#55: Chip ‘N Dale Rescue Rangers (Capcom, NES, 1991)

Chip ‘N Dale Rescue Rangers, the cartoon, despite being a Disney property, does not have a princess. What it has is Gadget Hackwrench, who is, straight up, a genuine feminist triumph of a character – a female mechanic/inventor who is clearly and obviously the brains of the Rescue Rangers operation, without any implication that her passion for engineering in any way diminishes her femininity. That the game should reduce her to a damsel in distress role is as inevitable as it is depressing. And yet, in all of this, a glimmer of something akin to hope appears; in the scene that plays after the first level, the Rescue Rangers receive a gloating message from Fat Cat explaining how he tricked them and kidnapped Gadget, including the intriguing claim that “from now on, she’s inventing things for [him]”.

I mean, why does Bowser kidnap Princess Toadstool? Why are all of these villains kidnapping all of these princesses? It’s a question that is generally glossed over by the game, with the player left to fill-in the blanks with their own assumptions. But in Chip ‘N Dale Rescue Rangers, it is explicitly stated that Fat Cat’s interest in Gadget is not sexual in nature, nor is it that she ‘belongs’ to the heroes and thus that taking her causes them pain. No, Fat Cat desires Gadget for her intelligence and her skills. It’s still a damsel in distress plot, but it is at least one with a spark of acknowledgement that said damsel is more than just an object to be possessed. Which is, in all honesty, a lot more than I’d expected from a game based on a Saturday morning Disney cartoon.