A New Day for Women in Beat’Em Ups: Marian and River City Girls 2
I think the thing that surprises me the most about playing Marian is how... liberating it really feels.
Marian is, put plainly, a brute. Marian hits people like her fists are made out of tanker trucks and they’re breaking the speed limit. Marian can punch her enemies across the screen with her basic Heavy attacks- not even a Special! Just a good old Heavy Attack, and she can send them across the screen with a punch that doesn’t look like she’s putting all that much effort into it.
Marian has elbow drops for her “hit them on the ground” move. Marian can grab people and bash their skulls together. She has almost unparalleled ability to crush faces, and her combo strings are all punches- no fancy kicks or twirls here. Marian can make her uppercuts combo into each other, but she can’t flipkick anybody.
She’s also kind of slow! Marian’s a bit of a tank. She’s not one of the faster characters; she’s not greased lightning like Provie or Kyoko. Marian’s a bruiser, not a cruiser. She can cross the screen quickly with her default Special, but that’s a wind-up punch that takes time and leaves her vulnerable- though when it’s at full charge, she just plows her opponents down in a massive punch that would be more commonly seen on a big, strong dude.
Which leads me to my next point: Marian? Is a surprisingly feminist character, in a lot of ways.
It’s not Ra Ra Girl Power like we’re used to seeing, which often emphasizes femininity. Marian’s about as feminine as a knuckleduster; yet the game manages this without emphasizing her as “boyish.” No one ever accuses her of being a man, or questions her as a woman, nor is her lack of relative girlishness treated as a problem for attracting others. Even her very introduction, beyond having Kyoko and Misako both lusting after her “legendary abs”, firmly establishes that she had a relationship with both the Lee brothers of Double Dragon fame (through hilarious eyebrow waggling, of all things.)
Girls in beat’em up games fall into only one category, usually, since there’s almost never more than one you can play: the speedy, fragile character. Marian is the exact opposite; her beat’em up predecessors in playstyle are people like Max Thunder or Floyd Iraia of Streets of Rage, Bullova of The Combatribes, and Mike Haggar of Final Fight. She‘s a one-woman wrecking crew, a bulldozer in first gear, slow but steady.
Even Marian’s theme in her boss fight is intimidating- and her fighting style during that boss fight is quite unique! She doesn’t summon goons or minions, like most bosses in beat’em ups do- no, the threat in her fight is just Marian herself, and she’s more than enough. She shakes the ground in her fight with her bare hands, throws exploding barrels at you, lunges across the screen with her giant punches- it’s quite the throwdown!
All of this to say that in a lot of ways, Marian is treated as powerful in a way that video games of all stripes, and beat’em ups in particular, have never treated women. Marian is an absurdly present physical threat, and none of it detracts from her womanly nature- she’s just a powerhouse and everybody has to deal with it.
Honestly her closest counterpart might be Martha Splatterhead, the final boss of Combatribes, more than any actually playable character- which makes it particularly amusing that Martha herself is in the game as a powerful, rare enemy type.
It’s neat to see a game treat a female character with both this much respect and this much sheer asskicking power without trying to lessen it in some way or use it as a slight against her, and I love seeing it.
Also Mega McDuffee deserves an award, the game’s musici s incredibly solid.
