Skip to main content

Father promotes positive gender roles by turning Link into a girl

She Link
Image used with permission by copyright holder

It’s no secret that video games (and mass media as a whole) tend to focus on classic male hero archetypes. With few exceptions, most blockbuster games (and films, and comic books, and novels) are headlined by a gruff, badass dude with a chip on his shoulder and the skills and dry, cool wit to dispatch his foes in inspiringly bloody fashion. That’s pretty neat if you happen to be a guy, as we have endless fictional role models on which to build our own, real-world personas, but what if you happen to be a bit more distaff?

This was the problem facing Mike Hoye, a game developer and father who hoped that he could bond with his daughter Maya by playing video games with the young lady. Though the duo quite enjoyed Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, Hoye found himself constantly having to mentally replace the game’s male pronouns when reading descriptive text to Maya. He wanted to instill in her the idea that women are just as capable of saving the world as men, so instead of tripping over he’s and his’s for months to come, Hoye decided to use his skills as a programmer to alter the game to his liking.

Hoye’s blog includes a pretty comprehensive description of everything he did (as well as instructions on how you too can enjoy Hoye’s alterations), but the quick version is that Hoye built a patch for the game for use with the Dolphin GameCube emulator. Once users have applied this patch, all of the game’s references to Link being a man have been replaced with descriptions of his newly female self. This wasn’t as easy as replacing “him” with “her” though, as Hoye had to make sure that each word he replaced occupied the exact same amount of space in the game’s memory as Wind Waker’s original text. Thus, some of the changes are a bit odd (“swordmain” instead of “swordsman,” for instance), but overall Hoye’s work does a pretty solid job of turning Link into a proper female role model for little Maya Hoye.

Of course, if you’ve played any of the Legend of Zelda games, you’re already aware that Link has never been seen as the classic pinnacle of masculine stereotypes. Even while slicing enemies in half, Link has always been effete, and his in-game grunts of pain are certainly not gender specific. For that matter, if you run a search for cosplayers dressed as Link, you’ll find a massive number of women who make surprisingly accurate doppelgangers of the Hylian hero.

Now that Hoye has gone to the trouble of turning Link into a lady, it makes us wonder who else might be ripe for a gender swap. The name “Samus Aran” is pretty neutral, right? What if she was turned into the man that fans expected her to be back when the original Metroid hit shelves in 1986? We’re not saying any of you should take on this project, as if you’re successful the blowback from angry Nintendo geeks will undoubtedly be massive, but if you’re willing to risk that verbal assault we’d love to see the finished results. Not for any gender equality reasons, but simply because discord makes great news.

Editors' Recommendations

Earnest Cavalli
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Earnest Cavalli has been writing about games, tech and digital culture since 2005 for outlets including Wired, Joystiq…
PlayStation Plus’ most notable free April offerings come from Microsoft
Four players stand together in the 4v4 PvP mode of Minecraft Legends.

Sony outlined all the new offerings PlayStation Plus Essential subscribers can expect in April; surprisingly, Microsoft is the company behind two of this month's four offerings, Minecraft Legends, and the Overwatch 2 Mega Bundle.

On April 2, PS Plus can get those two things free of charge in addition to Immortals of Aveum and Skul: The Hero Slayer. Immortals of Aveum is a single-player shooter where players use magic instead of weapons. Although the thing it's most notable for is flopping upon its release, Immortals of Aveum is still a solid shooter that you might have missed out on, and you should give it a shot now that you can get it through PS Plus. Meanwhile, Skul: The Hero Slayer is a tough 2D platformer roguelike that should entertain fans of that genre for quite some time.

Read more
These are the 10 best gaming PCs I’d recommend to anyone
Graphics card in the CLX Hathor PC.

We review dozens of gaming PCs each year. In 2024, there are a ton of great options, but we've narrowed down a list of the 10 best gaming desktops that deserve your hard-earned money.

In 2024, we still recommend the Alienware Aurora R16 due to its fantastic design, solid performance, and decent value. However, there are several other options depending on your needs and budget. If you want a deeper look into how we evaluate gaming PCs, make sure to read our post on how we review desktops.

Read more
Mecha Break’s robot customization shakes up the battle royale formula
Mecha Break robot head with glowing blue eyes

Mecha Break isn't the kind of multiplayer game you can master right away.

You might equip a lance that you barely know how to use because it seemed like a good idea, and spend the rest of a round attempting to bash yourself into enemies to help your teammates. It incorporates action that's more similar to that of Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon than it is to the shooter-focused gameplay in Gundam Evolution, Bandai Namco's multiplayer mecha shooter that shut down last year. Overwatch does come to mind, but in a way where mechs are still the focus rather than the pilots within them.

Read more