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Since the dawn of gaming, female characters have been portrayed as not only weak and easily kidnapped, but also as an annoyance. If the Princess is going to get hoodwinked, at least she could stay in one place, right?

Many have crowned Lara Croft of Tomb Raider fame as the herald of gaming heroines. Her landmark series not only defined 3D platforming, but also chose a female avatar in a genre filled with Indiana Jones clones. The only problem was that Lara still sold the game by the size of her guns... and I'm not referring to her dual Magnum pistols.

Sure, Lara is strong, assertive, and independent, but hundreds of "nude patches" and lots of revealing, unlockable outfits in the series have made it painfully obvious that her fame is almost a step back for women in games. After all, Super Mario never did a two-page spread in Playboy.

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By far, the strongest gaming heroine is Samus Aran, not Lara Croft, and the reason is simple: Samus didn't have to sell her body to sell millions of games.

Don't get me wrong, Samus Aran, bounty-hunter of Metroid fame, is beautiful. She has stunning blond hair, piercing eyes, and dons a skin-tight bodysuit. The difference between her and Lara is that she covers it all up in foot-thick metal armor, and never accomplishes her goals by bending over slowly or employing suggestive glances. She reaches her objectives with wits, strength, and the occasional Morph Ball Bomb Jump.

To truly appreciate Samus' impact on women in games, one must look at her first appearance in Metroid on the NES. To those who don't know, Samus' gender was unknown at the time, and her name was specifically chosen to be androgynous. The player spent the entire quest of mutant-killing space-platforming without ever seeing the hero's face, until the final scene in which her helmet is removed, revealing her long-flowing blond hair (well, as "flowing" as the 8-bit pixel graphics allowed). Gamers around the world were shocked because they had been tricked. Although the instruction manual never claimed Samus was a man, society's expectations just led players to think so. As time passed, the idea that a lone woman with a gun and some strong legs could save the galaxy didn't seem so weird.

But beyond the original Metroid, Metroid Prime on the Gamecube (and its sequels) have done far more to cement Samus as the strongest female lead. What was the big change? With Metroid Prime, the camera moved from a third-person side view to a first-person shooter angle. Gamers now played without staring at Samus armored body. More importantly, they also played seeing from her point of view. This is in stark contrast to Tomb Raider games, in which every opportunity is taken to show off Lara's chest, hips, and legs. Metroid Prime puts the player into Samus' mind and allows him or her to play without thinking of the heroine as a woman; she is instead just an extension of the player. Every now and then, reflections in Samus' visor show her eyes: beautiful, but also fearful and determined. It is this slight touch of personality that reminds the player of the feminine without injecting "sex" into the equation.

Being the strongest female video game character doesn't mean "Could Seung Mina beat up Chun Li?" or "Can Samus Aran's gun shoot through Amy Rose's Piko Piko Hammer?". Nor does it mean "Who is hotter, Lara Croft or Claire Redfield?" Instead, the strength of the character is about how well developed she is as a persona, and less about how well developed of a bust line she has.

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