Valis Analysis

The Valis series is far more interesting than it first appears. Yes, it’s a line of side-scrolling games with anime heroines and fantasy worlds and less-than-sensible armor, all of which is hardly unique in video games. Valis, however, was in at the ground floor of all that back in 1986, and as such there’s a lot to say about its influence and history. I tried to get into as much of that as I could in my review at Anime News Network.

 

 

One thing I briefly mentioned was Renovation’s advertising of the Valis games that appeared on the Sega Genesis. Now, there’s no question that Telenet created Valis with male players in mind: Yuko and her friend Reiko wander about in bikini armor, and the home-computer and PC Engine versions of the game sport the same gratuitous undressing scenes that anime OVAs of the era exploited. Yet when Valis III and a remake of the original Valis came to the Sega Genesis in North America, Renovation seemingly marketed them just as much to a female audience. In fact, I assumed Valis was a game for girls when I first saw it in GamePro and Electronic Gaming Monthly so long ago.

Evidence? Well, here’s the ad for Valis III, exhorting players to take on Yuko’s role and wield the sort of Valis. We might laugh at the costume, but we might also note that it’s far less revealing than Yuko’s in-game attire (though the screenshot doesn’t show it). There’s no battle brassiere, no bare midriff, no sights that might turn away concerned parents. Renovation wanted to pitch Valis to a wide range of customers. 

This went against just about everything the Sega Genesis stood for in North America. Sega had swiped away a big chunk of Nintendo’s market by peddling aggressive adverting that targeted teenage and pre-teen boys. Sometimes it was a commercial with groundhog puppets getting squashed by TVs and yelling “SEGA!” Sometimes it was a box illustration that no qualms about showing the heroines of Golden Axe or Alisia Dragoon in full pulp-fantasy metal swimsuits. You might even look at Renovation’s ad for El Viento, in which we’re told that the Mistress of the Wind "will blow your mind." Har har. They weren't going for that with Valis.

The Genesis version of the original Valis went further. The artwork renders Yuko’s outfit as nothing that would be barred from a Super Friends cartoon, and the accompanying writeup seems acutely targeted at girls: what would YOU do if your friend started dating a weird dude from another dimension? It again seems far from the usual pitches for Genesis games full of action and violence and yelling.

Perhaps that’s why I first assumed that Valis was aimed at the same audience as She-Ra, that Yuko was an avatar of feminist empowerment in a world of evil male oppressors. And the games, at least in Genesis form, don’t really dissuade that. There are no absurd sequences of Yuko getting dressed or her compatriots taking showers. It’s entirely possible that some young women latched onto Valis exactly as Renovation hoped. Like Trouble Shooter snatching up slogans like “The best man for the job is a woman” for its box copy and magazine ads, Renovation’s packaging of Valis struck an interesting turnabout in the brazenly male-focused marketing of the Genesis era.

Renovation’s Valis spots and Yuko’s altered costumes bring to mind another obscure case of companies marketing women warriors: Golden Girl and the Guardians of the Gemstones. This was Galoob’s attempt at replicating He-Man’s success in the mid-1980s, predating She-Ra by a year or so. Golden Girl faltered rapidly and didn’t last long enough for a TV series or a second wave of toys, and I suspect that the promotional art on the boxes (stolen from this auction) might have put off some parents and possibly kids as well. The toys were aimed at girls, but on the packages Golden Girl looks more like something a 23-year-old bassist would have painted on the side of his van circa 1985.

Galoob apparently missed an important memo for 1980s and 1990s advertising: if an outfit shows a woman’s navel, it’s no longer appropriate for children. Renovation apparently knew better. 

Did it work? I have no idea, but Renovation could take heart that such advertising was worth it if at least one girl with a Sega Genesis felt included by the Valis games or empowered by Yuko. It probably did them more good than playing Sword of Sodan.