Gender-Neutral Fan Mods for Twilight Princess, The Minish Cap, and Link’s Awakening are Available
Posted on March 15 2016 by Darrin W. Harr
If you don’t like the idea of the player being able to choose Link’s gender in Zelda games, read no further. The father who modded A Link to the Past to be gender-neutral for his daughter has been hard at work, and has released several patches just like it for other Zelda titles. If you don’t know what a gender-neutral protagonist is, it’s when the protagonist (in this case, Link) has no specified gender. The player essentially chooses the gender they wish to play as. It’s a great way for a protagonist to be an effective avatar, rather than an established character (such as Metroid’s Samus Aran).
Take a look at the list of modified games below:
- The Legend of Zelda (NES)
- The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (SNES)
- The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap (GBA)
- The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening DX (GBC)
- The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (GC)
“Last week, Nintendo released The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD for the Wii U. As an HD remaster of a decade-old GameCube/Wii game, the graphics are visually much sharper and the new GamePad controls are excellent, but there’s a long-standing grammatical “bug” that still remains: female players who choose to rename Link with their own name are still awkwardly referred to as male by many of the characters in the game. Link’s physical appearance and grunting vocalizations don’t really identify Link as a specific gender, and there’s absolutely nothing in the story of the game that requires the hero to be specifically male.” — EchoParkMacPC
What do you think of these projects? Do you think they make Link a more effective avatar for the player? Tell us in the comments below.
