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WTFriday: Birdo's Gender Confirmed?

Posted by Bob Mackey

Note to readers: WTFriday is a weekly feature where I find something stupid about video games get you to laugh at it until it goes away. Please try to forget this is what I normally do every day of the week.

One of the lingering question in the world of video games for the past 20 years has been "What the hell's up with Birdo?" He/she has basically been Nintendo's version of It's Pat, bewildering us all, challenging our concepts of gender, and perhaps breaking Yoshi's heart in some depraved reptile version of The Crying Game. Known as"Catherine" in Japan, I've always assumed that Birdo's biography was a victim of Nintendo's "make shit up" policy when it came to writing manuals. UNTIL TODAY.

In case you don't have the 20 year-old booklet immediately available, here's what the US instructions for Super Mario Bros. 2 have to say about Birdo:

"[Birdo] thinks he is a girl and likes to be called Birdetta. He likes to wear a bow on his head and shoot eggs from his mouth."

Yet, according to the Super Mario Wiki, the Japanese manual for Super Mario USA (the other Japanese version of the game) says pretty much the same thing. I'm going to go ahead and trust these people since they wrote 5000 words about Birdo.

This statement applies to all translations of the title, including the Japanese version. In Japan, Catherine is male as well, and likes to believe that he is female. Like Birdo, he likes to be called Cathy as opposed to his real name, Catherine. Birdo's masculinity is also part of contemporary canon in Japan, but it appears to have been retconned in the west save for sly references here and there.

Don't think that means we can close the book on Birdo's gender once and for all; recent reports about the Japanese Wii game Captain Rainbow--in which Birdo plays a prominent role--have complicated matters further. On Wired's Game|Life, Chris Kohler explains an in-game mission where you bust Birdo out of jail--and also why this game will never, ever come out in America:

The officer throws [Birdo] in jail for using the ladies' room when he's clearly a man. Birdo asks you to go to his/her house and find "evidence that I'm a woman." So you do. This is how it happens. As you walk into Birdo's bedroom, you hear... a buzzing. The pillow on her bed is vibrating and buzzing. You walk up to it, and Captain Rainbow looks under the pillow to find... an item that's censored out on the screen. It's covered up with a question mark. "Proof that the owner is a woman," it says, leaving it at that.

So you bring what is in all likelihood Birdo's vibrator back to the police robot, who accepts it, whatever it may be, as prima facie evidence that Birdo is a chick.

While you're pondering the gender and sex toy preference of Birdo this weekend, stare at the following freaks. You'll be glad you did.

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Posted Aug 29 2008, 02:00 PM

Filed under: bob mackey, wtfriday, super mario 2, birdo, gender

Comments

Amber Ahlborn said:

If Yoshi can lay eggs and be a guy, then I have no qualms with Birdo's claims to being a gal.

August 29, 2008 2:25 PM

Roto13 said:

I didn't know Birdo was male in Japan. My entire system of beliefs is shattering.

August 29, 2008 5:00 PM

About Bob Mackey

For a brief period of time I was Bull from TV's Night Court, but some of you may know me from the humor column I wrote for Youngstown State University's The Jambar, Kent State University's The Stater, and Youngstown's alternative newspaper, The Walruss. I'm perhaps most well-known for my bi-weekly pieces on Something Awful. I've also blogged for Valley24.com and have written articles for EGM, 1UP, GameSpite and Cracked. For all of my writing over the years, I have made a total of twenty American dollars. It's also said that I draw cartoons, which people have described with words such as "legible." I kidnapped the Lindbergh Baby and am looking to do so again in the future.

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Derrick Sanskrit is a self-professed geek in a variety of fields including typography, graphic design, comic books, music and cartoons. As a professional hipster graphic designer, his recent clients have included Nerve, Pitchfork and MoCCA, among others.

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