Nintendo has pride, they even have an official logo for it and go on the Pride Parade. They are a very family oriented company but also a very inclusionary one. They want everyone to have fun. Sometimes that creates problems since they can be a bit strict if they don’t think something is for everyone even if there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s to gather all the real stuff out there that Nintendo has done in their franchises since there’s a lot of misinformation out there depending on what point they wanted to prove. I mean trust me I tried to have bowsette be part of the article, I really did.
I won’t include characters that were just switched gender on localization for the most part. I definitely won’t include fanfic level “hints” to prove some characters are LGBT+, so Isabelle blushing at female characters does not count. You have to remember fans will find those “hints” in anything to prove their points. I want a real established list. This of course means I’ll exclude fanart, as hard as artists have tried to make Fox Mcloud and wolf O’donnel into a gay couple with excellent art, it can’t happen. All of the fan art is not allowed here as that infamous Shigeru Miyamoto tweet, “Please, do not do that”.
Of course this article must talk about Birdo which is not only the obvious choice but while some people go praise her without doing much research, is she male or female? It’s a much more complicated question to answer. It’s clear she seemed to be trans in the original game where I guess she’s being deadnamed even to this day if we go by those standards. Clearly different times. Since then Nintendo has sort of flip flopped around on what Birdo is. Mostly to keep it family friendly I’m guessing, and sometimes I think it just depends on the game she’s being featured in. Nintendo seems to just treat her like she’s female although sometimes they do bring her past as that not being the case.
It’s really not that different than modern Donkey Kong being the son or grandson of Crankey Kong. Nintendo isn’t thinking about it too much and just goes with what works in the game and there’s no established lore. Further complicating thigns, Birdo is not only the name of the character but also the species just like Yoshi and Toad. Are all of them female? or male? Evidence seems contradictory. As time passes I do think Nintendo will fully embrace Birdetta / Birdie as having the first trans character.
Vivian from Paper Mario gets referenced a lot but based on the Japanese version she doesn’t really seem to be a trans character, more of a crossdressing joke that is so often in Japanese media. I’m not an expert in Japanese culture to know but either way, you can tell he’s in some type of spectrum whether she likes to crossdress or not. I do think in any case it’s ambiguous enough that it can be interpreted as that, so even if the new translation isn’t accurate it can be seen as that’s what she is now even if not originally intended. She gets to join your party and proves her family wrong, I can’t think of a better story arc.
Now let’s get to Pokemon, and instead of using that oversued Nova trainer which is indeed trans, but she’s such a one and done NPC that really isn’t worth talking about much. Instead I want to put the spotlight on James from Team Rocket, now he’s as straight as you can be, hell he even impregnated Jessie in the manga. He just loves to crossdress, and he doesn’t give a damn what anyone in the world might think, they can call him all the insults they want, he knows what he’s good at and what he likes and isn’t ashamed to show it. A braver and truer person is hard to come by.
Tomodachi life got itself into a controversy when there was a bug that caused same sex marriages was patched out, but it wasn’t done intentionally, they were just trying to fix other parts of the games. Nintendo did say they would do a better job at representation in future Tomodachi Collection games (where are they Nintendo!). In general people would just post screenshots of female clothes on males or whatnot because you could do that. Representation should totally be in this game, although people need to remember it’s a wacky game not meant to be taken too seriously. It’s not a sim game, it’s a I wonder what crazy situations these Miis will come up with.
I excluded some franchises I don’t really know because I can’t vouch if the information is accurate, articles tend to exagerate from what I saw. So no Fire Emblem, despite that I know it’s possible to do it, I don’t know if the actual game acknowledges those things. I also haven’t played Earthbound to know. But they appear to be for the most part good representation on Nintendo’s part so they do need to be mentioned at least. As long as Nintendo understands not to do forced diversification I’m all for Nintendo doing more stuff. It’ll never be their focus, I mean just look at Mario and Peach. They’re about making fun experiences.