Birdo

Birdo is a pink, anthropomorphic dinosaur-like creature who wears a red hairbow and has a round mouth that can fire eggs as projectiles. Birdo's name was mistakenly switched with another Super Mario Bros. 2 (1988) enemy, Ostro, in the game's end credits and its instruction manual. Text in the first edition manual for the North American release of Super Mario Bros. 2 stated that Birdo would "rather be called 'Birdetta and "he thinks he is a girl". Due to this, she is widely considered to be one of the first transgender characters in video games. female, in her various re-appearances. Birdo has additionally been voiced with both feminine and masculine voices in different mediums. Birdo appears in the Wii game Captain Rainbow (2008) which delves into Birdo's gender identity. Due to conflicting sources regarding her gender, her gender identity has been of some debate among gamers, == Appearances ==

Birdo is a character in the Mario video game franchise. She made her first appearance in the Family Computer Disk System video game Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic (1987). The game was later localized for Western audiences in the form of Super Mario Bros. 2 (1988). In the game, she acts as a boss opponent. Birdo has made frequent appearances in later Mario games, acting as a boss opponent in games such as Super Mario RPG (1996), and Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga (2003). She is a playable character in various Mario sports games, including games such as Mario Tennis (2000) Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour, (2003) Mario Tennis Aces, (2018) and Mario Strikers: Battle League (2022). Birdo additionally acted as a playable character several times in the Mario Kart series of racing games. She has had roles in other Mario franchise games, such as the puzzle video game ''Wario's Woods (1994). She also cameos as an unlockable costume for Mario in the video game Super Mario Maker (2015), and appears in the RPG game Paper Mario: The Origami King'' (2020) as part of an in-universe stage play. Birdo appears in the animted film as a villain The Super Mario Galaxy Movie (2026). == Reception ==

Though the manual excerpt from Super Mario Bros. 2 about Birdo's gender did not receive attention until some time after the game's release, Sam Greer, writing for GamesRadar+, was critical of Birdo's portrayal, stating that her gender had become a "running joke" and was the "subject of much derision and stereotyping." The book 100 Greatest Video Game Characters analyzed Birdo's storyline in Captain Rainbow and how it represented the struggles of transgender people in real life for proper representation. They stated that by showing how Birdo was accepted as female by the characters of the Mario universe, it emphasized hope for proper inclusion and representation in the real world. However, it criticized how, by proving Birdo was female in Captain Rainbow's story, and via how Birdo had to partake in stereotypically feminine actions in order to be accepted as female, it reinforced the concept of gender being a forced binary choice on transgender people, instead of transgender people being allowed to make the choice of who they were for themselves. Stacey Henley of TheGamer stated that Birdo was a highly important character for transgender representation, as she represented the struggles and stereotypes of transgender people in real life. She described how Nintendo seemed "ashamed of Birdo's past" and that despite Nintendo's disinterest, Birdo was described as a "landmark piece of representation" within the transgender community that acted "[as] a metaphor for the community's own representation on screen." Zackari Greif of Game Rant also criticized Nintendo's handling of the character, citing multiple occasions where Birdo was referred to with male pronouns instead of female ones, as well as how Birdo is constantly referred to as "Birdo" and not "Birdetta", which is stated to be Birdo's preferred name in the Super Mario Bros. 2 manual. He felt that Birdo needed consistent and proper respectful treatment as a trans woman in the games as a result. Lorenzo Fantoni, writing for Vice, compared the Captain Rainbow scene to the later bathroom debates regarding transgender people. Fantoni also suggested that Nintendo does not know what to do with Birdo, believing that changes to Birdo's character were made in order to match present-day morals. == References ==