Gender Equality Fail: Kombo For Women

Cole Stryker — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Kombo launched a new microsite for female gamers today, called 'For Women'. At first glance, you might think this is a real step forward for the fairer gender in the world of interactive entertainment, but then you dig deeper.

Booth babes? Really?

Kombo has contracted the relatively lovely ladies at C+2, a modeling agency that caters to gaming conventions.

Of course, how naïve would we be if we powered this new section with the existing Kombo team… which, as you guessed, are mostly all guys. As talented and intelligent as they are, we followed the rules of common sense and decided to keep male influence out of our new For Women section on Kombo. With that said, allow me to introduce you to the very talented Kombo.com 'For Women' editorial team!

A noble effort, to be sure, but was this the best way to achieve that end? I don't doubt that several of these gals could put the hurt on me in whatever games in which they specialize, but would Kombo bring in any traffic if they weren't glamour models? If their profiles are to believed, these girls actually do play video games. Lotsa video games. But editorial experience? Not so much.

The first article unabashedly takes an insider's look into the world of booth babery.

We were treated like absolute princesses and it made standing in heels for 12 hours a day totally worth it!

Cute. It's essentially a thinly veiled advertisement for C+2 modeling, gussied up as an editorial feature. Kombo gets boobies for their readers and C+2 gets exposure. Everyone wins. Upcoming features include "Distracted While Buying Bras" and "CAT FIGHT With Madden on the Fifty Yard Line". Not joking.

The new site's only been up for a few hours, and it's been met with nearly universal disdain, as it should be. C+2 'President' Yvonne has been furiously batting away naysayers with sad face emoticons and eyelash flutters. Nadia and Amber, I fully expect your thoughts in the comments. And C+2 girls, feel free to justify your existence as well.

WTFriday: Birdo's Gender Confirmed?

Bob Mackey — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 18:00:00 GMT

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.

Related Links:

WTFriday: FMV Hell
The Ten Most Adventurous Sequels in Gaming History, Part 1
Mario Will Not Retire. He Will Outlive Us All.

61 Frames Per Second : gender

Gender Equality Fail: Kombo For Women

WTFriday: Birdo's Gender Confirmed?