the insert credit cold fifty: videogame icons: compiled by tim rogers -- with a foreword by chris kohler, fulbright scholar

38. Link (The Legend of Zelda series)

Yours and my childish fantasies aside, Link, the hero of Shigeru Miyamoto's long-running Legend of Zelda series, also inspired one Shinji Mikami to one day bring into conception the holiness that is Resident Evil. Link deserves a slot on this list because he's been through it all, he's appeared in videogames on more major consoles than any other game hero, he's had his own television series, was bad enough to guest-star in another television series in a slightly different form (that was Captain N, dear reader -- you need to get out less), and single-handedly created the action-adventure genre of electronic entertainment. Though in future years the videogame industry would just about unanimously outgrow Link's childish look, dorky green clothes, and kiddy bubbly outlook, he remains a deep dark little secret of all of our childhoods. Admit it, you used to love the little guy before his career-suicide turn in 2003's cartoonish, shudder-worthy Wind Waker.

37. Custer (Custer's Revenge)

The front cover of Mystique's Custer's Revenge advertises the cartridge as "Not for Sale to Minors." As Mark Twain would have us know, "If that don't fetch 'em, I don't know Arkansaw!" Custer's Revenge clearly fetched plenty of Arkansaw in its day. One could argue it's because of the bawdy subject matter, or the warning that children not be allowed near it. We here at insert credit, however, are man enough to admit: Custer represents a deep, real revolution in videogame characters. All seven pixels of his existence exude machismo and charm in a way that Duke Nukem still cannot, in all his polygons and all his voice-acted comments about killing strippers. Perhaps it is because Custer, unlike Grand Theft Auto: Vice City's hooker-fancying, tough-talking, Ray-Liotta-ing Tommy Vercetti, explicitly and actively drives his heterosexuality into imprisoned Native American girl after imprisoned Native American girl, and that we're able to control this experience, that puts him, so to speak, on top. That kind of grit, that kind of gusto: only from a cowboy, only from Atari, and only from a real man who understands what real men want.

36. Golgo 13 (Top Secret Episode!)

I was ten years old when I rented Vic Tokai's Golgo 13: Top Secret Episode! for the Nintendo Entertainment System from the local video store for two dollars. I took it home, and was playing for fifteen minutes before I met a woman in a train station who then took me to a hotel room. I was down to twelve-percent of my health at this time. When the woman took me to the hotel room, I was treated to a zoomed-out view of the side of the building. One window was back-lit. I could see Golgo 13's silhouette, and the woman's. The woman launched herself forward at Golgo, in an embrace. Their pixel bodies lumped together, and the light turned off. My health then climbed from twelve to one hundred percent. The Nintendo sound chip hummed out some high, slow lovey music. I squinted. (A problem I had. It's why I wear glasses now) Little did I know, my mother was standing behind me with an oven mitt on. "What the hell is this shit?" she wanted to know.

I was ten years old when I saw my first videogame protagonist have sex.

I was ten years old when I saw my last videogame protagonist have sex.

Final Fantasy X's Tidus and Yuna's Suteki dane moment is suggestive of sex, yes. It's not the real thing. The closest we get to aggressive console videogame sex, after Top Secret Episode!, is Fei and Elly sharing a bed in Xenogears.

Years after my Golgo 13 experience, I'd see the movie Golgo 13: The Professional, and be revolted by its monstrous sexuality; at fifteen years old, I'd begin my long, slow journey toward longing for days gone by, when Japanese secret-agent sex was simple.

Duke Togo, also known as Golgo 13 -- this root beer's for you.

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