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Historically, the video games industry was originally seen as being by, for and about men. In particular, young men and all the extra testosterone that that entails. So, female characters that appeared in the earliest games were there simply as eye candy or in passive 'romantic interest' roles such as demure princesses whose reason for existence was to be saved by swashbuckling male heroes.

This pretty much set the tone until the early 1990s, when due to games becoming more sophisticated, female characters began to appear in more substantial roles. Being a female gamer from way back, these first few distinctive ladies shone out to me like beacons after such characters having been so conspicuous by their absence. Finally us girlies began to have role models in our video games who, although they were still depicted to look like eye candy, were much more than just a pretty face.

Here in chronological order are my Top Ten favourite strong and individualistic female characters in my journey of discovery starting from my acquisition of my first PC back in 1990. Being strictly a PC gamer, my selection comes from PC games, so there may be some worthy console heroines that I am not aware of and I apologise for any such omissions. Some of the below are actually baddies rather than goodies, but they're all powerful females who were not there just to look pretty.


1. CARLA from 'THE SECRET OF MONKEY ISLAND' (1990). This fantastic classic adventure game contained the first major strong female character I ever encountered in a video game, and what an impressive lady she was! The character you play as, Guybrush Threepwood, a young wannabe pirate, is told that in order to become a true pirate he will have to successfully win three challenges, one of which is to defeat Monkey Island's swordmaster . This is no mean feat, and Guybrush has his sorry butt whupped many times before he finally manages to only just win the swordfight. And who is this mighty and feared swordmaster? None other than feisty Carla!


2. JILL from 'JILL OF THE JUNGLE' (1992). Like a sort of predecessor to Lara Croft, you played as the intrepid Jill who had to fight her way through the jungle via a succession of monsters. This involved vine-climbing, being able to transform into other creatures, and just generally being really ferocious. It was a platformer, not normally my type of game, but I still spent many hours enjoying the novelty of being able to play as a strong, tough female for the first

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