5 More LGBT Gaming Facts You Might Not Know
Final Fight's Poison
Any fighting game enthusiast will have at least heard of Final Fight, a 1989 Capcom arcade brawler. While pile-driving the entire criminal population of Metro City into oblivion you will come across Poison. This member of the Mad Gear Gang is a pink-haired, high heel wearing badass, with an interesting history to her.
In the original version of Final Fight, Poison was originally planned to be a cisgendered woman. However, they changed her to be a transgender woman when it was suggested that hitting women was "considered rude" in America, and they feared it would cause controversy. So in their minds punching a transgender woman is more marketable than hitting cisgendered women. The late 80s/early 90s was a strange time.
Bully
Rockstar's 2006 action-adventure game caused a fair bit of controversy when it came out, and some of the controversies were about Jimmy's sexuality. The loveable troublemaker was bisexual allowing you to kiss both girls and guys for health bonuses.
Bully also had an achievement for kissing 20 guys called "Over the Rainbow". In 2018 this doesn't seem like a big deal, but back in the day it meant the world to a closeted homosexual teenager like myself.
The First Queer Character in Gaming
Moonmist is a rather unforgettable interaction fiction game from 1986 by Infocom. However, it holds the title of being one of the first games, if not the first game, to have an LGBT character. You play as a young detective who has been ask by their friend Tamara to investigate a supposedly haunted castle in Cornwall.
The queer in question is Vivien Pentreath. In-game she is upset at Tamara's husband for proposing to Tamara whom she is deeply affectionate for. As with many games of the era, her sexuality is never stated but this small interaction is often considered to be the first evidence of a queer character in gaming.
GTA5's Trevor Philips
Whether you love or hate GTA 5 you can't say that it isn't the most popular game of all time. Even now 5 years after its first initial release Grand Theft Auto 5 is still seeing massive amounts of play. At time of writing there are 61,000 people currently in-game on Steam.
Trevor Phillips is one of the three main characters in GTA 5 and is openly queer. He has relations with both women and men throughout the game (spoilers!). Having a murderous sociopath as gaming's most popular queer character may or may not be a good thing - that's something to decide for yourself.
Marriage and Adoption in Sims 1
Everyone knows the Sims as the game where you can live out every absurd fantasy you can't live out in the real world, like owning a house and getting a stable job.
Whether you're gay or straight you can have relationships with whatever sims you want in The Sims 1. While same-sex couples can't get married in the Sims 1, they can move in together which gameplay-wise is identical to getting married. It's not until the Sims 2 where same-sex couples can get "married" proper.
Regardless of what gender adults are in a household in the Sims 1, as long as there are two adult sims in the house, you will eventually get a phone call asking if you want to adopt a baby. This allows same-sex couples to adopt children. Again though, it's not until the Sims 2 where same-sex couples can "officially" adopt and both be recognized as the adoptive parents.
We hope you enjoyed this walk through some of the little-known trivia of the gayming universe. Join us again soon for some more!
Jack Dixon is a gamer, cinephile, and more than likely he's the guy who's ignoring you on Grindr. Tweet him @Jackaphobia. Support his writing on Patreon!