10 Video Game Characters Who Bared Nipples Before Mario
Super Mareolas.
Nintendo Direct this past week revealed a great deal about the company's upcoming plans for their burgeoning Switch, though pretty much every juicy detail has since been drowned out by the lascivious leak of Super Mario's most candid snapshot yet. In a month when we learned that the Mushroom Kingdom's finest is no longer a plumber, so we were also afforded our very first glimpse of his glorious man nozzles. People have been unsure how to react.
A fair few have been moved to discomfort, rocked by an outdated belief that bare teats are inherently evil and should be sheathed at all time. Others have taken an opposite view, grateful that such a star would throw his hat (or his shirt) in the ring labelled 'free the nipple'.
Mario might claim to be a trailblazer, but he's also a fraud. Male heroes of video games have been whipping them out for years, and no one has ever lost any sleep over it. It helps when you're not the focus of intense objectification. That isn't our remit here though; we've no desire to rank nipples, because that's not normal behaviour. But we do want to take a non-discriminatory look at them.
These 10 stiffened in the wind long before Mario ditched the dungarees.
10. Donkey Kong
Mario's latest game has attracted all sorts of, if not necessarily bad, at least utterly weird headlines for its nonchalant nipple action. But keen historians of Nintendo will recall his first game had pec buttons on firm display. Only they were that of a gorilla.
Donkey Kong's design has received a modesty-inducing overhaul since his scaffold scaling days, but back in 1981 the malevolent primate was content to pound his chest with his teats proudly protruding. It's possibly the earliest representation of a nipple in a game, with a two satisfyingly minimalist pixels devoted to their depiction. It's hard to say why Donkey was eventually overcome with shame, though it probably has something to do with his normalisation into Western society.
He even started wearing a tie. That's 'dignity', apparently.