From the article “Are You A Boy Or a Girl? Playing as Kris in Pokémon Crystal,” previously published in the anthology Heroines of Gaming by Select Start Press
Many Pokémon players will jokingly quote Professor Oak’s memorable phrase: “Are you a boy? Or are you a girl,” the first question asked of players when beginning a new save file in all Pokémon games following Pokémon Crystal. While the language is stilted and the trope memorably comical, this question provided a novel phenomenal choice for me as a new gamer in 2001.
Growing up, the sole gaming influence in my life was my cousin, who was more like my brother. We lived on the same street, hung out every weekend, and were born less than two days apart from each other. He was the one to introduce me to Pokémon, Super Smash Bros, Halo, and many of my favorite games. When he first got a Super Nintendo, I was the one who “watched” him play. He explained that I “wouldn’t understand how to play,” all while running into Wigglers and falling off the screen in Super Mario World. However, I was included into the games once he received a Nintendo 64 and his first multiplayer games like Donkey Kong 64, Golden Eye, The World Is Not Enough, and Super Smash Brothers. When I got a Gameboy Color, we played Pokémon against each other as well.
In all of our games, I remember having limited options that were implicitly female. I remember always choosing Daisy Kong when we played Donkey Kong 64. My cousin never had any Metroid games, so I never knew Samus was actually female. I identified with Kirby’s pinkness and defaulted to him in Super Smash Brothers. I remember I chose characters like Daisy or Kirby purely for what I perceived as their female attributes; and as my gaming world was largely male-dominated, their femininity made them relatable to me. Games like Pokémon Gold and Golden Eye gave no options for gender choice, so I learned to take on a male persona.
The interesting conclusion that these games gave me as a nine year old was that to play video games, I had to put on a male body. At my small private school, I knew no other girls who actually played video games. I think I knew two other boys in the school who liked Pokémon (This is hardly an exaggeration—for this K-8 school, there were maybe a hundred students total), but for the most part, my peers found it odd that I still enjoyed Pokémon after the third grade. As the one who introduced me to games, my cousin was my main gaming companion, and the gatekeeper for my gaming knowledge. I don’t think it was until late middle school that I met another girl who actually played video games.
So when Pokémon Crystal came out in 2001, I remember being drawn to the girl on the box art. As a player I could choose between Ethan’s black and gold baseball cap or Kris’ blue pigtails and bright pink jacket. I was able to choose to play as either a male or female character—not just for a brief battle like in Super Smash Bros, but for an entire RPG journey. I could be a Pokémon Trainer and a female at the same time—I didn’t have to compromise or silence my femininity to catch Pokémon, or my sense of adventure to identify as female.
In my past gaming experiences, I felt that I had to choose between “male” and “female” activities. I could be masculine like my cousin and shoot down terrorists in The World Is Not Enough, or I could play Barbie: Explorer on the Playstation. One was fun and interesting (heck, one covered the screen in blood when you died!). The other was shallow and unmemorable. On Saturdays, I’d go over to my cousin’s house, play first-person shooters, run around in the woods and wear shorts. During the week, I wore my uniform skirt, my hair-sprayed hair, playing with American Girl Dolls and having sleepovers with my girl friends. My girlfriends didn’t share my interest in shooting NPCs, and my cousin didn’t understand how I found anything interesting in owning dolls.
When I look back at the female playable characters of the 90s, I find it interesting that they were in games that I never would’ve picked up on my own or known to look for. Games like Resident Evil, Tomb Raider, and Metroid had box art with dark color schemes. They were action-adventure games, a genre I had little personal interest in. Some of them had T ratings, or weren’t available on the Nintendo consoles. The characters were older than me and I know I would have struggled to engage with them on an emotional level. My cousin never was interested in any of these games, so I never learned about them through him either. I was nine—I was drawn to bright Nintendo colors and worlds I could escape into. I have nothing against the female characters from these games, but I wonder: how was a gamer like me supposed to know about or find these characters? How many of these characters were created for girls to identify with, and how many female playable were easily accessible to younger female gamers?
Kris also stands out from these other female playable characters to me in another way as well: she is a template—that is, a character that the player inhabits and makes fully their own. She has no backstory like Laura Croft or Samus Aran. In fact, she doesn’t even have an official name—Kris is the name on the back box art, the first default name when starting up a new file. Kris is a body that requires a player to inhabit and bring to life. The absence of Kris’ personality and a written storyline allows for the player to fill it in themselves, creating their own narrative, inventing their own personal Kris. This is a feature that makes the Pokémon games still one of my favorites of all time: the game doesn’t make any decisions for you on what to buy, which Pokémon to use in your team, or how to defeat a trainer—and these choices for me as a player were incredibly freeing. In Pokémon, you are encouraged (and required even) to invent yourself.
I loved the Pokémon games because they were neither “masculine” nor “feminine” in nature—they were just fun games. It was probably the first game where I truly saw myself in it and felt an emotional connection with the world and landscape. Kris wasn’t the only female I could see and identify with in the game—I also saw a range of female representation through trainers, gym leaders, nurses, bikers, police patrols, academics and others in skirts, pants, lab coats, and costumes. Pokémon Crystal demonstrated to me that the Pokémon world invited seemingly unlimited possibilities for both male and female players, and when I struggled in my daily life, I could find sanctuary in being Kris.
Pokémon was interesting in this way as not only a game but also as a franchise. Even though in some toy aisles and cultural contexts it was deemed a “male” franchise, there were products that told me there were girls out there that liked Pokémon too. I saw some of them at Toys ‘R Us, but even more from the toys my father would bring back from Japan. I had hair scrunchies with Eevee and Dratini on them. I had Starmie gel pens, stuffed animals, and jewelry. I even remember seeing (and regret never owning) Bellosom overalls at Walmart. For me, Pokémon was the first game icon that crossed the gender barrier and invited both males and females to enjoy the journey of being an adventurer and collector.
Many younger Pokémon players aren’t even familiar with Kris as a character. Many younger Pokémon players may not have memory of the time before gender choices and customization in games. In the end, as generations of Pokémon come and go, the avatars are replaced with new, trendier looks. Kris is reincarnated into May, Dawn, Lyra, Hilda, Rosa, Serena, Moon, and the future trainers that will follow. Female representation in games still has a long ways to go, but Kris’ first step out from New Bark Town invited the female Pokémon trainer on adventure, which continues to this day.
Meg Eden runs the MAGES Library blog, and teaches creative writing at Anne Arundel Community College. She is the author of five poetry chapbooks, the novel "Post-High School Reality Quest” (2017), and the forthcoming poetry collection “Drowning in the Floating World” (2020). Find her online at www.megedenbooks.com or on Twitter at @ConfusedNarwhal.