, who murders his victims and steals their best abilities. All of that is true. Kirby is a terrible monster, but it’s pretty fun to be a monster. One could theoretically go through out an entire game and only use Kirby’s basic abilities, but wheres the fun in that? Kirby teaches us that to get through life you have to take on many different roles and aspects; ya gotta be multifaceted. That’s a great lesson to learn. Learning how to go with the flow and take on roles as they come to you will serve our youth well.
The original Kirby’s Dreamland tells the tale of our hero, Kirby, going after the tyrant King Dedede. Dedede has stolen all of dreamland’s food and is keeping it all for himself, so it’s up to Kirby to redistribute the goods to the people of Dreamland. Of course, through Kirby’s political maneuvering King Dedede eventually reaches across the aisle and sees the errors of his way, but whats this classic tale of a greedy king telling us? It’s social resistance, of course! Kirby doesn’t stand by and just watch the powers that be take and take, he takes action and rebels! That’s a good lesson to learn, but hopefully it won’t lead our youth to distrust royal birds. The emperor penguin would be screwed.
Over the years, Nintendo of America has made some odd alterations to the official box arts design they receive from Japan, most notably is that they have switched an otherwise happy Kirby to an angry Kirby on several of the franchises box arts. Why? Who knows. Maybe NOA thinks Americans like their characters pissed. Or maybe there’s something about heading outside of Japan that just makes Kirby naturally angry. It could be that the boxarts just do it themselves; Kirby perhaps hates America! If there’s one thing that we can take away from all this is that America is a much more serious place than the whimsical land of Japan, where pink balls have the delight of going on adventures without anger or frustration. What a terrible land we live in that does this to creatures whom only want to suck and feast on the bounty of abilities in their way.
About a year ago I used some of my built up coins to get their 3-set of 25th anniversary posters for the Legend of Zelda, and they’ve made amazing additions to my apartment. In fact, I even framed one of them.
Economist and psychologist probably can express it better, but essentially SET says that society is a series of social interactions in which people determine their outcome by rewards gained vs. negatives lost. Basically laid out, the thought process behind most interactions can be shown by this equation.
The Sociology of Videogames 