I find these sorts of articles misleading, since there were quite a few old school games with female main characters that rather conveniently get forgotten about when making arguments like this.<p>Like Dixie Kong and Tiny Kong from the Donkey Kong Country series. It's funny how many people ignore franchices like that for their political screeds because the casts aren't human.<p>Heck, you could say Super Mario Bros 2 had a 'female hero', because it was the first game to have Peach go from being a damsel in distress to playable character.<p>Or the numerous games where you choose the gender (and general appearance) of the main character. It's pretty common in Western made RPGS, and it's getting about as common in Eastern ones (Pokemon has this since gen 2). How about games where there's a party of people and some/most of them are female?<p>I find this attitude that female characters are somehow a 'new' thing for gaming being rather unfair, and find the attempts of trying to then mix in crap like 'gaming's war on women' as even worse.