The Evolution of a Female Gamer

When I was a kid, I was one of the very few girls who played video games. It wasn’t something that girls did back in the 1980s. Little girls were supposed to play with Barbies and baby dolls. They were supposed to play dress up and pretend to be wives and mothers, I guess in preparation for their adult lives. While I did play with my Barbies on occasion, usually with my cousins, I didn’t pretend Barbie was dating Ken or was always dressing up for parties. Barbie had real issues to deal with in her life. My Ken was often a murderer and Barbie had to solve the crime before the other Barbies were victims. Sometimes Barbie’s life was normal, but most of the time I preferred to play with Star Wars action figures, Legos, and Hot Wheels because there was more action to them. As the gaming industry began to develop, I started to shift to more video games. I was unknowingly laying the foundations of becoming a gamer.

I grew up with two younger brothers and my childhood best friend was a boy named Marc who lived nearby. Marc and I spent a lot of time playing with Star Wars action figures, trading Garbage Pail Kid cards, and watching movies like Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure and, one of my favorites, The Goonies. When we weren’t playing outside, we were probably playing video games. In the early days, we had a ColecoVision with an Atari attachment. It was often a struggle to get games to work, and we didn’t have a big selection, but we enjoyed it when we could.

Years later, after the NES was release, Marc, my two brothers, and I would spend hours…