The first ever female character to appear in a one-on-one fighting game, it has to be said immediately that, regardless of her standing in gaming history, she was still designed into a sex symbol and stereotype which portrayed women in an unrealistic way. Anyone who has the original Street Fighter 2 games remembers that she was weaker than the rest of the male characters, was overtly attractive (perfect for the teenage fanboys to get excited over) and acted much like a young schoolgirl when she won a match [1]. Ethically, not the best image to portray, but because of her speed in the game she was as good a fighter as everyone else, something completely unseen until then. In many games previous to Street Fighter 2, with the exception of Metroid, females would take a supporting role or would be the damsel in distress. Even in the Capcom game prior to Street Fighter 2, the side-scrolling walk-and-beat-em-up Final Fight (which interestingly also had two of its main characters included in later Street Fighter games), the main goal of the game was to take one of three men to save the kidnapped daughter of the mayor. Street Fighter 2 helped change this. Samus Aran fought off alien hordes with an arm-cannon, Chun-Li fought off men twice her size with her lightning kicks. She may have been a stereotype, but she was a stereotype who garnered attention for being the woman who could stand with the men and still kick their behinds into next week.
Since then Chun-Li has become "synonymous with strong females." [2] and has "inspired countless future game heroines." [3]. As the franchise progressed Chun-Li became much less of a typecast and her Interpol officer profession came much more into her character, building her into a strong, memorable character still popular today. The inclusion of Chun-Li was one of the first steps on the road to making video gaming much more of a gender neutral affair and it is probably fair to say that, without her, we might not have some of modern video gaming's biggest female characters. Would we still have Lara Croft or Jill Valentine?
[1] D. F. Smith, Top 25 Street Fighters: The Final Five, retrieved 05/12/09
[2] The Wednesday 10: Gaming Heroines, retrieved 05/12/09
[3] Tyler Wilde, Street Fighter Week: The evolution of Chun-Li and Blanka, retrieved 05/12/09
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