Black, Female, Fighter #6 at 1:33 PM

 (According to an article made last year there have only ever 13 playable female characters. The list doesn't include fighting game characters for reasons I don't agree with. As such, I have decided to put a spotlight on 14 of these characters, to see what is being dismissed here. There are MORE than that, but I admit, not MUCH more.)

Jackie Briggs

Game

Mortal Kombat X

Bio

How Black is she?

She's the daughter of Blaxploitation Dude Jaxx and has cornrows.


Prominence
Well, she's fairly recent, but as the daughter of an important character, she's bound to be somewhat important. Also, since the story has a focus on the Special Forces characters of the game, of which she is, well that's what makes her beautiful. Whoa-oh-oh...

Fight examples

Flaws

Have you ever noticed how black characters always get stuck with scifi and military stuff in mixed fantasy settings? Like, Black guys aren't getting bitten by radioactive spiders or getting magic alien rings.

Tha's not to take anything away from Jackie. It's just an issue I have with fiction overall, sometimes.

Point is, Jackie being a Special Forces member is boring to me, personally. Wouldn't she be a little wild, growing up without her dad because he got killed by Syndel in the last game? Why is she the Murtaugh to Cassandra Cage's Riggs?

Pros

She's not a dance-fighter, she's wearing clothes most of the time, and she's just a boring and uncharacteristic Special Forces type character.

Progress.

Black, Female, Fighter #5 at 8:12 PM

(According to an article made last year there have only ever 13 playable female characters. The list doesn't include fighting game characters for reasons I don't agree with. As such, I have decided to put a spotlight on 14 of these characters, to see what is being dismissed here. There are MORE than that, but I admit, not MUCH more.)

Adrianna


Game

Fighter's Destiny 2

Bio

NONE.

How Black is she?

She's Black, because Brazilians are stereotypically always assumed to be Black. Or Green.

Weirdly enough her alt costume includes a Native American Feather Headdress(remember to look up that thing's name later). Maybe it's a carnival thing I don't know, but even as I try to keep an open mind about this kinds of things, I don't assume Fighter's Destiny is a serious source for information about the people of Brazil.

Prominence

Statistically speaking, you have not played Fighter's Destiny or it's sequel. And The game's cover boy is a Ryu Knock Off, so no.

Fight examples

 Flaws

You know, I've come to find that there's a valid reason why Brazil gets featured so much in fighting games. They've got a couple of fighting styles (Vale Tudo, Capoeira,  Brazilian Jiu Jitsu).

However, since tradition states fighting game rosters are filled with crude national stereotypes  when all else fails, I guess they decided there wasn't a Batucada Dancer in a game yet.

I mean, that design...they aren't even trying.

Pros

Fighter's Destiny fuckin' sucks.

Black, Female, Fighter #4 at 8:07 PM

 (According to an article made last year there have only ever 13 playable female characters. The list doesn't include fighting game characters for reasons I don't agree with. As such, I have decided to put a spotlight on 14 of these characters, to see what is being dismissed here. There are MORE than that, but I admit, not MUCH more.)

Jade

Game

Mortal Kombat

Bio

How Black is she?

Jade was originally a palette swap of an actress who played both Kitana and Millena. Those are White. This one is not. She was drawn with dark skin since the beginning, and has mostly been consistently been shown as tan skinned at least. However, as an extradimensional being, she carries no actual Earth Ethnicity.


Prominence

Jade has never been the most important Mortal Kombat character. In further games, her being Kitana's bodyguard meant that she was mostly a goon. A good goon, but a goon nontheless. She's currently super fucking dead, but that happens in Mortal Kombat.

She appeared in the second movie, as an Asian, and she was not to be found in the cartoon at all.

Fight examples

 Flaws

Jade's skin color has fluctuated wildly, and it's still a point of contention whether she's supposed to be Black or Middle Eastern-ish tan.

Pros

As a support character, she's remained pretty consistent in at least her characterization.

Fighting Female July : Gal Fighters is quite good for a portable fighter at 2:29 PM

Fighting games are games of precision and skill, which is why the mostly stayed away from anything under 16 bits. It's not so much that it's impossible to make  a fighting game for the original gameboy and nes. But to make it any good at all takes so much skill, it's practically not worth it.

So when I approached Gal Fighter, an original female only SNK fighting game based on it's King of Fighter series for the Neo Geo Pocket Color, I wasn't expecting much. However, the game managed to deliver above my expectations.

The overarching plot is that there's a  wish granting talisman, a tournament to get it, and various characters who want it. Not exactly Homer's The Illiad there, but it'll do. You've got a handful of characters you may recognize from King of FIghters such as Mai, Athena and  Leona.  I recognized them more from having been depantsed for Mugen years ago, but whatever.
 
The fighting is surprisingly fluid. Pulling off specials and hypers is easy, and I ran into the odd combo now and then. To influence the fight, you can collect items which affect you and your opponent. Or at least I think it is, the descriptions are mired in bad translations that, while hilarious, kind of obscure the purpose of the object.

The difficulty is seemingly easy. I had no trouble beating all the opponents, and only got beat by the final boss, Miss X(Iori Yagami in drag), once, which I resolved by taking one of those famous items.

Black, Female, Fighter #3 at 8:01 PM

 (According to an article made last year there have only ever 13 playable female characters. The list doesn't include fighting game characters for reasons I don't agree with. As such, I have decided to put a spotlight on 14 of these characters, to see what is being dismissed here. There are MORE than that, but I admit, not MUCH more.)

Amanda

Game

Strip Fighter 2, 4

Bio

There are no Bios I could read in Strip Fighter. From what we can tell she's a pro-wrestler from Brazil.

How Black is she?

Well, her Character Select Portrait portrays her as being very black, but her ingame sprites and cover art betray the idea. She's also definitively not black in Strip Fighter 4, which might not even be a "real" Strip Fighter game because they keep straight up ripping characters from other games all willy nilly.

Prominence

Strip Fighter is an obscure mail in porn game for the PC Engine, known for being super bad, and  Amanda is the GRAPPLER in that. Nope, not a lot of prominence, there.


Fight




Not a lot of Amanda action around. Huh. Hoping this will get you covered. NSFW probably

 Flaws

This is Strip Fighter, and Amanda has an attack where she hits you with her enormous breasts. I think everyone can make their choices from that point and move on.

Pros

If playable "Black and Female" is rare in gaming, playable "Female and Fat" is ULTRA Rare,. And despite the fact they didn't have to because this is a stupid smut game, Strip Fighter 2 got there before Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Virtua Fighter,  Star Gladiator, Dead or Alive,  Soul Calibur, Tekken,  King of Fighters, World Heroes, Psychic Force, Smash Brothers, Darkstalkers, Battle Arena Toshinden...

Hell, pretty much only Playstation Battle Royal and Clayfighter got there at all, and I don't want to be the asshole who says "Ya see, you ARE represented...by a stereotypical opera fat lady and a character with "Fat" in her name." But, tittilation aside, Amanda's as good as it gets, so far.

Black, Female, Fighter #2 at 7:26 PM

(According to an article made last year there have only ever 13 playable female characters. The list doesn't include fighting game characters for reasons I don't agree with. As such, I have decided to put a spotlight on 14 of these characters, to see what is being dismissed here. There are MORE than that, but I admit, not MUCH more.)

Vanessa Lewis

Game

Virtua Fighter

Bio

She was being trained to be a child soldier, but then was rescued by a guy and stuff. And also she's got amnesia and doesn't remember sex with Stryker.


How Black is she?

Well, the intent that she's an African American is pretty clear, although her white hair (and brows) certainly aren't a naturally ocurring happenstance. Unless I´m wrong about that, IDK.

Prominence

She was in 2 Virtua Fighters out of 5 that are ever going to be made(although they said the same thing about Dreams. And they only mostly kept to their word, so...)

Fight examples

Flaws

If women feel offput by "sexy" female bodies, I don't know how they'll feel about "amazonian" female bodies. I mean, she isn't all that extreme, or anything, but I don't think this is what they mean with "strong female characters."

Vanessa then double ups on that by having the kind of attire a "traditional beauty" fighter would have, so it might be the worst of both worlds.

Pros

Other than the attire, Vanessa mostly subverts expectations of traditional femeninity, which is what most women who play games want to see (Citation Needed)

Also, you can custom her appearance, so, if she makes you uncomfortable, it's probably your own fault.

Black, Female, Fighter #1 at 7:13 PM

(According to an article made last year there have only ever 13 playable female characters. The list doesn't include fighting game characters for reasons I don't agree with. As such, I have decided to put a spotlight on 14 of these characters, to see what is being dismissed here. There are MORE than that, but I admit, not MUCH more.)

Come on, Lisa, you're tearing Hayate apart

Lisa Hamilton/La Mariposa

Game

Dead or Alive 4 and 5, Extreme Beach Volleyball.

Bio

How Black is she?

Could be blacker. While she's got some obvious stars and stripes costumes and she's noticeably dark skinned, she has the same soft features of all the other girls in this series.

Prominence

Lisa started out as the default partner, and tutorial voice, for Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball. However, Lisa eventually made it into the series proper under the really very badly hidden secret identity of La Mariposa, a highly kinetic masked pro wrestler.

As far as being an important character, she's not quite that important. The heroines of this story ARE the feuding high schooler ninja chicks. They're the cover girls. However, Lisa's role as a  scientist in DOATech ensured she even had a lot of serious play in the story.

Fight examples

Flaws

There isn't a lot of depth to her. She's a scientist good guy who moonlights as a wrestler. She dabbles in superscience that  ninjas often have to fight, but she doesn't stop because science. That's above and beyond the call of duty for a fighting game backstory, but if you want a deeper black female character I guess Home is out on Home video.