20 Most Powerful Gaming Moments Of All Time
5. Metroid (1986) - Samus Is A Girl!
The Moment: After completing the game and nailing that final mission, a message is displayed on screen giving you deserved congratulations on your success and telling you that you helped save the entire galaxy. Under the message stands Samus Aran, the character you've been playing as for the entire game. The message disappears and Samus is finally seen without a suit and helmet, revealing that she is in fact a woman.
How Is It Powerful? This was the late 1980s and video games were still very much in their primitive stages, still slowly emerging from the limitations of arcade gaming. Like all artistic mediums, it took video games a little while to adapt to new ideas. Women in games during this era were usually there to be rescued or earned as a sort of prize after completing the game.
Here in Samus stood the very first video game heroine, in an age of damsels and princesses. She paved the way for the likes of Lara Croft, Jill Valentine, or a female Commander Shepard. It was an enormous step forward in the gender politics of video gaming.