Who are your favorite black Nintendo characters?

StarTropics chief?

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Brock is a weird one, but I think the general consensus is that he is asian.

IIRC, they actually removed him from the anime for a bit because they worried that his darker skin and closed eyes would cause a racism debate in the west. That's why they replaced him with Tracey Sketchit for a while.
 
No one mentioned Beedle? Wtf, guys?
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I'm not sure if this is even a real thread anymore.

A lot of Nintendo games feature non-human protagonists anyway like the Yoshi and Kirby series. The games that do feature human-people have been getting progressively more diverse (pokemon).
 
Lizardus said:
If I remember correctly, supposedly Mario was inspired by the landlord of Nintendo's American Warehouse, Mario Segale.



What the fuck is caucasian skin?

caucasian =/= white
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You're pretty clear cut on what white and black is.

Okay, they have crayola peach colored skin. Whatever that means.
 
MannyToons said:
Someone gets banned for posting the Donkey Kong crew, but others who posted characters like Candy Kong, Jynx, and Wham Bam Rock don't?

K.
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Well by posting the Kongs that's making a racist joke in itself. The other 2 (at the very least Jynx, which I posted) were posted to bring up evidence that historically Nintendo has not been very good with black representation in its games.
 
Polioliolio said:
You're pretty clear cut on what white and black is.

Okay, they have crayola peach colored skin. Whatever that means.
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It's kind of disingenuous to comment on a game that's still in development. Especially when the developers themselves said that they were working to include character customization (which may or may not include skin tone).
 
Croc said:
Well by posting the Kongs that's making a racist joke in itself. The other 2 (at the very least Jynx, which I posted) were posted to bring up evidence that historically Nintendo has not been very good with black representation in its games.
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This excuse people have been saying is piss poor.. I swear
 
I can see Jynx being culturally insensitive, and they very well could have known they were being insensitive when approving the design, however I don't think the design was explicitly racist. Seems much more likely that the design is heavily inspired by Japanese folklore (as has been mentioned many times).
 
Rm88~ said:
Brock is clearly Mexican.


Also these Splatoon characters are more likely based on these:
t3kB76e.jpg


Rather than on real squids, lol.
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Game would look better if it used these dudes.

I like Grant from Pokemon XY

So what color does skin turn when you have frostbite? Jynx is an ice type Pokemon based off a snow witch in JApanese folklore.
 
Koppai said:
Game would look better if it used these dudes.

I like Grant from Pokemon XY

So what color does skin turn when you have frostbite? Jynx is an ice type Pokemon based off a snow witch in JApanese folklore.
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For frostbite, skin turns purple then black from necrosis.
 
Considering the only black people most of them ever see are in american movies, why would you expect them to put black people in anything? America barely puts non-whites in media and we've got an insane amount of minoritiees. Why would the country composed of almost exclusively 1 nationality use black people? Foreigners in general just pass a single percent of the population.
 
Byakuya769 said:
They're not human, and yet they default to caucasian skin tones. And then you go so far to as to scour the internet for a picture of dead squids that have lost their pigment? On top of that, the squids in the games are bright and colorful, yet that only translates to the squid person's hair and clothes but not their skin...

Come on.
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Let's say we wanted to make them asian. How would you change the design to look more asian as oppossed to white?
 
ZdkDzk said:
Considering the only black people most of them ever see are in american movies, why would you expect them to put black people in anything? America barely puts non-whites in media and we've got an insane amount of minoritiees. Why would the country composed of almost exclusively 1 nationality use black people? Foreigners in general just pass a single percent of the population.
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This is something that people keep ignoring. A bigger issue is minority representation from developers located in racially diverse areas.
 
Hurricane_Chris said:
For all the people defending offensive stuff stuff by saying Japan is racially homogeneous and unaware of cultural etiquette, I have a question for you: have you ever lived in Japan or worked at a Japanese company?

I've lived in Japan for over a decade, and I've worked at a couple of large companies that, I guess, make a few games that are really popular here on GAF. I can tell you that working at a Japanese corporation is just like working at a corporation anywhere else in the world. Employees get training on how to deal with folks from different cultures, how to deal with people of different sexual orientations, how to deal with the opposite sex (sexual harassment training is a yearly thing at many companies, and is really, really annoying), and all the other stuff you often hear folks complaining about when they say that XYZ is too much PC rubbish and they hate the "waste of time" human interaction training.

Additionally, most companies in Japan realise that they're gonna be fucked if they don't become more global, so many are making a huge effort to hire highly skilled foreign people. HR departments are struggling, but working hard to make skilled foreign workers feel welcome in a work environment that is really hard for foreign people, especially those from the United States or western Europe, to get used to.

People in Japan aren't dumb and they aren't on some alien planet. They are tuned into the same global media and information that the rest of the world is. When you see something that's questionable or racist or whatever in a game, it is highly likely that someone, in some meeting somewhere, mentioned the fact that it'd offend a particular group of people. The decision maker(s) either :

A. Didn't care and decided to roll with it.
B. Decided that the primary market was Japan and that the opinion of the group being offended didn't matter.
C. Decided that the group offended is not in the target demographic so it doesn't matter if they're offended.
D. The company can use language and culture and "not knowing" as an excuse if there's any backlash.
E. Some other BS reason that basically equals giving no fucks about the group in question.

I personally have experienced all of these at least once, and B and D on MANY occasions. If you see something, and it seems wrong, it is a safe bet to assume that the perpetrators had similar thought but for whatever reason rolled with it anyway.
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I don't think they're saying that Japan is unaware of other races but are saying the same thing you are. B and D.
 
Nintendo's lack of original black characters is not nearly as annoying as their refusal to include darker skin tones in a lot of their character creators for me. Fire Emblem, Animal Crossing, and even Pokemon have been very limited in this regard. Splatoon looks cool, but if it's true that it too has a character creator, I'd really hate to see them make a similar mistake.

Because really. Their exclusion is just...baffling. There's absolutely no reason for it and it makes them come off as ignorant and insensitive. I mean, being forced to tan to get a skin tone you want? That's literally setting white people as the default and anyone else as an "other." I understand that character creation is a little different in that game, but there's still much better ways they could handle the issue than that, like simply allowing you to choose a skin color similar to choosing your gender and just doing the face generation the same way you always have.

I'm glad the new Xenoblade isn't making such a egregious error. I'm curious if they've ever commented on this at all because it's pretty damn silly.
 
This isn't really meant to excuse Nintendo, but I can't think of a video game franchise made by Sony or MS with a black lead protagonist either (or any developer really EA, Ubisoft, Activision, Sega, Capcom, Konami, Square-Enix, Rockstar [except San Andreas], TakeTwo, ect). Am I mistaken and just unobservant?
 
ivedoneyourmom said:
This isn't really meant to excuse Nintendo, but I can't think of a video game franchise made by Sony or MS with a black lead protagonist either (or any developer really EA, Ubisoft, Activision, Sega, Capcom, Konami, Square-Enix, Rockstar [except San Andreas], TakeTwo, ect). Am I mistaken and just unobservant?
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The way this thread has gone i would not expect a serious discussion which is a damn shame. So many graves filled in this thread.
 
ivedoneyourmom said:
This isn't really meant to excuse Nintendo, but I can't think of a video game franchise made by Sony or MS with a black lead protagonist either (or any developer really EA, Ubisoft, Activision, Sega, Capcom, Konami, Square-Enix, Rockstar [except San Andreas], TakeTwo, ect). Am I mistaken and just unobservant?
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One black first-party Sony character is Emmett Graves in Starhawk. I'm a huge Warhawk fan, and while I didn't like Starhawk quite as much, I thought Emmett was a neat character. He had some other touches like the cowboy getup and Rift Energy veins that made him stand out as a character, aside from the novelty of being black.

I'd seriously like to see a black Mario character, but it'd have to be done right. Introduce him (or better yet, her) in a mainline game like Galaxy, so it doesn't feel like adding variety for the sake of variety (as the characters in the spinoffs sometimes feel). Make him or her a character of some significance, like Rosalina in Galaxy.
 
Necro bumping this a bit, because the (supposedly) full roster for Super Smash Bros for 3DS is confirmed to have 49 characters and the only one who isn't white by default is Mr. Game and Watch. Some of them are animals, in which case you could argue there are more animals than black characters in Super Smash Bros. for 3DS.

Think about that for a moment.
 
KillerIsJed said:
Necro bumping this a bit, because the (supposedly) full roster for Super Smash Bros for 3DS is confirmed to have 49 characters and the only one who isn't white by default is Mr. Game and Watch. Some of them are animals, in which case you could argue there are more animals than black characters in Super Smash Bros. for 3DS.

Think about that for a moment.
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Ehh, as we can see from this mess of a thread, there wasn't much to pick from that would gel with the rest of the smash roster
 
KillerIsJed said:
Necro bumping this a bit, because the (supposedly) full roster for Super Smash Bros for 3DS is confirmed to have 49 characters and the only one who isn't white by default is Mr. Game and Watch. Some of them are animals, in which case you could argue there are more animals than black characters in Super Smash Bros. for 3DS.

Think about that for a moment.
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Isn't Ganondorf in Smash Bros 4? Pretty sure that he isn't white.

Honestly as a non white person, I don't see a problem with this especially with Nintendo universe having non human characters.
 
KillerIsJed said:
Necro bumping this a bit, because the (supposedly) full roster for Super Smash Bros for 3DS is confirmed to have 49 characters and the only one who isn't white by default is Mr. Game and Watch. Some of them are animals, in which case you could argue there are more animals than black characters in Super Smash Bros. for 3DS.

Think about that for a moment.
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Little Mac
 
Given Smash is framed as a compilation of existing characters with lifespans on Nintendo platforms I don't think it would be the best rallying point for the need for more diverse representation in video games. So I guess I see Smash more as a symptom of an industry-wide problem if anything.

And given the rather dubious initial context of this thread I guess I should move on.
 
Is there much of a black population in Japan? Would be kind of weird for them to go out of their way to depict a race of people they don't have much contact with because some internet posters in America think it's insensitive or something.
 
There's more to Smash than the 49 characters. For example Little Mac's victory animation features Doc Louis.
 
Mr-Joker said:
Isn't Ganondorf in Smash Bros 4? Pretty sure that he isn't white.

Honestly as a non white person, I don't see a problem with this especially with Nintendo universe having non human characters.
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I don't understand how having animals = makes it okay that there are no real black characters.
 
Some of the arguments to defend Nintendo do more to illustrate the problem than anything. The fact that the vast majority of black characters mentioned in this thread play very minimal roles at best is very telling. Sure there's a lot of nonhuman characters in Nintendo games, but that doesn't make it any better from my standpoint. They haven't even progressed enough to add skin tones in animal crossing (Don't tell me Miis count) and the options in pokemon are laughable. I don't think the OP is controversal at all since it illustrates a very clear problem with the industry at whole.
 
Fancy Corndog said:
Is there much of a black population in Japan? Would be kind of weird for them to go out of their way to depict a race of people they don't have much contact with because some internet posters in America think it's insensitive or something.
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Is there much of a white population in Japan?!
 
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