Metroid

Maybe, pound for pound, the game ending that has blown more minds than any other. If you weren’t there to experience it at the time, though, it’s likely impossible to grasp the impact of its revelation. Today, everyone knows that “Metroid is a gril.” But Nintendo went to some lengths to mislead players about the identity of intrepid intergalactic bounty hunter Samus Aran back in her first adventure, even referring to her with male pronouns in the instruction manual. And if, like many players, you didn’t look at the manual, well, the heroes in the overwhelming majority of movies, games, and TV shows were men. Why would you assume this striking figure in the rad sci-fi power suit would be any different?

When Samus takes off her helmet or her suit (depending on how quickly you completed the game), well, if you were a kid in 1986, you got your world rocked by the truth that Samus was a woman. Cementing the ending’s impact is the fact that this revelation was preceded by one of the most memorable boss battles in games up to that point against the evil Mother Brain, and the timed escape sequence that followed, a series staple that has become somewhat cliché today, was a pulse-pounding surprise at the time.

Sadly, even then Nintendo framed Samus’ gender as a kind of gimmick and reward, with the gender reveal becoming more…ahem…revealing as you beat the game more quickly. Some subsequent games in the series, armed with more sophisticated graphics, objectify Samus more explicitly with the art you “earn” for a job well done. Alas, the history of female representation in video games is full of complication and internal contradiction, and so, my feelings about this ending are complicated as well. On balance, I’m still glad that the heroic Samus was revealed to be a woman all those years ago, but let’s not pretend that she, Lara Croft, and most other female heroes throughout much of games history haven’t been used at least as often to serve as eye candy for straight men as they have to offer women a few scraps of representation.—Carolyn Petit