Super Mario. Most of us know that franchise. Some would even say that they love it. From the heroic plumber himself, to the enemies that make up the plot of the game (Bowser, the Goombas, the Koopa Troopas, the Shy Guys, etc.), to the evolution of both the 2D and the 3D platform format, there’s a lot to like and appreciate about Super Mario and its history. But what you may not be aware of is that it actually holds the distinction of creating and maintaining one of the earliest transgender characters in gaming.
When Super Mario Bros. 2 was released in North America in 1988, the game’s manual gave a short description of each character, but one in particular stood out. The description for the character Birdo, whose name was mistakenly swapped with Ostro’s in the final product, reads “He thinks he is a girl and he spits eggs from his mouth. He’d rather be called ‘birdetta.’ Any mention of Birdo’s gender was omitted in later copies of the manual.
This technically isn’t her first appearance overall, however. Super Mario Bros. 2 is actually a re-skin of a game known as “Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic,” and in this version, a character under the name Catherine was in the original place of Birdo. In fact, Birdo is still known as Catherine in the Japanese version of the franchise, since the design was never changed from the original Doki Doki Panic form. See her trophy in Super Smash Bros (Wii U) below, which confirms this.
Speaking of the Japanese release, the actual original Super Mario Bros. 2 game was exclusively only released in Japan because the team at Nintendo of America thought it was too hard for western audiences. IGN. com, a news website for and about fictional universes of all types, states “Nintendo decided Mario 2’s difficulty level exceeded North American skill level. Rather than risk the franchise’s popularity, they canceled its stateside release and looked for an alternative.” The game was later released for us westerners as “Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels,” while Japan got our version of the game under the title “Super Mario USA.” This release also came with promotional ads. One in particular was in an interview format, and Birdo/Catherine…was talking like an overly feminine gay man, or a femboy as the modern world calls them. The interview was relatively normal, talking about her role in the game and how she hopes her friends in Japan “play nicely,” until it got to the part where she shoots an egg out of her mouth. While I was impressed by the mask moving its eyes and mouth, and the fact that the actor had a good amount of mobility in the costume, I was shocked but also laughing at the portrayal. I laughed because I thought it was mean, and I laugh at mean things because it’s absurd in a way…I think I laughed a bit too much because it totally felt like they just made fun of drag queens. But this wasn’t the last of Birdo.
In the 2008 Japanese exclusive Wii game “Captain Rainbow,” you play as an ordinary guy named Nick, whose persona, the game’s namesake, was a popular TV superhero and he wishes to once again have the popularity of his character on TV. In the game, there are appearances from other Nintendo characters from big franchises that have their own wishes. When we first meet Birdo on Mimin Island, the game’s location, she’s locked in a cage and being guarded by a robot officer named Mappo. Why did Birdo get arrested? Well, Mappo saw her walk out of the women’s restroom and thought she was a male and refused to let her go. The player helps by making their way to Birdo’s house and searching for proof that Birdo is female, eventually coming across an item that qualifies as evidence. Other non-playable appearances of Birdo in other games are often either just her making a cameo or her being an enemy for Mario to fight.
The general consensus is that Birdo’s best portrayal is in Captain Rainbow, highlighting the bathroom scene as referencing a real life issue. Mappo arresting Birdo relates to the experience of trans individuals who go through the same or similar situations, whether it be with officers or regular civilians. But while the whole gender identity concept originally just started as a joke at first, there is another example decades later that was way more appropriately portrayed from the start, that being an entirely new villain turned ally and hero, Vivian, who debuted in “Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door.” Vivian’s story is that she was bullied by her two sisters and the oldest of the trio, Beldam, intentionally misgenders her all the time. The obvious abuse makes her eventually side with Mario. But in the original English and German releases, they remove that storyline and just replace it with her being “ugly.” It was restored in Nintendo Switch releases, which removed any instances of misgendering in 2024, as affirmed by videogameschronicle.com, which covers video game news as the title implies. Vivian’s status as a trans woman was finally acknowledged.
Although with recent events going on in the US as of now, which is the whole deletion and censorship of diversity in anything important and whatnot, characters like this might become less and less prominent. Many anti-trans laws (like the whole bathroom thing) are being passed in masses this year across the U.S. According to translegislation.com, a site that tracks laws that target the trans community, 90 bills have been passed this year alone, and all states except for Vermont have at least one bill relating to this topic.
The Mario franchise obviously isn’t going away anytime soon, but events like this do often come with backlash. While this is likely not related, for a while after Mario Party 9, released in 2012, Birdo wasn’t playable in any games outside of Mario sports games, which by then were already few in appearance. Birdo had only just started making regular playable appearances again during the Nintendo Switch era, first back in the sports franchise in Mario Tennis Aces in 2018, then in the party franchise in Mario Party Superstars in 2021.
While Birdo does appear in the upcoming Nintendo Switch 2 game “Mario Kart World”, there’s no telling if she’ll have any more in the new era of gaming. If you erase Birdo’s existence, you erase a part of gaming history and even alienate a part of the community who mainly use Birdo for their gaming experience, like me. Sure, the initial handling was poor, but despite the very outdated language in the manual, this overly flamboyant pink dinosaur thing is remembered to this day as a source of representation to an already vulnerable and at risk demographic. If we were to take her away, you take away a member of the small percentage of trans representation, and that’s sure to garner unwanted attention. With the deletion of diversity in everything now, gaming probably won’t be far away from that treatment either, and if there’s no way to escape reality with fantasy, then where would another safe space be?
