As someone who was exposed to "boyish," "girlish," and gender neutral games, I saw how the girly games had less... quality than the boy games. And the more gender neutral games seemed good overall.
I'm a amab non-binary person, and I have very distinct memories of my Dad trying to get me to play more "manly" games, like getting Need for Speed and like Monster truck games, because apparently Mario, Zelda, Pokémon and Wario weren't manly and mature enough.
Little correction for the history section in the beginning of the video: electronics became viewed as a men's thing around the time the cold war started ramping up, operating those large clunky computers before were very much delegated to be women's jobs cus it was annoying to do but once it became cool with the space race they were shoved to the side. Consoles being in the electronics ail probably already indicated them as being a men's thing so it was a straightforward choice for nintendo to put their consoles in the boy's toy ail. I'm not sure if it's nintendo's claim they picked the boy's ail randomly, but even then I kinda doubt it was random. Also HOLY SHIT the dev team behind girls only is hungarian, that was a jumpscare for me.
Late comment is late, but from what I read about that time and Nintendo's decision-making it came down to the US Game Crash- they knew they needed to make it BIG in order to break free from the US audience's perceptions of games as trash. And at the time Good Business Science was that you HAD to pick a demographic to aim yourself at, Manly He-Man BoyToys and Pink Silky TeeHee Girl Toys were selling GANGBUSTERS at the time, in numbers greater than previous decades more gender-neutral "unisex" style For The Whole Family were selling. Now, whether this was because Gendered Commercials were some kind of arcane magic that unlocked vast scores of revenue OR because of that whole, you know, loosening of the telecomunnications standards by Reagan allowing cartoons that were basically toy commericals beaming the desire for toys into kids brains and generally much more rampant consumerism following the humdrum US 70's... we shall simply leave that question to the more learned among us. But the style at the time was that you had to pick a side in order to create a hit, and perhaps because tech was seen as a Man's Business as you say... Nintendo went for the boy aisle. And the rest is unfortunate history...
One of the things that pushed girls out of computer science in the 1980s was that people started assuming you needed to come into the college curriculum as a "whiz kid" with home programming experience, and home computers had been marketed heavily to boys as jumped-up game machines. So there was weird gender stuff happening in the biz already at that point.
There's a lot of Japanese games that were aimed at girls, like otome games (games about dating cute guys). Some otome games had more RPG type elements, or more complicated gameplay elements than you'd see in, say, Cooking Mama. You can see that DNA in stuff like Fire Emblem Three Houses, which shares a lot of staff with those (including the lead artist/character designer) and also has a lot of hot guys you can date and a female protagonist option.
I would argue Rhythm Heaven is more of a rhythm game, like Elite Beat Agents. The mini games are all different representations of the same gameplay, whereas in cooking Mama you are switching from rhythm game, to dexterity game, to button mash, to decoration game.
@@MelodyNosurname I recommend Bayonetta, Shantae, Demon Turf Neon Splash, Tokimeki Memorial, Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia, Ex-Zodiac, Resident Evil: Origins Collection. For game that let you play as a female character.
Wait is this a thing? Because I’ve never played fallout but SOMEHOW a side effect of me starting testosterone was watching extensive fallout lore videos. Like ughhhhgg post apocalyptic radiation go crazy for t brain
listening to you talk about Mean Girls DS and noticing 505 Games published it makes me realize how wild their back catalog is when it comes to how much they've published like this company's catalog ranges from publishing this and Hotel for Dogs for the Wii to GUNFIRE REBORN, CONTROL, ABZU AND DEATH STRANDING (on PC).
Intial Story of Seasons games were gendered male. The bit about the gap on pricing for the blue baby game instead of the pink one reminded me of of how for a couple SoS games between the intial generation of male-only and the chosing-a-gender generation there was the regular-harvest moon where you can only play as a male and cute-harvest moon, where you can only play as a female. I remember loving one of the games from the cute genre and when replaying it when i was slightly older found out that they also *technically* added gay marriage via the "Best Friends" route that existed in the origonal Japanese release. idr if it was only with the witch bachelorette but I think it was. That ir she would do the ceremony evem when shes the "best friend". "Best Friends" could also have childern i think, that or it was easily hackable or im just thinking to hard without looking it up again
There were several other “best friend” options, being the Harvest Goddess, a mermaid, and a princess at the bottom of the mines. I am not making any of these up. It was marriage in all but name, and you could even have kids with them.
I still don't understand why they had to sell two different versions of those games considering Animal Crossing was a thing back then and gave you the choice between boy and girl
I remember playing the Dora game at 18:27 myself as a kid. I wonder where the copy of it is now, but I'm sure I still have it. :) As a trans masc myself I grew up with typically 'girly' games, I wasn't really interested in stereotypically masculine things, besides the colour blue lol. I've always loved New Style Boutique 2, and is still one of my favourite games of all time.
505 GAMES MADE THE MEAN GIRLS GAME? God they came a long way from making that to the greatest cyberpunk action trial and error game to come out in the past couple decades
Nice to see a retrospective on the peak of girl-targeted shovelware. I had a long period (basically, from the later DS Lite variants through to 2021) when I mostly fell out of following videogame news, but since buying a secondhand Switch and rediscovering this world, it's been encouraging to see so much change. Today's parents of every gender grew up gaming, and they remember what franchises they stuck with and what got old fast. I love the thought of mums today introducing their daughters to Tomb Raider and Metroid Prime and being like, "Yeah, this is why I'm Like This..." and the daughters perhaps not even understanding why those female action heroes were such a huge deal to us. I think money comes into it too - if you grew up heavily into games then you know it makes more sense to slap down £50 for something with a bit of longevity that your kid won't get bored with after a week. Our parents mostly didn't have that insider knowledge - they were guided by what we begged for, or by the media demonising violent and gory games in relation to school shootings etc., and I think that context particularly explains all those "Imagine a Traditional Woman's Career!" things - it's what you buy if you know nothing about games except that they're "dangerous," yet your eight-year-old is desperate for a DS...
To add to the background into pre-85, there wasn't a reliable means of determining of game quality at that time (the box art not helping matters). The second point (a point Gaming Historian debunked right on this very site), the dump of Atari assets was because manufacturing duties for Atari was moved to Taiwan from the Texas facility. New Mexico was chosen as that state's laws would criminally prosecute landfill pickers. I know some simplification had to occur to focus on the main point of the video, but I couldn't let the "ET cartridge dump" story perpetuate. Seems like the same lack of investigation many media outlets (especially the listacle types) pursue.
Also otome games still exist but i think they are starting to pander more to any gender that is atracted to hot guys and more and more otome games are using a gender neutral pc which is good in my opinion i dont want my sword boys calling me a woman just because i am attracted to them
11:32 Action Girlz Racing was meant to simulate how difficult it is for women to drive. Even though car insurance rates suggest women are slightly better at it.
Nice video! In Japan in 1994 for the Snes, Ruby Party is primarily women team made Angelique, the first game by women for women. It's a strategy game and a dating sim! And spawned many spinoffs and sequels. It's never been released in english but a fan translation for the DS version is in the works!
Oh god, Cabela's Dangerous Hunts is quite the trip, but as a American🌭Man🍺, I love it for just the pure and unnecessary creature genocidal rampage I can go on, another awesome vid Melody!
My dad had it when I was younger, and I remember us all YELLING at the intro sequence. GOD that game could have been SO COOL if only they had kept all the wild shit as the main focus I would LOVE a game about being hunted down by a super persistent grizzly as I tried to hunt enough food to survive in the wilderness But uhhhhh making you scared of wildlife would probably not sell Cabela's stuff so well
The girly games have a weird kind of appeal to me as a trans woman. It’s like getting a peak into what my childhood could have looked like if I was a cis woman. It’s like a peak at the childhood I never had.
I was wondering if you'd bring up the Style Savvy series, definitely the first thing that pops into my head when i think of "girly games", except i remembered in an article they said that it was also made in the hopes of expanding men's style and vocabulary for clothes.
I still find it sad and funny that the Japanese company who made the Style Savvy games use to make the decent wrestling games (one being Ultimate Muscle on the GameCube). Don't get me wrong, the Style Savvy games are decent (while not my cup of tea), but damn, that's a bizarre genre change right there.
I know this is like a month late but Barbie Jet Set Style was my absolute favorite game for rode trips growing up, and after the Barbie movie I started to replay it again and all I’m going to say, is while it has a certain charm; the littlest pet shop Olympic one was better. Also why did Barbie just randomly roast a girl like a quarter of the time when she clearly just wanted/ needed one thing done Barbie would be like “I think a full makeover is in order” like damn she just chipped a nail it’s not that deep
22:46 I mean while in reality most games can be enjoyed by most people, you also have to consider the devs of the time, now I am not saying thought "Oh, this game? FOR BOYS ONLY, NO GURLS ALLOWED" but they were skewing towards the concept of boys (of the time) because of multiple reasons, one being that they would have been making a game they would have wanted to play as children and that means they had a mostly ""boy intent"" and if you asked, idk, any ""normal game'" dev team: is this a boys game or a girls game? they would have (probably) said: oh this is generally a boy-ish game. be that because they knew how their audience skewed (except in house Nintendo games, they made games for children) or because they themselves with the comprehension of girls of a 2006 nerd couldn't see them playing and having a good time with it, so, in the end, we have 2 genders that games cater towards at this time, girls and "normal" which encompasses everything else, you know kinda like that one unaware child that says something like "these are my friends he's Mexican, he's asian and I am -normal- " and it's like "ooh nooo" But I do think that's in part because most girl geared games were almost guessing what fun constitutes for girls and or were done sloppily so they ended up feeling like that cheapo tablet you buy for your grandparent that's lagging after 2 weeks of use and you have to go "fixing" their tablet, this is, of course, generalization cooking mama was good, the project diva games are bangers, I still play them and I know people that had fun playing some of the barbie games. if they were all mostly decent the girl-"normal" divide would still be there to some degree because we live in the type of society that we live in but the words "girl's game" would not be tied to "ah yes, mostly bad games for little girls" and there would be many many more games like cooking mama where the first thing you think about them is not "girl game" in the same way "boy game" isn't the first thing that comes into my mind when someone says tony hawk pro skater 4
growing up in the 90s, its interesting how the handheld consoles gravitated towards women. I always remember my mom and other girls seemed to be more into that side of things than me (a boy at the time) and the guys into consoles
I had a bunch of these girly games as a kid and I loved them despite being shovelware. The Imagine games, Girls life Makeover, the LPS ds games. Peak nostalgia for me.
Being from Michigan, I honestly don't think most of the population realizes how much of a threat to humanity deer are. They're everywhere up here and are hellbent on throwing themselves in front of moving vehicles. Imagine driving through a big busy city and having to not only watch for normal traffic and pedestrians, but random deer attacks. Ah well, at least venison tastes good.
Seeing this, I did not expect an appearance from Action Girlz Racing. I guess Im not the only transfem who decided to play the game in 2023 for the sake of playing gendered games. I played it with my little cousin, who is a boy, and we had fun just due to how terrible it was.
I really enjoyed this niche subject & the deep dive into shovelware that's only gone up in value since Nintendo has signaled clearly that they don't care about video game preservation. Really interesting to see so many "girl games" be so expensive now since most tiles have never been rereleased on newer systems. The 3ds port of an old Barbie game for the Wii is now the most expensive 3ds game on the market for example. Also what's that about Funko burying $30 Mil in vinyl figures in a landfill? Where's that landfill? If they don't want them I'll buy some.
This entirely off topic, but I just wanna say I like your voice quite a lot. It's both soothing and energetic. It's like being in a fun theme park, but sipping on a refreshing drink. I'm relaxed and energized. Second, insert the "Both, both is good" meme when it came to the science for boys or cooking for girls DS game. I want both of them. Spyro was the reason I saved money and bought a playstation and I consider it my first real gaming experience outside of Invaders on a arcade console. I dunno what "gender" choosing Spyro is, but that game was my absolute jam. Bought the remake by toys for Bob years later. Had no idea how loved the trilogy was at the time or how well known of a game it really was. I just saw "OMG, I can be dragon? OMG portals that take me to different environments? Bangin' music? Flight? Colourful and light hearted? Collect and explore? Gimme gimme gimme."
I have genuinely never heard of Science Papa before and I was pretty engrossed in all things DS back in the day. It sounds like some background joke parody from a TV show.
I would like to say that the Imagine series did have some good games... and that's because those games were actually localised versions of Japanese girly games that were given the Imagine branding, some of them even having slight dating sim elements. They also looked a lot better compared to the "original" Imagine games but imo the anime style graphics just look so much better. These specific games are: Figure Skater Ice Champions Ballet Star Makeup Artist (Also known as Cosmetic Paradise)
At some point, computers and technology became a "boy" thing. It happened a little before my time, I wasn't born until 1981, but there was a lot of misogyny in the culture about "Women can't do math and science, they're too dumb for that! They're only good for makin' babies and cooking and cleaning!" (Including the infamous "Talking Barbie" that whined the ill-fated voice line "Math is haaard!") Nintendo wasn't marketing it as a "Video Game" system, that might've still managed to be "a whole family thing" at the time. They marketed it as "Look at this cool robot! It comes with this box you need to make the robot do stuff. Don't worry about it, it's not important, just get it into your home now." And robots were ABSOLUTELY "Boy Things". So of course it went on the boy side. After that, well, video games were computer stuff, which was boy stuff, and they'd always been boy stuff before so they weren't gonna break that any time soon. The fact that "Badass hero shoots a bunch of faceless enemies and makes stuff blow up" was the easiest type of game to really make, well, of course they just kept that feedback loop going. They ended up not just "boy things", but "YOUNG boy things", and it took a long time to really get main-stream acceptance for video games beyond the ages of around 14. You were expected to become "more mature and stop playing with those toys" until around the time of the Wii/DS. XBox was a "gray area", young adult/college age guys could get away with liking that, because it was all guns and military shooters and Halo and racing games and GTA. But even then, it was considered "You can play around with it in college, but you'll rot your brain and be a loser if you still do it outside a dorm room." ...And then there's me, a trans girl who didn't care what gender stuff was supposed to be for. I was absolutely hooked on all things video game and computer related my entire life. Still am. ^_^
@12:59-.-I heard these games weren't even made by Ubisoft, but we're foreign games that Ubisoft license to localized, and then slapped the same branding on all of them. The same thing happened to the Petz franchise Once EA bought the rights to the original games. Petz fans are easily the most done dirtyed fans ever.
Dude I just found your channel, this fucking ROCKS! I love your editing style and art and the topics you talk about and the waggabaggabobo WAGWAWAHGWHFGAGHGWHAGHGAWHGWAGWAHG anyways subscribed, keep it up, babe~!
When I was a kid my brother loved cooking mama and my sister and I both loved science papa. Granted we all turned out gay and also we swapped games a lot but my point still stands.
I’ve always been curious about a proper investigation into a lot of the “Imagine” series games and especially the “Petz” series games as a subset of shovelware mostly for little girls and babies that is comprised mostly of both low effort titles and disguised localizations of completely different and especially varied Japanese life sim titles. I think it’s interesting how in this era the only way to pump out so many generically branded games under a unified title was to take lots of games from Japan and wash out their entire identity to fit the mold publishers like Ubisoft wanted out of them.
i love watching these videos but oh my god are they absurdly stimulating all the sound affects images it makes my eyes roll back into my head as foam rolls out my mouth
True story: my dad got me Hell's Kitchen for DS for my birthday one year because he thought I wouldn't like how girly Cooking Mama was. …I still have no idea how my parents never clocked me as anything but straight.
18:30 oh my FUCKING god i had that dora game!!!!! picking up beach litter was my favorite activity. damn, that 1-second clip gave me so much nostalgia loool
I remember having so much shovelware for the Wii as a kid (a ton of it girly). Playing Doom for the first time as a 10 year old was like having an epiphany.
RIP gender, also, I've never once thought Cooking Mama was a girls game, though I was in first grade around the time the DS was around so what did I know
im so glad most of my games as a kid were just passed down snes games from my mom and dad. their obsession with mario, mortal kombat, and street fighter gave me life (but i still played girly games on the internet)
didn't realize I was not cis let alone nonbinary until my adulthood, but looking back at the chaotic mess of games I played as a child and teen, both "boy" and "girl" games and the non gendered AAA stuff like Pokemon, all pretty equally, it certainly does check out. One hour I will be playing shooters with my cousins and the next I will be applying Barbie's makeup, fuck gender
As a they/them type mother fuxker that was obsessed with the cold stone creamery game I approve of this message
the gender ambigs love scooping ice cream
@@MelodyNosurname as a nongendered entity i can confirm the zǎoshang hǎo zhōngguó xiànzài wǒ yǒu bīngqílín wǒ hěn xǐhuān bīngqílín
I didn't understand anything you wrote.
@@mikeval1525 bing chilling
@@mikeval1525 it's pretty easy to understand tbh
Ah yes the three genders…
Science, cooking, and falling blocks.
😂
to other lesser kind people, it's like:
Job
Kitchen
*_WTF IS THIS SHIT?_*
No lie falling block game is my life and a huge comfort throughout my ongoing transition
As a genderfluid person, I cook falling blocks using science.
@@princessintestines YOU COOK PEOPLE?
Okay, listen... you can be Cooking Mama and Science Papa at the same time! It's called meth.
Jesse, we have to cook
meth parent
Breaking Mama
Breaking Bad The Game?
*Walt's Wisdom & Warning*
Don't you also have to be genderfluid to be both?
As someone who was exposed to "boyish," "girlish," and gender neutral games, I saw how the girly games had less... quality than the boy games. And the more gender neutral games seemed good overall.
@DEADGUY666damn bro who hurt you?
@DEADGUY666you're talking about 10 year olds in the early 2000s bro
@DEADGUY666 but you're making fun of them for when they were 10
@DEADGUY666 they were probably 8 lmao
@DEADGUY666 nah i just like cartoons
I'm a amab non-binary person, and I have very distinct memories of my Dad trying to get me to play more "manly" games, like getting Need for Speed and like Monster truck games, because apparently Mario, Zelda, Pokémon and Wario weren't manly and mature enough.
Little correction for the history section in the beginning of the video: electronics became viewed as a men's thing around the time the cold war started ramping up, operating those large clunky computers before were very much delegated to be women's jobs cus it was annoying to do but once it became cool with the space race they were shoved to the side. Consoles being in the electronics ail probably already indicated them as being a men's thing so it was a straightforward choice for nintendo to put their consoles in the boy's toy ail. I'm not sure if it's nintendo's claim they picked the boy's ail randomly, but even then I kinda doubt it was random.
Also HOLY SHIT the dev team behind girls only is hungarian, that was a jumpscare for me.
Late comment is late, but from what I read about that time and Nintendo's decision-making it came down to the US Game Crash- they knew they needed to make it BIG in order to break free from the US audience's perceptions of games as trash. And at the time Good Business Science was that you HAD to pick a demographic to aim yourself at, Manly He-Man BoyToys and Pink Silky TeeHee Girl Toys were selling GANGBUSTERS at the time, in numbers greater than previous decades more gender-neutral "unisex" style For The Whole Family were selling.
Now, whether this was because Gendered Commercials were some kind of arcane magic that unlocked vast scores of revenue OR because of that whole, you know, loosening of the telecomunnications standards by Reagan allowing cartoons that were basically toy commericals beaming the desire for toys into kids brains and generally much more rampant consumerism following the humdrum US 70's... we shall simply leave that question to the more learned among us.
But the style at the time was that you had to pick a side in order to create a hit, and perhaps because tech was seen as a Man's Business as you say... Nintendo went for the boy aisle. And the rest is unfortunate history...
One of the things that pushed girls out of computer science in the 1980s was that people started assuming you needed to come into the college curriculum as a "whiz kid" with home programming experience, and home computers had been marketed heavily to boys as jumped-up game machines. So there was weird gender stuff happening in the biz already at that point.
My teacher let us play with dry ice in science, and my friend accidentally made a dry ice bomb.
Still not as terrifying as failing on cooking mama.
@@Labyrinth9885 so like the freezer pipe bomb
Jaiden Animations can confirm
@@zerobullets6935 dry ice, one use plastic water bottle, capping the lid, and a science teacher who doesn't pay attention.
i got my childhood DS used and the mic didn't work so i failed at cooking mama far more than i otherwise would have
congrats, you guys made the ice grenade
There's a lot of Japanese games that were aimed at girls, like otome games (games about dating cute guys). Some otome games had more RPG type elements, or more complicated gameplay elements than you'd see in, say, Cooking Mama. You can see that DNA in stuff like Fire Emblem Three Houses, which shares a lot of staff with those (including the lead artist/character designer) and also has a lot of hot guys you can date and a female protagonist option.
“Never has there been a mini game compilation with more charm than cooking mama.”
Rhythm Heaven would like to have a word
Oh also swag vid just came from the 31 minutes video to see what else ya made, and you should softmod your 3ds to capture footage it’s pretty easy
*cough* WarioWare *cough*
@@AustynL also FNaF: Help Wanted
I would argue Rhythm Heaven is more of a rhythm game, like Elite Beat Agents. The mini games are all different representations of the same gameplay, whereas in cooking Mama you are switching from rhythm game, to dexterity game, to button mash, to decoration game.
Never has a channel's content and aesthetics made me subscribe so quickly
thank you aaaaa
@@MelodyNosurname I subscribed for the epic video style B)
@@MelodyNosurnamesubbed for 31 minutos, stayed for the humor, good job melody 👍
@@EDMSCOOPERme too!
@@MelodyNosurname I recommend Bayonetta, Shantae, Demon Turf Neon Splash, Tokimeki Memorial, Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia, Ex-Zodiac, Resident Evil: Origins Collection. For game that let you play as a female character.
Melody just saying “Boobs” was my favorite part of the video 🤣
Fallout new vegas was the peak of gendered video games. Such a good gendered video game it switched peoples genders.
Can confirm. Was a girl then became burly strongman after playing it.
@@Dumb_Killjoy 💪
Wait is this a thing? Because I’ve never played fallout but SOMEHOW a side effect of me starting testosterone was watching extensive fallout lore videos. Like ughhhhgg post apocalyptic radiation go crazy for t brain
@@wormworm580 as a trans-man pre T, this comment is oddly affirmative for me
listening to you talk about Mean Girls DS and noticing 505 Games published it makes me realize how wild their back catalog is when it comes to how much they've published
like this company's catalog ranges from publishing this and Hotel for Dogs for the Wii to GUNFIRE REBORN, CONTROL, ABZU AND DEATH STRANDING (on PC).
"Willst thou get the girl? Or play like one?" life's one and only question
Intial Story of Seasons games were gendered male. The bit about the gap on pricing for the blue baby game instead of the pink one reminded me of of how for a couple SoS games between the intial generation of male-only and the chosing-a-gender generation there was the regular-harvest moon where you can only play as a male and cute-harvest moon, where you can only play as a female. I remember loving one of the games from the cute genre and when replaying it when i was slightly older found out that they also *technically* added gay marriage via the "Best Friends" route that existed in the origonal Japanese release. idr if it was only with the witch bachelorette but I think it was. That ir she would do the ceremony evem when shes the "best friend". "Best Friends" could also have childern i think, that or it was easily hackable or im just thinking to hard without looking it up again
There were several other “best friend” options, being the Harvest Goddess, a mermaid, and a princess at the bottom of the mines. I am not making any of these up. It was marriage in all but name, and you could even have kids with them.
Just two very close gal pals. Roommates, even.
I still don't understand why they had to sell two different versions of those games considering Animal Crossing was a thing back then and gave you the choice between boy and girl
Hm, so it's a bit like Krobus in Stardew Valley.
Hearing about what led up to the videogame crash is really parallel to the mobile game thing going on right now
I remember playing the Dora game at 18:27 myself as a kid. I wonder where the copy of it is now, but I'm sure I still have it. :)
As a trans masc myself I grew up with typically 'girly' games, I wasn't really interested in stereotypically masculine things, besides the colour blue lol.
I've always loved New Style Boutique 2, and is still one of my favourite games of all time.
yes new style botique is so good omg
505 GAMES MADE THE MEAN GIRLS GAME? God they came a long way from making that to the greatest cyberpunk action trial and error game to come out in the past couple decades
and they helped make mobile terraria wich is a huge win
@@TheAliceUwU No shot really?
They also published some Cooking Mama games according to Wikipedia.
Nice to see a retrospective on the peak of girl-targeted shovelware. I had a long period (basically, from the later DS Lite variants through to 2021) when I mostly fell out of following videogame news, but since buying a secondhand Switch and rediscovering this world, it's been encouraging to see so much change. Today's parents of every gender grew up gaming, and they remember what franchises they stuck with and what got old fast. I love the thought of mums today introducing their daughters to Tomb Raider and Metroid Prime and being like, "Yeah, this is why I'm Like This..." and the daughters perhaps not even understanding why those female action heroes were such a huge deal to us.
I think money comes into it too - if you grew up heavily into games then you know it makes more sense to slap down £50 for something with a bit of longevity that your kid won't get bored with after a week. Our parents mostly didn't have that insider knowledge - they were guided by what we begged for, or by the media demonising violent and gory games in relation to school shootings etc., and I think that context particularly explains all those "Imagine a Traditional Woman's Career!" things - it's what you buy if you know nothing about games except that they're "dangerous," yet your eight-year-old is desperate for a DS...
To add to the background into pre-85, there wasn't a reliable means of determining of game quality at that time (the box art not helping matters). The second point (a point Gaming Historian debunked right on this very site), the dump of Atari assets was because manufacturing duties for Atari was moved to Taiwan from the Texas facility. New Mexico was chosen as that state's laws would criminally prosecute landfill pickers.
I know some simplification had to occur to focus on the main point of the video, but I couldn't let the "ET cartridge dump" story perpetuate. Seems like the same lack of investigation many media outlets (especially the listacle types) pursue.
Also otome games still exist but i think they are starting to pander more to any gender that is atracted to hot guys and more and more otome games are using a gender neutral pc which is good in my opinion i dont want my sword boys calling me a woman just because i am attracted to them
11:32 Action Girlz Racing was meant to simulate how difficult it is for women to drive.
Even though car insurance rates suggest women are slightly better at it.
This video has gotten the main message that it was trying to prove to me: cooking Mama is the fucking GOAT
I cried a little when you called link "zelda" 5:54
“Neutral but more boy leaning” sounds like how I describe myself thank you for this
Nice video!
In Japan in 1994 for the Snes, Ruby Party is primarily women team made Angelique, the first game by women for women. It's a strategy game and a dating sim! And spawned many spinoffs and sequels.
It's never been released in english but a fan translation for the DS version is in the works!
Melody I’ve been binge watching your content and as a nonbinary person this channel is JUST WHAT I NEEDED!! Thank you so much!! 💕✨
dream jelly sent me here and i’m so glad she did!! psyched to subscribe :))
Oh god, Cabela's Dangerous Hunts is quite the trip, but as a American🌭Man🍺, I love it for just the pure and unnecessary creature genocidal rampage I can go on, another awesome vid Melody!
My dad had it when I was younger, and I remember us all YELLING at the intro sequence. GOD that game could have been SO COOL if only they had kept all the wild shit as the main focus
I would LOVE a game about being hunted down by a super persistent grizzly as I tried to hunt enough food to survive in the wilderness
But uhhhhh making you scared of wildlife would probably not sell Cabela's stuff so well
@@TigirlakaLaserwolf6 Make the protagonists two rednecks with too much moonshine and ammunition, and you've sold me for life
@TigirlakaLaserwolf6 My dad had it too lmao. He never touched it though, I remember it just sat in the milk crate we had our games in.
The girly games have a weird kind of appeal to me as a trans woman. It’s like getting a peak into what my childhood could have looked like if I was a cis woman. It’s like a peak at the childhood I never had.
This exactly is how i feel
This is late as hell, but pop off and go do it. The guy on ebay isn't gonna come and shoot you cuz you're trans and wanna play Barbie on the PS1
Considering the fact that those games sucked it would've been better to stay a man
My sister was just as much as a gamer as me and she did not love these girly games. She wanted mario.
Same lol wish I was a cis girl lol
I bet Melody gets extremely nervous during Deer Hunting Season 👀
Me too, girl... Me too 😔
This was a very fun and informative video Melody! Very well done!
I can't believe style savvy and the lego friends game weren't mentioned. Those were peak (though friends graphics aren't great)
I was wondering if you'd bring up the Style Savvy series, definitely the first thing that pops into my head when i think of "girly games", except i remembered in an article they said that it was also made in the hopes of expanding men's style and vocabulary for clothes.
I still find it sad and funny that the Japanese company who made the Style Savvy games use to make the decent wrestling games (one being Ultimate Muscle on the GameCube).
Don't get me wrong, the Style Savvy games are decent (while not my cup of tea), but damn, that's a bizarre genre change right there.
Glad to have stumbled upon this channel, I love the use of WarioWare D.I.Y. sfx in the editing
I know this is like a month late but Barbie Jet Set Style was my absolute favorite game for rode trips growing up, and after the Barbie movie I started to replay it again and all I’m going to say, is while it has a certain charm; the littlest pet shop Olympic one was better. Also why did Barbie just randomly roast a girl like a quarter of the time when she clearly just wanted/ needed one thing done Barbie would be like “I think a full makeover is in order” like damn she just chipped a nail it’s not that deep
22:17 Why'd you have to inflict psychic damage on me like that
according to single men on twitter, the modern "games for girls" are games like Animal Crossing, Stardew Valley, and Pokemon(???)
animal crossing is THE girl game. pokémon is the game for losers
Why do they think stardew is a game for girls?
Also pokemon, why do they think those game are only for girls?
@@thatitalianlameguy2235why do you think animal crossing is for girls?
Guess im a girl then lol
I’d just pick from either side of the aisle if the thing looks good
All games are girl games or boy games except for Tetris, which is non-binary
Very cool I wish you many banger videos in the coming year. This is my blessing.
Oh my God I love your laugh! It makes me feel cheered up
22:46 I mean while in reality most games can be enjoyed by most people, you also have to consider the devs of the time, now I am not saying thought "Oh, this game? FOR BOYS ONLY, NO GURLS ALLOWED" but they were skewing towards the concept of boys (of the time) because of multiple reasons, one being that they would have been making a game they would have wanted to play as children and that means they had a mostly ""boy intent"" and if you asked, idk, any ""normal game'" dev team: is this a boys game or a girls game? they would have (probably) said: oh this is generally a boy-ish game. be that because they knew how their audience skewed (except in house Nintendo games, they made games for children) or because they themselves with the comprehension of girls of a 2006 nerd couldn't see them playing and having a good time with it, so, in the end, we have 2 genders that games cater towards at this time, girls and "normal" which encompasses everything else, you know kinda like that one unaware child that says something like "these are my friends he's Mexican, he's asian and I am -normal- " and it's like "ooh nooo"
But I do think that's in part because most girl geared games were almost guessing what fun constitutes for girls and or were done sloppily so they ended up feeling like that cheapo tablet you buy for your grandparent that's lagging after 2 weeks of use and you have to go "fixing" their tablet, this is, of course, generalization cooking mama was good, the project diva games are bangers, I still play them and I know people that had fun playing some of the barbie games. if they were all mostly decent the girl-"normal" divide would still be there to some degree because we live in the type of society that we live in but the words "girl's game" would not be tied to "ah yes, mostly bad games for little girls" and there would be many many more games like cooking mama where the first thing you think about them is not "girl game" in the same way "boy game" isn't the first thing that comes into my mind when someone says tony hawk pro skater 4
we love to see women winning
.
The tally gal!!
This is quickly becoming one of my favorite channels, im so glad that they fainlly make youtube vidoes.... for GIRLS?>????
Melody screaming "girl alert" is probably the weirdest source of euphoria I had in a while.
growing up in the 90s, its interesting how the handheld consoles gravitated towards women. I always remember my mom and other girls seemed to be more into that side of things than me (a boy at the time) and the guys into consoles
I can't believe you ignored Super Princess Peach the entire video, is probably the most famous "girl game" ever made
Not really. I haven't seen anyone talk about it, but who knows? It might be more relevant now with the new Peach game
I had a bunch of these girly games as a kid and I loved them despite being shovelware. The Imagine games, Girls life Makeover, the LPS ds games. Peak nostalgia for me.
OK but the LPS DS games have such an intense, just, aura??? A powerful vibe that goes straight to the bones. Now I really wanna reaquire them.
Being from Michigan, I honestly don't think most of the population realizes how much of a threat to humanity deer are. They're everywhere up here and are hellbent on throwing themselves in front of moving vehicles. Imagine driving through a big busy city and having to not only watch for normal traffic and pedestrians, but random deer attacks. Ah well, at least venison tastes good.
The Wario Appreciation Society extends their best invitation to you given your...
Reaction to his greatness.
Man this takes me BACK. Also, I love your vibe and humor. You've gotten a new sub! :D
I just found this channel by pure chance and this is my first video! I love your style and sense of humor!
We added a third gender… and then a fourth…. And a fifth… and yea it goes on n on n on. That’s why.
I don't have anything to say I just like your content so have a comment for engagement
Loving your channel, great content, good job!
I love your videos because you somehow manage to make graphs and data interesting
The puppet parts where they are shouting sounds like it's blasting out if my phone speaker and it scares me every time.
me thinks this video is for girls
the advertising wasnt hardcore enough, needed more dinosaurs and sludge
If anybody here has never seen a full playthrough of Imagine: Fashion Designer, im BEGGING you to do so.
That game gets BONKERS
Seeing this, I did not expect an appearance from Action Girlz Racing. I guess Im not the only transfem who decided to play the game in 2023 for the sake of playing gendered games. I played it with my little cousin, who is a boy, and we had fun just due to how terrible it was.
The Little Mermaid on NES was legit pretty good.
I really enjoyed this niche subject & the deep dive into shovelware that's only gone up in value since Nintendo has signaled clearly that they don't care about video game preservation. Really interesting to see so many "girl games" be so expensive now since most tiles have never been rereleased on newer systems. The 3ds port of an old Barbie game for the Wii is now the most expensive 3ds game on the market for example.
Also what's that about Funko burying $30 Mil in vinyl figures in a landfill? Where's that landfill? If they don't want them I'll buy some.
Preston is so expressive. I love how terrible he looked like he felt looking at Girlz Racing or whatever it was called
This entirely off topic, but I just wanna say I like your voice quite a lot. It's both soothing and energetic. It's like being in a fun theme park, but sipping on a refreshing drink. I'm relaxed and energized.
Second, insert the "Both, both is good" meme when it came to the science for boys or cooking for girls DS game. I want both of them.
Spyro was the reason I saved money and bought a playstation and I consider it my first real gaming experience outside of Invaders on a arcade console. I dunno what "gender" choosing Spyro is, but that game was my absolute jam. Bought the remake by toys for Bob years later. Had no idea how loved the trilogy was at the time or how well known of a game it really was. I just saw "OMG, I can be dragon? OMG portals that take me to different environments? Bangin' music? Flight? Colourful and light hearted? Collect and explore? Gimme gimme gimme."
Your fishing resort full pack in is my holy grail and i glare at it jealously
I have genuinely never heard of Science Papa before and I was pretty engrossed in all things DS back in the day. It sounds like some background joke parody from a TV show.
I would like to say that the Imagine series did have some good games... and that's because those games were actually localised versions of Japanese girly games that were given the Imagine branding, some of them even having slight dating sim elements. They also looked a lot better compared to the "original" Imagine games but imo the anime style graphics just look so much better. These specific games are:
Figure Skater
Ice Champions
Ballet Star
Makeup Artist (Also known as Cosmetic Paradise)
The responses from Majesco IN CHARACTER is legendary. Omg go OFF Mama
I am surprised the Style Savvy series is not mentioned.
There ARE good girly games between all the shovelware. You just need to dig very big deep. 😂
CORRECT
i only found your channel yesterday but I'm surprised you don't have more subscribers
I be quoting Preston all day with “surrrrrre”
Ok but Imagine Cooking for the DS slaps, actual story and I loved it as a kid
this is unrelated to the topic of the video entirely but i love the use of warioware diy sound effects in the editing, really really good
I fuckin love the frame on your character that is probably based on a wonderful frame from charlie brown oh my god its so satisfying
11:46 YO-KAI WATCH PLUSHIES?!
Fuck yeeeeeeaaaaaaa
At some point, computers and technology became a "boy" thing. It happened a little before my time, I wasn't born until 1981, but there was a lot of misogyny in the culture about "Women can't do math and science, they're too dumb for that! They're only good for makin' babies and cooking and cleaning!" (Including the infamous "Talking Barbie" that whined the ill-fated voice line "Math is haaard!")
Nintendo wasn't marketing it as a "Video Game" system, that might've still managed to be "a whole family thing" at the time. They marketed it as "Look at this cool robot! It comes with this box you need to make the robot do stuff. Don't worry about it, it's not important, just get it into your home now." And robots were ABSOLUTELY "Boy Things". So of course it went on the boy side.
After that, well, video games were computer stuff, which was boy stuff, and they'd always been boy stuff before so they weren't gonna break that any time soon. The fact that "Badass hero shoots a bunch of faceless enemies and makes stuff blow up" was the easiest type of game to really make, well, of course they just kept that feedback loop going.
They ended up not just "boy things", but "YOUNG boy things", and it took a long time to really get main-stream acceptance for video games beyond the ages of around 14. You were expected to become "more mature and stop playing with those toys" until around the time of the Wii/DS. XBox was a "gray area", young adult/college age guys could get away with liking that, because it was all guns and military shooters and Halo and racing games and GTA. But even then, it was considered "You can play around with it in college, but you'll rot your brain and be a loser if you still do it outside a dorm room."
...And then there's me, a trans girl who didn't care what gender stuff was supposed to be for. I was absolutely hooked on all things video game and computer related my entire life. Still am. ^_^
@12:59-.-I heard these games weren't even made by Ubisoft, but we're foreign games that Ubisoft license to localized, and then slapped the same branding on all of them. The same thing happened to the Petz franchise Once EA bought the rights to the original games. Petz fans are easily the most done dirtyed fans ever.
Dude I just found your channel, this fucking ROCKS! I love your editing style and art and the topics you talk about and the waggabaggabobo WAGWAWAHGWHFGAGHGWHAGHGAWHGWAGWAHG anyways subscribed, keep it up, babe~!
When I was a kid my brother loved cooking mama and my sister and I both loved science papa. Granted we all turned out gay and also we swapped games a lot but my point still stands.
I’ve always been curious about a proper investigation into a lot of the “Imagine” series games and especially the “Petz” series games as a subset of shovelware mostly for little girls and babies that is comprised mostly of both low effort titles and disguised localizations of completely different and especially varied Japanese life sim titles. I think it’s interesting how in this era the only way to pump out so many generically branded games under a unified title was to take lots of games from Japan and wash out their entire identity to fit the mold publishers like Ubisoft wanted out of them.
i love watching these videos but oh my god are they absurdly stimulating all the sound affects images it makes my eyes roll back into my head as foam rolls out my mouth
True story: my dad got me Hell's Kitchen for DS for my birthday one year because he thought I wouldn't like how girly Cooking Mama was. …I still have no idea how my parents never clocked me as anything but straight.
18:30 oh my FUCKING god i had that dora game!!!!! picking up beach litter was my favorite activity. damn, that 1-second clip gave me so much nostalgia loool
13:05 what if
"imagine
enlisted
soldier"
15:28 like shouting every single slur to someone in voice chat in COD
7:02 I mean Duck Hunt is the 2nd highest selling game by technicality of it being the game that came with the console alongside Mario.
I remember having so much shovelware for the Wii as a kid (a ton of it girly). Playing Doom for the first time as a 10 year old was like having an epiphany.
RIP gender, also, I've never once thought Cooking Mama was a girls game, though I was in first grade around the time the DS was around so what did I know
11:16 I was kinda expecting Scott the woz bursting through that door.
So glad you brought up the daring game for girls that shit was my childhood
“Games that are evil and let you hunt deer”
Awh…GimMe a hUuUg MaN…
She got her hair tied up in braids. And glasses perched up on her face!
Tetris is for manly menny man men and you know it
Heartbroken at no mention of the Style Savvy series 😢
im so glad most of my games as a kid were just passed down snes games from my mom and dad. their obsession with mario, mortal kombat, and street fighter gave me life (but i still played girly games on the internet)
Nice name 😉 And amazing content! Its great to see more trans content creation lately!
Shout out to Tetris DS for being the best way to play Tetris
It's like the McDonald's girls vs boy toys. The boys ones were more fun while the girl toys were just solid plastic with hair you brush.
when the gendered games don't have me i know gmod have me
didn't realize I was not cis let alone nonbinary until my adulthood, but looking back at the chaotic mess of games I played as a child and teen, both "boy" and "girl" games and the non gendered AAA stuff like Pokemon, all pretty equally, it certainly does check out. One hour I will be playing shooters with my cousins and the next I will be applying Barbie's makeup, fuck gender