Black history permeates all facets of our lives—and video games are no exception. From the 8-bit days to the 4k Ray Tracing present, Black video game characters have occupied various positions; from the precarious period of early sports games in the ’70s, which included titles like Heavyweight Champ and the nameless grayscale sprites, to Spider-Man: Miles Morales as the poster child for a new gaming generation today, Black representation has come a long way.
Similar to other mediums, such as film, music, and literature; Black culture has been, and is, integral to grappling with our collective understanding of video game history. People of color have often been portrayed in popular media as stereotypes and tropes that speak to an underlying structure of racism, patriarchy, heteronormativity, and other forms of systemic oppression. As a Black queer gaymer, the only time I ever saw myself on the screen was through character creation, but that’s just cheating in the context of this story.
Video games are complex systems of visual culture that "create and uphold value systems and hierarchies of one constituency"—often the dominant class at the expense of another, says Soraya Murray in her book On Video Games: The Visual Politics of Race, Gender and Space, published in 2017. In short, they can be racist too.
But the history of the Black video game character isn't that of failure. Just as in reality, Black characters have strived to break outside of their pixelated parameters to present a more autonomous and complex image of what race can be in the world of video games.
Let’s Play Some Ball: The Sports Role
Most of the earliest depictions of Black and brown characters can be seen in sports titles.
Sega’s Arcade release of Heavyweight Champ in 1976, which arguably showed the first black video game character on screen, was likely the starting point. It’s “arguable,” however, because the game was rendered in grayscale, with one light and one dark player. In the 1987 reiteration of the franchise, the player’s race became undeniable as the game shifted away from grayscale to a multicolored sprite program.
Outside of boxing, other sports games like the Atari Basketball series (1979), Track & Field (1982), and One on One: Dr. J vs. Larry Bird (1983) offered even more avenues for depicting Black characters—such as Basketball having Black players on the cover art—but they didn’t stand out much from the white characters beside the fact that they had different colored sprites.
As tech advanced, so did the video game industry. Gone were the days of college cohorts and garage development sessions of the mid ‘70s, and in came larger budgets with bigger names to sell titles.
The rise of the multiplex teen—a time when a more autonomous American youth began to occupy a larger role in the center of American culture; particularly within cinema, due to the large Baby Boomers teen population at the time—gave way to a youth whose walls were littered with superstars and athletes of color. This would give rise to superstar sports titles, which then gave Black characters more of a spotlight in games.
Titles like Daley Thompson's Decathlon (1984), Frank Bruno's Boxing (1985), and most famously Punch-Out!!—originally titled Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!—in 1987, all for the NES, made up a large portion of the original Black superstar athlete games. The Blackness, for better or worse when adhering to the stereotypes of sports players, was present in the ethos of early game history. To find black digital bodies that were not restricted to just shooting hoops is another matter, however.
From the Tracks to the Streets: Color Choice and Beat-Em-Ups
In the late ’80s and early ’90s, there was a recurring theme of giving players a pool of characters of different races, genders, and nations to choose from.
Sega’s Quartet (1986) on the Sega Arcade System 16 was a sci-fi side scroller that allowed you to choose from four player options—including one Black character by the name of Edgar. This was one of the first major steps into a multicultural co-op arcade era.
In 1988, two games—yes, a whopping two games for the whole year—gave you the choice to pick a character of color—Narc and Chase H.Q. But these choices are restricted to being player two, which meant that the centering of whiteness was still in operation, leaving Black characters to fill the roles of sidekicks or secondary choices only.
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These games also highlight another setting, like sports, that mainstream video games often showcased Black characters in—the inner city. In Final Fight (1989), you don't get to pick a Black character, but darker people are present as enemies throughout the rough pixelated streets of the Capcom title—so this didn't really count. These black and brown enemies only help to legitimize the setting of the inner-city through stereotypes and race based caricatures. They were somewhat accessories in framing urban culture. This was a passive form of using Black characters to facilitate Black inner-city settings.
In the same year of 1989, however, Ghostbusters 2 for the Gameboy and Konami’s Crime Fighters for the arcade gave you the choice of picking a Black character whilst not being restricted to the second player slot; meaning you could finally be Black and the first player. These beat-em-ups, from Quartet to Crime Fighters and others like Streets of Rage (1991) reframed Blackness from the tracks and fields to the streets and alleyways, which was not really a positive leap.
Still depending on popular stereotypes of the time—facilitated by the mainstream co-opting of hip-hop culture and a Reagan’s race-based conservative War on Drugs—the creation and upholding of “value systems and hierarchies of one constituency,” as Murray wrote, still holds true. Games were an extension of belief systems around American race relations. But it gets better, don’t worry.
Fighting Games: Multiplayer and Multiculturalism
Coming off the back of the multiplayer beat-em-ups from the mid ‘80s to early ‘90s, a different game genre was also beginning to facilitate racial minorities.
From their inception, fighting games have continued to draw upon cultural and gender diversity when it comes to character selection. Street Fighter 1 (1987) gave us Mike, the Black American boxer (an enduring trope), while Pit-Fighter (1990) gave us South Side Jim. Pit-Fighter is not only important for its inclusion of a Black character, but also for its use of digitized sprites in a fighting game, which would lead to Mortal Kombat (1992).
By far, the most impactful titles in the fighting game genre would be used as the stamp of approval for diversity to come: Street Fighter II: The World Warrior (1991) and Mortal Kombat II (1993). Both games would lead the mainstream charge in terms of casting a variety of genders and races. From Jax, the all-American soldier, to Balrog (better known as Mike Tyson outside of the US, being that he was a caricature of the athlete), and the South Asian Dhalsim, a fire-breathing yoga master. More Black and brown images were being seen, but the attempt to fix the meaning, a Stuart Hall concept in which images and their meanings become limited in media for racial stereotypes and orientalist views would restrict minority characters from going beyond the glass ceiling. This also includes the images of Black and brown female-gendered characters, who were unseen until Mortal Kombat II (1993) with the introduction of Jade.
The Single-Player Experience
Historically, whiteness has been regarded as the default, a privilege not afforded to people of color. Players of the games we mentioned were given the choice to play as someone Black, not forced to, which has been the case with white characters from Punch Out's Little Mac to The Witcher's Geralt of Rivia and many other AAA titles.
Forcing players, particularly those that identify as white, to play as someone who is not a white male is a politically radical act that can combat the default of whiteness and, arguably, provoke systemic change in the industry to some degree.
On the Commodore 64 in 1986, now-defunct London-based developer Computer Rentals Limited (CRL) released one of the first Black-led single-player games, Cyborg—which was rereleased as Mandroid in 1987. The game put players into the metal shoes of the titular Black character Cyborg, who must reestablish communication with an earth expedition team that has gone dark. Another Commodore 64 title, Street Beat (1987), was one of the first games to feature an all-Black setting: Funkytown (yes, like the Disco song). The player controls Rockin' Rodney, who must use his “ghettoblaster” (a stereo) to make the inhabitants dance while delivering demo tapes to Interdisc's head office, a company within the game.
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Other original Black video game characters included voodoo priest and warrior Akuji from Akuji The Heartless (1998), Colonel John R. ("Rusty") in Blade of Sin (1998), former Marine John Dalton of Unreal II: The Awakening (1998), and one of the first black female lead characters by the name of D'arci Stern of Urban Chaos (1999).
This trend of original Black video game characters in the ‘90s was short-lived as celebrities and source material with Black protagonists would soon give way to more representation in gaming. Games like Michael Jackson's Moonwalker (1990), Barkley Shut Up and Jam! (1993), Shaq Fu (1994), and Micheal Jordan: Chaos In the Windy City (1994) hinged on Black stardom to frame and sell Black culture in the video game industry.
Other licensed properties also gave you control of their Black protagonist in the form of movie or comic book games, such as Beverly Hills Cop (1990), Predator 2 (1992), Todd McFarlane's Spawn: The Video Game (1995), and ShadowMan (1999). Games also infused hip-hop and rap culture to make black protagonists like in Rap Jam: Volume One (1995), Wu-tang: Shaolin Style (1999), Def Jam Vendetta & Fight For NY (2003-04), Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (2004), 50 Cent: Bulletproof (2005), and Marc Ecko's Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure (2006). What this period tells us is that having a Black protagonist in video games was contingent upon pre-established marketable source material such as hip-hop and sports superstars or big budget films. But as the new millennium dawned, the shackles of these rules would soon begin to break, and a more nuanced Black protagonist would soon begin to take form.
Where Are We Now and Where Can We Go?
Black video game history is sprinkled with moments that oscillate between fixed stereotypes to newer, more liberated Black characters.
Characters like Cole Train in Gears of War (2006), Barret Wallace in Final Fantasy VII (1997-2020), Commander Isaiah Jaxon in Crackdown 3 (2019), and Doomfist of Overwatch (2017) still, in some ways, rely upon the “black buck,” a racial minstrel dating back to the early 19th century.
But then, there are moments where the stereotype is subverted and characters like Carl Johnson and Franklin Clinton of the GTA series provide a level of depth and nuance not traditionally allowed in the thug role. This, however, is a dialectic (the idea that two opposites can create meaning) view of reading and creating Black characters, being that it is contingent upon how whiteness has historically defined blackness. But there are characters who completely break this way of thinking (the binary of Black and white), and do not seek to rework racial tropes but, more so, showcase a variety of Black realities. Characters like History Professor Lee Everett of The Walking Dead (2012), Vietnam War Vet Lincoln Clay in Mafia III (2016), and hacker Marcus Holloway of Watch Dogs 2 (2016) present a myriad of Blackness in gaming. New forms of Black womanhood on screen also seek to break the mold of both traditional racial and gender characters in games as well. This can be seen in titles like Dandara (2018), who is an Afro-Brazilian warrior in the colonial period, Aveline de Grandpré the New Orleanian assassin businesswoman in Assassin's Creed III: Liberation (2012), Billie Lurk in Dishonored: Death of the Outsider (2017), and leading characters Lifeline and Bangalore in Apex Legends (2019).
When Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales was announced as the exclusive launch title for the PS5, it was the first time that a Black character led the charge into a new console gaming era. As of December 31, 2020, the game has sold 4.1 million copies and was nominated for 3 categories at The Game Awards 2020, which included Best Performance by Nadji Jeter as Miles Morales. To see the Afro-Latino character’s face (unmasked), on billboards, buses, and larger-than-life posters was an experience in itself and was one of the first times I was reminded that I exist in these digital spaces too. Collectively, we can only begin to grasp the impact of what this representation could mean for Black and brown players and the industry itself. From the days of grayscale boxers in Heavyweight Champ; to seeing Edgar and Cyborg in their brown pixelated cyberpunk futures; over to the diversity of Street Fighter, and the single-player experiences of Marine John Dalton, Colonel John R. ("Rusty"), and Lady Aveline de Grandpré; and finally today with Miles—it is reaffirmed that we have been there, throughout the history of video games. And we will continue to be there, even if we aren't always desired to be seen.
We’ve only scratched the surface of what Blackness can be in the ongoing topic of video game history. Looking to the future, with game studios becoming more diverse, such as Nuchallenger, 3-Fold Games, and Playtra Games—all led by Black women and men—there has been a larger movement to have representation at the core of the development process. There is much more work that has to be done, beyond having Miles Morales and other Black characters at the head of these AAA narratives, but we’ve come such a long way and this is something to truly celebrate.