No one is expecting games to suddenly start showing sodomy in a tent, Brokeback Mountain style – game publishers still have issues depicting heterosexual sex scenes (check out Are Gamers Scared of Sex? for more) – but where is the gay video game hero? Or strong supporting characters? They are very hard to find, just as they were in films and TV before the 1980s. Bisexuality is starting to be seen - or at least accessed if a player is looking for it - but unlike other entertainment forms, games have not joined the 21st century by displaying diversity in human sexuality.
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The censorship has now stopped thanks to the implementation of ‘mature’ classifications and many Japanese RPGs feature androgynous characters, whose sexuality – and often gender – is hard to determine. Flea in the Chrono Trigger series is one obvious example – he dresses like a girl (in Chrono Cross wearing a pink and white school-girl style outfit) but is apparently male. Even the family-friendly Zelda series has Tingle - a 34 year old man-child who wants nothing more in the world than to be a fairy. He’s annoying and ugly but obviously popular enough to appear in several Zelda games since making his debut on the N64’s Majora’s Mask in 2000.
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In Western RPGs, Juhani from Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is perhaps the first openly lesbian character – and also the first gay character in the Star Wars ‘universe’. When first meeting Juhani, you have the option of either killing her, or beating her and convincing her to return to the Jedi order. If you choose to kill her, a female Jedi at the temple screams at you for murdering her beloved - saying that she and Juhani spent many nights under the stars together. Later, that female Jedi will attempt to murder you for what you did to her lover. Lesson: you interfere with lesbian love at your peril.​