Sci-fi Stripteases in Barbarella, Metroid and Mach Rider
The 1968 movie Barbarella opens on an astronaut floating inside a mod spaceship that boasts floor-to-ceiling shag carpet. After about thirty seconds of zero gravity twirling, the astronaut removes one of the suit’s gloves, revealing a distinctly feminine hand. The boots come off next, and the audience gets to see a pair of shapely legs. It’s at this point that the vocals on the pop song title track kick in, complete with cooing backup singers, and then a mirrored barrier within the astronaut’s domed helmet lowers, finally letting viewers see the beautiful face (and big hair) of the film’s star, Jane Fonda.
She’s a knockout, of course. That’s kind of the point of Barbarella. In case you haven’t seen the film, I’ll post this sequence below. (Yes, it’s a SFW version.)
If this reveal came as a surprise, then it did so by playing off the audience’s presumption that someone dressed as an astronaut had to be male. It’s an understandable bias. In 1968, only one woman had been to space: Valentina Tereshkova, who made a solo spaceflight in 1963. The vast majority of astronauts had been male, and that’s still the case in 2023. Surprise at this reveal also necessitates that you know nothing of the film, however, because Barbarella’s plot can reduce down to “sexy lady in space,” more or less, but for the purposes of this essay about gender in video games, this is a significant sequence.
If I told you that this sequence might have influenced the way gender is presented in a certain futuristic Nintendo series, you’d probably assume I was talking about Metroid and its protagonist, Samus Aran. Although Metroid draws more from other sources, there is a certain “striptease” element to the original NES installment wherein the faster the player completes the game, the more of Samus you see in the ending screen. Take five hours or longer to defeat the Mother Brain, and you see Samus in her full space suit. If you take three to five hours, however, Samus removes her helmet, revealing what could be interpreted as long hair and a feminine face, depending on how fluent you are in the visual language of 8-bit era pixel art. Beat the game in under three hours, however, and it’s a lot clearer; you see more of Samus’ long hair and a more distinctly feminine body wearing a leotard. And if you can beat the game in under an hour, you see Samus in underclothes that more or less amount to a red bikini.
Left to right: five hours or longer, three to five hours, under three hours and under one hour. At least on a conceptual level, this is actually somewhat racy by Nintendo standards back in the day. Maybe they figured anyone who could master Metroid in less than an hour was mature enough to see Samus in skimpy underwear?
While Barbarella keeps the audience in suspense about the gender of the astronaut character for all of thirty seconds, Metroid is pulling off a similar trick and then holding off the reveal for a lot longer. In fact, because the instruction manual for Metroid explicitly tells you that Samus Aran is male, you have a lot more reason to be surprised by this end-of-game reveal. And if you never manage to get especially good at Metroid, you could easily play all the way through and never learn the truth about Samus’s gender.
It might seem like a stretch to look at the presentation of Samus’ gender in the original Metroid and say that it’s an intentional nod to Barbarella, but there’s an intermediary work that makes the connection seem more plausible. In fact, in my opinion, it gives a more definitive answer to the question of another Nintendo protagonist’s gender.
I’m talking about Mach Rider.
Released for the Famicom on August 27, 1985, Mach Rider predates Metroid by about a year. As far as pop culture comparisons go, it’s more Mad Max than it is Barbarella, but it’s nonetheless futuristic science fiction. The English instruction manual explicitly sets the game in the year 2112 and identifies the player character, Mach Rider, as someone racing from sector to sector in search of people who have survived the ongoing invasion of Earth by hostile aliens. Unlike the manual for Metroid, the text does not gender Mach Rider one way or the other, but I would imagine most people playing the game or looking at the official art would just assume the person riding the motorbike is male, because in the way that most astronauts have been male, most playable characters in video games have been male as well. Nothing in the game gives any clue as to Mach Rider’s gender.
In November 1985, however, Nintendo also released a second version of the game for the VS. arcade system, and among the differences between the console version and this new, updated version is a hint that Mach Rider may actually be female.
The game’s start screen shows a pixelated rendering of Mach Rider, sporting an armored racing suit and looking a lot like a prototype for F-Zero’s Captain Falcon.
Upon beating the first stage, you see this same background, only with the image of Mach Rider missing and a few squares of a new image in its place.
From here on out, every time you beat another stage, more of this image fills in, to the point that when you beat the final stage, Sector 10, the image of Mach Rider has been replaced with one of a woman wearing thigh-high boots and a revealing leotard.
The game does not ever say explicitly that this woman is the same person you were controlling on the motorbike, and as a result, there’s been a lingering mystery about who she is. If you look at this in the context of Metroid and its various endings gradually revealing more of Samus’ body, it seems plausible that Mach Rider may also be (surprise!) a sexy woman in a revealing outfit. However, not everyone reads this the same way, and some conclude that the woman in white is a different character, perhaps one of the rescued human survivors — something like Peach or Zelda appearing at the end of their respective games, just showing off a lot more skin. This is actually a staple of various erotic games that reward players for completing a given level with an unobscured picture of a sexy woman, and in the series Gals Panic, the entire play mechanic revolves around revealing these kinds of images.
I think Barbarella can clarify the matter, however. In fact, we may look at Mach Rider as more of a direct homage to the 1968 movie. Throughout Barbarella, the title character undergoes many costume changes, and for the sequence in which she crashes her spaceship into a shadowy labyrinth area, she dons a white leotard with matching boots.
This particular outfit is one of the more popular looks in the film, to the point that it’s a frequent option today for Barbarella Halloween costumes or people cosplaying as the character. The chainmail bikini is famous too, and while harder to pull off in a DIY context, I’m pretty sure that’s supposed to be what she’s wearing in the Robert McGinnis art in the poster for the film. And I’m sure the green mosaic minidress has its fans, but this white outfit is arguably the most iconic one and the one best able to communicate Barbarella specifically, as opposed to some some other female character in a sexy sci-fi context.
Now, this Barbarella outfit is not the same as the one the Mach Rider woman is wearing, but I can see the latter as something that is trying to approximate the former using the limited means of pixel art. The biggest differences are that the Mach Rider outfit lacks the black accents and that it’s actually more revealing than the Barbarella outfit — and yes, it’s really surprising to find an instance when Nintendo is more daring than a movie famous for its eroticism. The boots are almost identical, with the shadow on the Mach Rider version mimicking the black stripe on the Barbarella version. Both outfits seem to be leotards with belts that almost make them look like they’re composed of two separate pieces. And both outfits feature plunging necklines, just with the Mach Rider one plunging further down than the Barbaraella one does. Even the styling of the Mach Rider woman’s hair could arguably be seen as a pixelated version of the big, 1960s-style hair Jane is sporting in the film, even if it’s a different color. (For what it’s worth, even Barbarella’s hair ranges from blond to red to light brown, depending on the lighting in the photo. I think she’s meant to be strawberry blond.)
To me, I think it’s pretty clear that Mach Rider and the woman in white are supposed to be the same person. That’s the most obvious explanation I can think of for why she would replace “him” over the course of VS. Mach Rider, revealing her true self once the last level is beaten — and again, doing all this just a few months before Samus would more famously do it in Metroid. But in case you’re not convinced, I think this woman has been styled like Barbarella not just because Barbarella is a famously sexy sci-fi character but also because she is *the* character in her story — a hero, an adventurer, the character with the most agency and surely not a damsel in distress. This video game character has been made to look like Barbarella because they wanted her to look sexy, sure, but also because they want to suggest she, like Barbarella, is the protagonist of her story.
For what it’s worth, this is not the only time Barbarella appears to have influenced a Nintendo franchise. In her excellent video “Samus Aran Origins: Metroid’s Influences Beyond Alien,” Kate Willaert goes deep on the various works that have come together to make the Metroid protagonist who she is today, and those include Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, the anime/manga Space Cobra, and the Namco game Baraduke, which did the whole “courageous spacefarer is actually a woman” surprise reveal when it hit arcades in May 1985, before Mach Rider was even released. If anything I’m putting in this post is of interest, I strongly encourage you to watch Willaert’s video.
In the video, Willaert connects a look that Samus sports in Super Metroid — a black leotard with a cut out showing off her navel — to one of Barbarella’s looks with a similar feature. The connection is more complicated than I’m stating here and involves the prototype version of Jane Royal, a character from Space Cobra. But for what it’s worth, I also think these two looks are similar enough and exist in such a similar genre context that it’s more likely an homage than it is two instances of space adventurers who want to show off their tummies.
Regardless of the conclusion I think Nintendo is leading us to make in VS. Mach Rider, treatment of the character’s gender has been mixed subsequently. This has not been helped by the fact that VS. Mach Rider is so far the final game in the franchise, if you can call two entries a franchise. Mach Rider has persisted instead as a referenced thing — a minigame in WarioWare: Twisted! or an unlockable vehicle in Mario Kart Wii. Mach Rider is represented in the Smash Bros. games a few different ways, including as a music track and in Super Smash Bros. Melee as a trophy, but the English description for it identifies the character as male.
However, the 2008 Wii title Captain Rainbow seems to indicate that at least some people at Nintendo consider Mach Rider to be female. The game, which was never released outside Japan, focuses on an island populated by lesser-remembered Nintendo characters. Some of them, like Little Mac and Takamaru have since rebounded from obscurity, while others, like Lip from Panel de Pon, have yet to return to the spotlight. However, the game’s files include a model for Mach Rider that looks distinctly feminine, with hips and a pinched waist, indicating that at some stage she would have been those marooned on Captain Rainbow’s island of misfit Nintendo mascots.
I realize that cut content from an obscure game which never made it outside Japan and which Nintendo seems unlikely to revisit is not exactly a hard confirmation, but it’s something, at least, to indicate that we were correct to read VS. Mach Rider’s presentation as a Metroid-style gender reveal. Personally, I want Mach Rider to be female. I like it when video games give their female characters interesting stuff to do, and to me, being the main character qualifies as pretty damn interesting. It’s curious that Nintendo’s first female protagonist, Clu Clu Land’s Bubbles, is similarly complicated when it comes to the matter of her gender. It actually takes until 1990 for Nintendo to release a game in which the main, default hero character is clearly, indisputably female in a way that the player knows from the moment they plug in the cartridge and turn the system on — and yes, I will be writing about her in a future post.
I went back and forth on putting the word “striptease” in the title for this post, because taking off your clothes in a sensual, performative manner isn’t the same as just revealing your gender. I ended up keeping it, however, because one of motivating factors in a striptease is anticipation, which the performer heightens by holding off a full reveal. Strictly in those terms, Mach Rider has Samus and Barbarella beat. From the start of the movie, Barbarella only takes two minutes to lower the barrier in her helmet to reveal her face — and another two minutes to reveal her breasts. Samus takes however long you need to beat Metroid, so long as it’s under five hours, and by the time Metroid II: Return of Samus hit shelves, the secret was out that this fearless spaceman was actually Nintendo’s leading lady. Mach Rider, however, debuted almost forty years ago and we’re still waiting for her big reveal.
The anticipation, for those paying attention, is assuredly heightened.
Miscellaneous Notes
For the record, I don’t necessarily think that Metroid’s gender reveal is a nod to Mach Rider’s. For one thing, Metroid was produced by Nintendo R&D1 and Mach Rider was produced by Hal Laboratory. While they could have been in communication with each other, it’s also possible that two different teams of people both thought it would be surprising for players to find out they’d been controlling a female character without realizing it. As Willaert points out in her video, this sort of surprise gender reveal predates Metroid, Mach Rider and Baraduke, and 1983’s Return of the Jedi actually begins with Princess Leia disguising herself as the male bounty hunter Boushh. It’s both a surprise to the characters onscreen and the audience watching the screen when Leia reveals her true identity. I do wonder what the first instance of this was — not just in visual media but in storytelling in general.
This post focuses on the connections between Mach Rider and Metroid, but the series that’s always had a special relationship with Metroid is Kid Icarus. Many people who worked on Metroid moved on to Kid Icarus, and as a result, the games have a similar feel despite the fact that they have different settings. It’s also probably the explanation for why generic Metroids show up in Kid Icarus as Komayto. That said, 2012’s Kid Icarus: Uprising features a gender reveal surprise that does, in fact, feel very much a nod to Metroid. Gaol is an armor-clad villain who, upon being defeated, is revealed to be a beautiful human woman.
One thing I can’t explain about the woman in white in VS. Mach Rider? The knife. I have no idea why she’s clutching a knife, and I can’t think of anything in Barbarella it could be referencing. Anyone?
Barbarella left quite a legacy in popular culture, but one of the more interesting influences has to be the one associated with the film’s ostensible damsel in distress. Barbarella’s adventure is kicked off by her search for a male scientist who basically functions in the way a missing princess does in most video games. It turns out to be more complicated than that, but this character, played by actor Milo O’Shea, is named Durand Durand, and yes, he is the namesake of the 80s band Duran Duran.
There’s also a character named Dildano played by David Hemmings from Blow Up and the sequel to Suspiria. There is not a greater pop culture connection to be made here. I just want to call attention to the fact that this is a name that was given to a character. DILDANO. Given that original comics by Jean-Claude Forest were decidedly adult in nature, I have to assume that his name is supposed to sound like the thing it sounds like, no?
Barbarella and everyone’s favorite sci-fi character, Dildano.
For what it’s worth, it was not a given that female characters needed to be disguised back in the NES days. As this post on Nerdly Pleasures notes, lesser-famous games such as The Krion Conquest, Ghost Lion, WURM and Arkista’s Ring leaned into their female protagonists. This post also notes that some people didn’t believe that the ending of Metroid meant that Samus was female, and I would say it’s a similar sort of thinking that would lead someone to think Mach Rider can’t be female. That said, I’ve also got a post on Castlevania’s Sypha Belnades, whose gender was revealed as a Metroid-style surprise. And in this Twitter post, Willaert points out the Akira Kazama from Rival Schools (and later Street Fighter) not only has a Metroid-style gender reveal moment but also could be seen as a Mach Rider-style biker.
I think another instance of Nintendo calling back to the original Metroid’s multiple endings may be Wario Land 4, which makes an interesting twist in that the form of the game’s damsel in distress changes not based on how long it takes to complete the game but instead by how many of the game’s twelve treasure chests are opened.
Left to right: the “boyish” Shokora, the Peach-like Shokora, the Wario-like Shokora, and terrifying Baby Shokora.
If you collect less than two of them, Princess Shokora appears as a baby. If you collect between two and three, she looks like Wario in drag, more or less. If you collect between four and eleven of them, she looks a lot like Princess Peach — and indeed this is presumed to be her “standard” form, as that’s how she appears in Nintendo’s official art of her. However, if you collect all twelve, she appears as a somewhat masculine-looking woman, not wearing a dress but wearing an outfit that actually looks a lot like Prince Haru’s in the Mario anime. In fact, I do wonder if this version of Shokora is an homage to Prince Haru being a spoiler of sorts in the Mario anime, ending up with Peach even if Mario and Luigi did all the rescuing. And in the context of gender presentation, Nintendo certainly seems to be saying… something by rewarding Wario with a less standardly feminine princess for doing the most work.
Like the post about Bubbles from Clu Clu Land, this post grew out of a massive project resulting from me trying to find the first Nintendo crossover — that is, the first instance of a Nintendo property from one game showing up in another in a sort of winking nod for customers loyal to the brand. The more I wrote, the more some of these connections seemed substantial enough to merit their own post. I will get around to that post one day, but in the meantime I’ve found a lot of other stories to tell.
Finally, in looking around online, I had trouble finding a large version of the “female Mach Rider” image with clean pixels and accurate colors, so here is one for you all. Ride on, Mach Rider!
