Rightie Keeping Me Down! The Left-handers of Video Games, Part 2!

Diversity’s an important thing. Especially in our cultural works. Art does reflect culture, after all, and works without diversity are pretty much saying that certain groups just don’t exist or aren’t worth talking about. In a lot of respects, one would think I’m pretty well represented. After all, you don’t have to go too far to find a white male somewhere in video games. People don’t often notice that I’m a minority as well. But I am. I face casual discrimination on a daily basis, from a society that doesn’t even seem to notice that it’s doing so. I live in a world that makes itself very clear that it was not built for me, and would much rather just leave me behind. My kind have a history of being subjected to abuse just for being who we are, to the point that many have had our defining trait beaten out of them. Most speakers of the English language still make habitual use out of words that were once used as slurs against people just like me. I’m a member of a group that makes up somewhere between eight and fifteen percent of the population, yet is still one of the most underrepresented groups in any medium of art. I am a left-hander.

Well more than a year ago, I wrote a post highlighting some of the most prominent southpaws in video games. In that post, I highlighted just some of the many, many obvious advantages of my kind, and gave light to the few of us who have managed to shine through as video game characters in our right-centric world. I’m proud of that post, and it still ranks as one of the most popular things I’ve written on this blog. Unfortunately, we haven’t seen any new left-handed characters in video games since then. Seriously, I’ve been looking and the most recent leftie game character came out a couple of months before I wrote this post. This seems daft to me. I thought I made the case for greater southpaw representation quite well. Now, you might think that nobody in a position of power has been affected by my post because I write a small blog and nobody’s gotten the chance to read it.  Well, you’re wrong.  Completely sensible and actually right but I’m being dramatic here so you’re wrong!  This is obviously a case of the establishment trying to keep a hold on things, to make sure our group remains oppressed, so that they can sit there and have all the prominent positions in the video games and the movies and the books and smoke cigars with their right hands.  Well, I’m here to fight the Right Power movement.  I’ve kept my eyes open since that last post, and I’ve got plenty of new characters to add to our roster, and together, we’re going to shake things up.  Let’s go!

Mega Man-Mega Man Franchise

 Look at that.  Just look at that picture.  Have you ever seen such a demonstration of left-handed glory?  Well, except for MegaMan.exe on the far left there.  He thinks he’s so cool.  But he’s not.

Being a primarily 2-d character, it’s been a little hard to get a firm confirmation on Mega Man’s handedness.  Sprite flipping plays havoc on everybody, so it’s been really hard to tell in game.  He was usually depicted as holding using his left hand for his Mega Buster or other weapons in the official art and game boxes, but not always, and, well, you can’t really trust Mega Man’s box art anyway.  When the series made the jump to 3d in Mega Man Legends, Mega Man Volnutt (far right in the picture above) was solidly a leftie, and every other version of him has followed suit.  Except for MegaMan.exe.  Who is lame.

Hey, while we’re at it…

Zero-Mega Man X and ZX

He was originally designed as the much cooler replacement for Mega Man, so of course he has to be left-handed.  Going right would just be a step down.

Zero’s polarity used to be just as hard to figure out as Mega Man’s.  He was just as subject to sprite-mirroring, and, although official art did depict his handedness more consistently, determination was stymied by the fact that he used two different weapons; a sword in his left hand, and his blaster in his right.  Which one was his mainstay?  Arguments could be made for both.  Even though it was definitely his sword, you fools.

His more recent appearances have settled the matter.  In Capcom’s Vs. series, where he’s in his traditional model, he definitely relies far more upon his blade than his blaster.  In the ZX series, in his new model…

There’s just no question.

Red-Pokemon

This is again a character whose polarity took several releases to determine.  In the original games, Red has a static sprite, so you never see either way.  Pokemon FireRed and LeafGreen make it clear, though, he’s definitely a leftie.  Every time he pops out a Pokeball, it’s his left arm making the throw.  Obviously, this handedness illustrates exactly why he’s the best trainer in the series.

Left is Right: Southpaws in Video Games, Part One

There’s been a fair bit of discussion in recent years about diversity in video games. Players are getting tired of the mid-thirties unshaven male/bald space marine/what have you protagonist that are the standard for protagonists, and we’re wanting to see more non-WASP characters. There have been calls for more women characters, more races represented, better treatment of gay characters, etc. Yet there’s been one underrepresented segment of the population that seems to have gone forgotten. Nobody seems to think to include us, to demand more representation from our populations, all the while gamemakers are seemingly forgetting we exist. We are a proud group with a very rich and distinguished history, yet we have been living with persecution for centuries, that continues to this day. I speak, of course, of the mighty southpaws.

It has long been scientific consensus that left-handers are more attractive, more intelligent, better in bed, and improved in just about everything we do than most. Indeed, experiments have proven again and again that we are everything Daft Punk ever dreamed of: harder, better, faster, stronger. Of course, you could probably find scientist out there who disagree with those findings, but they’re probably right-handed, and therefore their opinion can’t really be trusted. If you think about it, left-handers are pretty much like superheroes; we are just innately better at pretty much everything. If one were to call us the next step up in human evolution, they wouldn’t be too far off the mark. Yet, even with our obvious greatness, we find most of western culture against us. While “right” also means “correct” and “just” in English, the Latin root for the word “sinister” took on evil connotations because it referred to left-handed people. Largely because of our natural ability to circumvent many defenses against right-handed fellows, southpaws were considered treacherous and touched by the devil, which is ironic considering that we actually seem to be blessed by God himself. Even now, the Right Power movement pervades our culture, with basic tasks such as cooking, writing, and even using common school supplies made much more difficult by the fact that nearly everything is made specifically for right-handed people. In fiction, left-handers are rarely represented at all, and even when we are, our handedness is most commonly used as a sign for how evil the character is.

Of course, we do have some small representation in most mediums, and video games are no exception. The amount of left-handed characters is very small, but most of them are very significant. And usually the best parts of their own games. To follow is a bit of a celebration of left-handed characters in games, listing the most notable ones in the games I’ve played, and explaining a bit of how their natural superiority shines through.