I’ve been looking into very early playable female characters in games. Many lists are missing information because they intentionally discount various aspects (unnamed characters, not human, etc.) so I’d like to find as much information as possible to make my own determination of what matters or is interesting. 1983 and on playable female characters become much more common as either real characters, selectable characters, or just porn. I don’t know how many of later games have any real historical relevance (beyond maybe Metroid?) so I’m focusing on the earliest ones.
This is certainly far from the first such list but I am hoping it is relatively thorough.
Player 1 controls a boy on the overlay and player 2 controls a girl This is the first video game period where you can consider a player to be controlling a female character, even if it is just represented on the overlay
A sprite swap of Death Race where men chase women and vice versa. The first ever playable or depicted female human in a commercial game The game is “lost” right now with no ROMs or screenshots, although a cabinet at least exists somewhere
Non-interactive storybook software that includes a quiz mode where you can’t actually lose. Probably the barest qualifier of being a video game, if it counts at all. Little Red Riding Hood is technically the protagonist, named, and depicted in-game, although you don’t control her or make any choices for/as her. She isn’t an original video game character, but a literary one
A Pac-Man knock off where you play a naked woman. Potentially the first game where you actually control a sprite of a human woman! Had a limited US release as “Streaker” and (potentially) “Stripper”
The art for the game depicts you as a humanoid, although in-game you’re just a regular ladybug The home port manuals refer to you as she and her. At least once it refers you as “Lady Bug” with no article or possessive (i.e. the Lady Bug, your Lady Bug), which could imply her name is Lady Bug, although this is a stretch and likely just an oversight. I would not personally consider this a human(oid) character, however I don’t necessarily think discounting art and advertising as “not part of the game” is the correct approach either, especially for early, more abstract games.
Strategy game with the possible first named, off-screen female protagonist. Presumably you “play” as Benthi controlling her forces, although you don’t actually control her. She is depicted in the manual
The first playable, named, female protagonist: Ms. Pac-Man Some sources (e.g. Polygon) don’t consider her “named”. I think she is clearly named Ms. Pac-Man. Also Ms. Pac-Man Plus released in 1982, an official conversion kit, might technically count as its own game.
Bad, early Pac-Man clone where you play as an IBM smiley face character, but due to the title she is technically female. Re-released as “Pac-Girl”
First playable, named, human, female protagonist: Billie Sue Likely what you could plainly call the “first named woman player character” of a video game. Despite being human, Ms. Pac-Man has more personality. Just saying!
Very early playable female characters: women… eating ‘em. The first game where you can play as two female characters! Self-describes itself as having the world’s first computer generated fart. More research may be needed.
You play as a mother pig named Mama
You play as a mother kangaroo rescuing her joey
Ancient chat bot AI thing. Not really a game, and not really a playable female character, but maybe of interest. This is an implementation of ELIZA, researched and created between 1964-1966.
You play as nameless, genderless humans, although you would imagine yourself playing as Ripley.
The arcade manual depicts a black widow with an hourglass, which females usually have. While it sure feels like in a game named Black Widow, you’d be playing as the scary, dangerous, partner-eating sex rather than the harmless male, it isn’t specified in any explicit way in the game or other surrounding materials.
For example Santa Paravia and Fiumaccio (1978, TRS-80), a strategy game that predates most other games on this list. “You” are the ruler of Santa Paravia and the game asks your gender to provide gender-appropriate titles (e.g. Sir, Lady, King, Queen). A very early game that asks the player’s sex is the HP2000 game Trek73 (1973). These would largely be hard to classify as the vast majority don’t ask your gender, but could obviously be played by women.
An unreleased Universal game exhibited in 1982. It looked pretty neat.
The queen represents a female, so there’s that. There is a long history of computer chess I am not bothering to go deep into. MicroChess (1976) and Video Chess (1979) are perhaps two important early video games. The Turochamp algorithm (1948), the first computer game to ever enter development, would be a hard one to go earlier than if you count chess. There are also old computer games that are not explicitly chess, such as the BASIC game 1QUEEN (1970). If you really consider chess and its variants to be the first appearance of playable female characters, this is it’s own rabbit hole.
There are many, many more past 1982 I came across while researching. Here are some pre-1986 games are below, some years are approximate, and this is far from complete. Once games get more complex, you get things like Alien on Commodore 64, a game where you control all the members of the Nostromo including Ripley, so I guess that counts? There are likely many mid-80s RPGs or strategy games where you control a female character in a party that are not easy to find. Something like Ultima III has classes that are clearly represented by females in the art, but nothing in the game or manual mentions gender, so it can be hard to classify these too.
And also a couple games I’ve seen described as having a female protagonist but don’t appear to actually have them:
A Critical Hit! has well researched articles on early female characters and some of the only English info on obscure Japanese games like Streaking anywhere online.
This HG101 article has information on many of the obscure Japanese games
Mobygames’ list of female protagonists but it is a little lacking and at least a few are incorrect
This Atariage thread has lots of Atari games
A Polygon article about Score, Wabbit, and the search for information on female protagonists
Random Terrain, the absolute best-researched source for Atari release dates
Note this article was originally posted on VideoGameSage in 2021.