I never knew about this bit of gaming history, very informative video! Maybe the whole debate is one of the reasons Nintendo hasn't really put them in the spotlight of any recent games?
With Switch Online, I finally got to experience Mach Rider... and I couldn't figure it out. I'd drive along for a second or two and then blow up. Cool story and designs though. 0:59 - The bigger surprise to me as a kid was finding out Samus was a human. I never thought about Samus being male or female; I had assumed that she was a robot with a gun for an arm (after all, humans don't have guns for arms and it seems impractical to replace your hand for a gun, as cool as it looks). 1:31 - I was expecting you to say 'female protagonist' and was prepared to bring up Bubbles... though I guess I kind of just did. 2:27 - So technically, alongside Wild Gunman, Mach Rider is a Nintendo IP that precedes even Mario. Heck, precedes even Game & Watch. 3:43 - Nintendo's arcade roots don't tend to be thought of much, perhaps due to how they moved away from the scene mostly by the SNES period whereas console competitor Sega pushed the arcade angle with their systems. It is surprising then to hear that Nintendo prioritised the arcade games of the Vs series with the Famicom/NES versions being handled by 3rd parties. 5:50 - Except the fact that smash bros has made such translation mistakes before; mislabelling a Furil sticker as Lip, getting game origins wrong, etc. A decent argument but not definitive. 7:30 - From Nintendo themselves? Interesting choice of poster for this magazine. 8:04 - From what I know, the female Link was designed by the magazine artists. I believe the magazine were the ones that thought Link was a girl, rather than Nintedo making said artwork. 9:46 - Funny enough, I was planning to bring that up. The reveal of another survivor ties in nicely with the story of the game. I do think I ultimately lean into the lady being Mach Rider angle, but the found survivor is also a nice path. 10:03 - Okay, you kind of lost me with that one. I recall games often putting the player into the roles of games back in the day. Are you a bad enough dude and the like. That, and on a personal level, the character not being their own thing is always more disappointing to me. As best, I'd say it is like Link, who is never the player (BS games aside) but is still your 'link' to the game.
It's hard to say whether "You are Mach Rider" means much. Like, it does imply the game wants you to self-insert, but a lot of games do that and the protagonist still has a defined gender, albeit a lot of that might be because of a presumed-male audience. But I'm also lukewarm on it because I generally don't have a particular affinity for avatar characters. Any time a game encourages me to self-insert, that element usually falls flat for me. Mach Rider could be explicitly man, explicitly woman, or ambiguous gender and I don't feel like it'd substantively affect my connection to the game. So in my headcanon Mach Rider will be a lady based on personal preference.
There was a manga for the game in the CoroCoro magazine, and it starred two different guys riding the Mach Bike, so that's not completely out of the question.
I remember seeing a bunch of licensed mangas for Mach Rider, and one of them was about students in Japan beating the game, so maybe Mach Rider is supposed to be a video game inside a video game where the gender of the protagonist is purposely unmentioned to the player to make the game suitable to all genders, but there are some problems with this theory, mainly the fact that such mangas are usually non-canon and that another manga has Mach Rider be an actual character although their gender isn't specified (at least not in the pictures I found of the manga)
A mini-doc about Mach Rider? Yes!! I love having to piece tiny bits of lore and evidence together to figure things out (or watch others piece them together). Great presentation and arguments, my dude!
4:43 the JUSTIN BAILEY pass code is not the only way to play as suitless Samus, it's an unlockable for finishing the game in less than 3 hours. JUSTIN BAILEY is not even a real intentional code. 7:45 Like you pointed out, Link was also depicted as a girl in officially licenced Japanese magazines, at that time it was just artists having fun and interpreting the sprites Nintendo provided the way they wanted, it was way before Nintendo having stritct guidelines for how the characters should look in products.
Talking about taking the trophy descriptions from Smash as proof for something also falls flat when you read the description for Kaptain K.Rool's trophy in Brawl, where it incorrectly calls the character King K.Rool's brother, when in fact they are the same person.
Everybody wants Mach Rider to be a lady but if you ask me we already got Samus for that (as far as someone in a suit who everyone thought was a dude but actually turned out to be a woman. I know MR came first but still). I don't think that trope needs to be done twice. For me Mach Rider was cool as is in the original game, and I don't mind just having another badass male character.
Hard agree in everything! Having Mach Rider as an Avatar character is the best way to approach the situation. Yeah, it could be a buff guy or gorgeous lady, just like one would like to be. I hope they bring them back and let the player customize the look behind the helmet and even get upgrades and stuff for the suit and bike.
I'm all for representation and all that, but I'm of the opinion that the harder a character leans into being a "player stand-in" the more boring they are. I'm team Lady Mach Rider, myself. But quite frankly, I'd receptive to anything just as long as we GET more Mach Rider lol
I really liked your video, it's quite entertaining and interesting. I would like to see a video that reviews the history of a little known famicom game franchise called famicom mukashibanashi, made up of the following games: shin onigashima, yuyuki. Which has representation in Super Smash Bros Ultimate through spirits and music.
Ive always thought Mach Rider was a girl, I personally prefer that because well, Nintendo didnt have too many female characters in the 80s (especially ones that were named) and so Mach Rider being female really helps add to that number, plus theres just more in favor of female rider. That being said, I would like a cross over of Mach Rider, Metroid, and F Zero. Samus, Mach, and Falcon all give me vibes that they would be friends
I personally prefer interpreting Mach Rider as female. The ratio and male led and female led games is no where close to equal and I think there’s enough evidence to not make it an outlandish assumption. NoA has made enough localization errors to where it’s certainly explains why Melee uses he/him.
That's what I'm saying lol. Regardless of the poster and the other ending screen, it was clearly a dude in the original NES game. The female variants seem more like a retcon to me.
@@anomaly395 It's all very confusing, a lot of English and japanese wiki sources have conflicting info about when Mach Rider released in all of regions, both NES and Arcade. Even Nintendo's own declaration of the Japanese release date is disputed by other sources. But recently an archived japanese source is suggesting it released in August of 1985. Which would strangely put it before it's november japanese NES release. I don't really know how to explain it myself.
I lean towards Mach Rider being a lady, the evidence is definitely more in favor of that argument than the other. I'd like to see this franchise come back somehow, but I wonder how the gameplay could be evoved for a modern experience.
The "male" Mach Rider looks similar to Captain Falcon. Which could lead to problems if they wanted to bring back the series. But the female designs stand out enough that nobody within Nintendo at least will say that she looks too much like another character. But honestly I loke both versions of Mach Rider and would like for both to be canon. Maybe even have where you can choose which you play as. Maybe the male one is slower but has more power. Meanwhile the female one is faster but at the cost of power.
It doesnt matter whos under the suit because it is the player and whatever gender they choose to be.Much like how when in my power armor in Fallout 76 nobody knows i am a woman until the suit comes off. Imagination is a powerful thing.
I actually really like that last idea. It's like how Ori from the... Ori games... never has their gender outright stated. It was an intentional choice from the developers so that Ori can always suite the player. I've seen the developers of those games refer to him as male, whilst other developers refer to her as female, and I think if they did it with Mach Rider, it would very much be welcomed (I hope).
I had the same idea for a new Mach Rider....I keep envisioning this open world post-apocalyptic adventure, with both Mach Rider & their bike having upgrades as you progress, and I even imagine the player creating the protagonist through a character creator a la Mass Effect or Saints Row. This allows for both interpretations to be right, and the actual personality of the character can still be completely defined for the sake of story with a few changes here & there based on your chosen gender
That could be a good solution for the gender debate, like a modern Fire Emblem game, just offer both genders, male and female. Sadly Nintendo isn't showing any interest on bringing back this game in a modern revival despite having a huge potential... I suppose is on the indi developers hands bring back this game in the same fashion such as the revival of Boomer shooters, Metroidvanias & 2D based games.
I never knew about this bit of gaming history, very informative video! Maybe the whole debate is one of the reasons Nintendo hasn't really put them in the spotlight of any recent games?
You took the words right out of my mouth.
It is AWESOME seeing tiny bits of Nintendo History like this get thrown into the spotlight once again.
With Switch Online, I finally got to experience Mach Rider... and I couldn't figure it out. I'd drive along for a second or two and then blow up. Cool story and designs though.
0:59 - The bigger surprise to me as a kid was finding out Samus was a human. I never thought about Samus being male or female; I had assumed that she was a robot with a gun for an arm (after all, humans don't have guns for arms and it seems impractical to replace your hand for a gun, as cool as it looks).
1:31 - I was expecting you to say 'female protagonist' and was prepared to bring up Bubbles... though I guess I kind of just did.
2:27 - So technically, alongside Wild Gunman, Mach Rider is a Nintendo IP that precedes even Mario. Heck, precedes even Game & Watch.
3:43 - Nintendo's arcade roots don't tend to be thought of much, perhaps due to how they moved away from the scene mostly by the SNES period whereas console competitor Sega pushed the arcade angle with their systems. It is surprising then to hear that Nintendo prioritised the arcade games of the Vs series with the Famicom/NES versions being handled by 3rd parties.
5:50 - Except the fact that smash bros has made such translation mistakes before; mislabelling a Furil sticker as Lip, getting game origins wrong, etc. A decent argument but not definitive.
7:30 - From Nintendo themselves? Interesting choice of poster for this magazine.
8:04 - From what I know, the female Link was designed by the magazine artists. I believe the magazine were the ones that thought Link was a girl, rather than Nintedo making said artwork.
9:46 - Funny enough, I was planning to bring that up. The reveal of another survivor ties in nicely with the story of the game. I do think I ultimately lean into the lady being Mach Rider angle, but the found survivor is also a nice path.
10:03 - Okay, you kind of lost me with that one. I recall games often putting the player into the roles of games back in the day. Are you a bad enough dude and the like. That, and on a personal level, the character not being their own thing is always more disappointing to me. As best, I'd say it is like Link, who is never the player (BS games aside) but is still your 'link' to the game.
Amazing video! Super interesting to hear about this bit of Nintendo History.
It's hard to say whether "You are Mach Rider" means much. Like, it does imply the game wants you to self-insert, but a lot of games do that and the protagonist still has a defined gender, albeit a lot of that might be because of a presumed-male audience.
But I'm also lukewarm on it because I generally don't have a particular affinity for avatar characters. Any time a game encourages me to self-insert, that element usually falls flat for me. Mach Rider could be explicitly man, explicitly woman, or ambiguous gender and I don't feel like it'd substantively affect my connection to the game. So in my headcanon Mach Rider will be a lady based on personal preference.
I've never played the game, but is it possible that perhaps there is more than one Mach Rider? With Mach Rider being a title?
There was a manga for the game in the CoroCoro magazine, and it starred two different guys riding the Mach Bike, so that's not completely out of the question.
I remember seeing a bunch of licensed mangas for Mach Rider, and one of them was about students in Japan beating the game, so maybe Mach Rider is supposed to be a video game inside a video game where the gender of the protagonist is purposely unmentioned to the player to make the game suitable to all genders, but there are some problems with this theory, mainly the fact that such mangas are usually non-canon and that another manga has Mach Rider be an actual character although their gender isn't specified (at least not in the pictures I found of the manga)
I did not know there was a Mach Rider manga :O
@@NantenJex Yeah it's weird, haha. But I think it's one of the first results if you search 「マッハライダー漫画」
Its now on Nintendo Switch Online for NES.
A mini-doc about Mach Rider? Yes!! I love having to piece tiny bits of lore and evidence together to figure things out (or watch others piece them together). Great presentation and arguments, my dude!
The in-game depiction of the female character looks a lot like Mine Fujiko from the Lupin III franchise
I greatly anticipate the day Mach Rider becomes relevant again, so people have reason to look at this video!
4:43 the JUSTIN BAILEY pass code is not the only way to play as suitless Samus, it's an unlockable for finishing the game in less than 3 hours. JUSTIN BAILEY is not even a real intentional code.
7:45 Like you pointed out, Link was also depicted as a girl in officially licenced Japanese magazines, at that time it was just artists having fun and interpreting the sprites Nintendo provided the way they wanted, it was way before Nintendo having stritct guidelines for how the characters should look in products.
honestly it made more sense that mach rider is a title rather than a character.
Maybe the original intention was that the protagonist at the end get murdered by this woman holding a knife and she steals his vehicule
That would be tragic, but I don’t think Mach Rider would’ve allowed that. She would’ve been a future antagonist.
Great vid!
Talking about taking the trophy descriptions from Smash as proof for something also falls flat when you read the description for Kaptain K.Rool's trophy in Brawl, where it incorrectly calls the character King K.Rool's brother, when in fact they are the same person.
Outdated it is now 2:09
Train an AI on the game and its lore and ask it what it identifies as
Everybody wants Mach Rider to be a lady but if you ask me we already got Samus for that (as far as someone in a suit who everyone thought was a dude but actually turned out to be a woman. I know MR came first but still). I don't think that trope needs to be done twice. For me Mach Rider was cool as is in the original game, and I don't mind just having another badass male character.
Hard agree in everything! Having Mach Rider as an Avatar character is the best way to approach the situation. Yeah, it could be a buff guy or gorgeous lady, just like one would like to be.
I hope they bring them back and let the player customize the look behind the helmet and even get upgrades and stuff for the suit and bike.
I'm all for representation and all that, but I'm of the opinion that the harder a character leans into being a "player stand-in" the more boring they are.
I'm team Lady Mach Rider, myself. But quite frankly, I'd receptive to anything just as long as we GET more Mach Rider lol
I really liked your video, it's quite entertaining and interesting.
I would like to see a video that reviews the history of a little known famicom game franchise called famicom mukashibanashi, made up of the following games: shin onigashima, yuyuki. Which has representation in Super Smash Bros Ultimate through spirits and music.
I do want to cover that one someday. Maybe if a fan-translation ever releases then it will get bumped up my to-do list.
Ive always thought Mach Rider was a girl, I personally prefer that because well, Nintendo didnt have too many female characters in the 80s (especially ones that were named) and so Mach Rider being female really helps add to that number, plus theres just more in favor of female rider.
That being said, I would like a cross over of Mach Rider, Metroid, and F Zero. Samus, Mach, and Falcon all give me vibes that they would be friends
There’s a manga where 2 young men are Mach Rider, in similar fashion to the Japan’s classic superhero tale Kamen Rider.
I personally prefer interpreting Mach Rider as female. The ratio and male led and female led games is no where close to equal and I think there’s enough evidence to not make it an outlandish assumption. NoA has made enough localization errors to where it’s certainly explains why Melee uses he/him.
5:18 That's OBVIOUSLY a guy
There shouldn't even be a debate on this
That's what I'm saying lol. Regardless of the poster and the other ending screen, it was clearly a dude in the original NES game. The female variants seem more like a retcon to me.
@@anomaly395 Vs. Mach Rider released before the NES version.
@@zynux8252 Went back and checked and well, you got me there.
@@anomaly395 It's all very confusing, a lot of English and japanese wiki sources have conflicting info about when Mach Rider released in all of regions, both NES and Arcade. Even Nintendo's own declaration of the Japanese release date is disputed by other sources. But recently an archived japanese source is suggesting it released in August of 1985. Which would strangely put it before it's november japanese NES release. I don't really know how to explain it myself.
@@zynux8252 Hmm, I see. Well, I just thought Mach Rider was already cool as a guy when I first saw him. But if he really is a woman then hey 🤷♂️.
I lean towards Mach Rider being a lady, the evidence is definitely more in favor of that argument than the other.
I'd like to see this franchise come back somehow, but I wonder how the gameplay could be evoved for a modern experience.
The "male" Mach Rider looks similar to Captain Falcon. Which could lead to problems if they wanted to bring back the series. But the female designs stand out enough that nobody within Nintendo at least will say that she looks too much like another character. But honestly I loke both versions of Mach Rider and would like for both to be canon. Maybe even have where you can choose which you play as. Maybe the male one is slower but has more power. Meanwhile the female one is faster but at the cost of power.
mach rider was the captain falcon of nes era
It doesnt matter whos under the suit because it is the player and whatever gender they choose to be.Much like how when in my power armor in Fallout 76 nobody knows i am a woman until the suit comes off. Imagination is a powerful thing.
Mach Rider is such a great game!!!
6:36 since when was kirby gender neutral?
Mach rider is definitely a girl, just like the rider in super hang-on (except when they’re an old man)
I actually really like that last idea. It's like how Ori from the... Ori games... never has their gender outright stated. It was an intentional choice from the developers so that Ori can always suite the player. I've seen the developers of those games refer to him as male, whilst other developers refer to her as female, and I think if they did it with Mach Rider, it would very much be welcomed (I hope).
What if I'm a male, and I prefer Mach Rider to be a female?
I had the same idea for a new Mach Rider....I keep envisioning this open world post-apocalyptic adventure, with both Mach Rider & their bike having upgrades as you progress, and I even imagine the player creating the protagonist through a character creator a la Mass Effect or Saints Row. This allows for both interpretations to be right, and the actual personality of the character can still be completely defined for the sake of story with a few changes here & there based on your chosen gender
That could be a good solution for the gender debate, like a modern Fire Emblem game, just offer both genders, male and female.
Sadly Nintendo isn't showing any interest on bringing back this game in a modern revival despite having a huge potential...
I suppose is on the indi developers hands bring back this game in the same fashion such as the revival of Boomer shooters, Metroidvanias & 2D based games.