Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

Women in video games have come a long way since the days of 8-bit fragging. Female characters are on par with their male counterparts, can be hero OR villain, and are considered a normal part of gaming.

But it hasn't always been that way.

And because of that, I suspect that when games were first being developed a lot of the "male" characters that we know and love we in reality...

Women in disguise.

Now before you roll your eyes, remember that women were once oppressed in this country, treated as second class citizens, and if it could happen in the REAL world - why couldn't it happen in video games? I did a bit of research and have found the five most likely MALE characters....that are actually women.

Link (Legend of Zelda) - Let's just go with the obvious.

We all know that elves are kinda femmy to begin with, but the Legend of Zelda is nothing more than a badly disguised lesbian love story...

...not that there is ANYTHING wrong with that.

Hell. If anything it makes it HOTTER and adds replay value to the game. I mean two chicks doing..stuff that two chicks do? In a VIDEO GAME? C'mon - that just multiplies the awesome by a billion. I might even blow the dust off of the old Nintendo now, just to go back and visit the girls. That, and it changes the game's message just a little bit and makes it a bit more realistic.

Think about it.

Original Story: Ganon steals away the Princess because he loves her and Link is a rival for that love.

TRUE Story: Ganon steals away the Princess because he's like the father from Footloose who doesn't want the kids to dance because Satan invented the Hokey-Pokey. (**Fact verified, btw)

That's right, Ganon is Zelda's FATHER, and he knows that his daughter is just about ready to do some late night Cinemax prison flick, so he locks her away from her partner, the very butch - yet somehow NOT butch at all Link. In the original ending (that was censored) it was all revealed and Link and Zelda defeat Ganon, move to California ,and start an organic vegan health food store.

Luigi (Super Mario Bros) - Face it, Luigi just LOOKS like a chick in drag. As if he crawled right off of the set of some bad cookie cutter sitcom where the female lead pretends to be a man and puts her hair up under her hat before donning an overly obvious fake mustache.

Hilarity ensues until the "big reveal" in which no one realizes that the newly arrived repairman with the soft supple skin and the monster rack was really a chick.

Well guess what Luigi? It doesn't work on Prime Time and it doesn't work here. Did you think that we wouldn't notice that you look nothing like your fat ass brother? Or that underneath that work cap and bushy "Italian Grandmother" mustache that you were actually kinda hot?

You blew it, so come clean. Sure, "Super Mario Brothers" sounds a LOT cooler than "Super Mario Siblings", but come on - who ever heard of a SKINNY plumber? You proved to your father that girls can run the family business too, and I'm sure you impressed him with your knowledge, amassed collection of gold chains and your bright red Iroq-Z28, but now you are just insulting our intelligence.

Blanka (Street Fighter II) - Probably the most telling and obvious female-pretending-to-be-male character ever, because Blanka isn't even pretending.

I mean her name is BLANKA.

Obviously of Latin decent, it doesn't take a lingual genius to see that if Blanka was really a dude, his name would have been BLANKO - the MALE version of the name. Oh HO. Mrs. Lopez's 8th grade Spanish class is coming back to you now isn't it? You REMEMBER something about names ending in "A" or "O", and realize that "Holy shit! Coyote could be on to something that actually MAY be grammatically correct!"

So why the disguise? Why the smoke and mirrors and obvious cloak and daggery?

I honestly don't think that this was by design. I just think that Blanka was so frigging butt-ugly that no one ASSUMED that she could be a chick. I mean she's got heavy scoliosis, green skin, and kool-aid red hair - not exactly the "turn ons" that people list in their E-Harmony ad.

Plus, Street Fighter already had its "prerequisite hot chick" in the form of Chun-li. I mean if you're some knuckle dragging ape woman with green skin and curvature of the spine, the LAST thing you want to do is be compared to some hot little Asian chick who does that cute little mouth covering hand giggle.

Poor Blanka. If Captain Kirk taught us ANYTHING, it was that green chicks need love too.

Sonic the Hedgehog - I defy you to find a more feminine creature in this world than a hedgehog.

Since Hedgehogs are asexual and reproduce by a form of "budding", technically Sonic shouldn't even be on this list. But as a REAL MAN, I know in my heart that if you don't have a "hedgehog" then you're a chick, even if you are asexual.

Which is why all plants are chicks too - with the exception of the cactus which is just about as manly as a frigging plant can GET. A cactus kicks the living hell out of other plants and the rides off into the sunset with some sexy rose in order to deflower her.

Cactus are COOL.

But Sonic? Sonicran around all day trying to collect gold rings. Need I say more? Men don't care about rings, hell if it were up to MEN, when we got married we'd seal the deal with those little wire bread ties being wrapped around our fingers. No, collecting rings all day and then gabbing about them all proud of yourself at the end of every level is absolute a sign that Sonic was a chick.

Still, she had that "Butch spiked haircut Hot Topic working Goth chick" thing going, so she might have ya know, let you watch her and her girlfriend hedge the hog and all that.

So she's still cool.

Donkey Kong - "But Coyote, Donkey Kong is a GUY!"

Is he? IS he really?

Let's look at the ORIGINAL Donkey Kong for a second shall we? A big monkey steals Luigi ..sorry "The Princess" so that Mario has to rescue her. Now while you may be thinking "Doy, that's totally a guy move", you would absolutely be wrong.

That might be a guy *HUMAN* move, but as far as monkeys go that's totally screaming "I have hairy she-monkey parts". Same goes with King Kong. Check out the news sometime - whenever you get those touching stories about some ape adopting a kitten or falling in love with a puppy, it is ALWAYS a female ape.

Why? Because chicks are nurturing and loving. MEN are dicks.

Male monkeys don't adopt crap and pet it and keep it from harm. Men of any species were put on earth for three reasons and three reasons only:

*Eat.

*Have sex.

*Throw poop.

That's it. Three. Three reasons, and if you'll note - Donkey Kong did NONE of those things. He just adopted the Princess and wanted to be like friends and do her hair and crap. If Donkey Kong was a DUDE, you wouldn't have been hopping over flaming barrels, you would have been dodging softball sized chunks of monkey poo as he hucked them at your head.

Then he would have come over and ripped off you arms, because monkeys are strong enough to do that.

-Coyote