Birdo is often considered the first transsexual video game character.
In his first appearance in Super Mario Brothers 2, Nintendo described him in the manual: “He thinks he is a girl and he spits eggs from his mouth. He’d rather be called ‘Birdetta.’”
Birdo’s gender has been the subject of question, and the sentence above was omitted from later versions of the manual. The Japanese version used a different name, but described the character in the same way as the American version.
Birdo’s reception has been mixed, receiving some negative reviews from the video game community, but positive reviews from the LGBT rights community.
(via Transsexual.org, Wikipedia, artwork by ChameleonTheArtist)
Posted by Dan Leveille on January 9th, 2010 at 4:47pm
