Left-Handed Video Game Characters
Link, Aya Brea, Barett and Sephiroth Are All Southpaws
For a large segment of the population, left-handed characters have almost been completely ignored by video game designers. There are a few exceptions.
Left-handed people currently make up 15% of the population of the United States, but they are vastly underrepresented in video games. Most of the sprites shown on screen are right-handed, when handedness is an issue. The trend continues into online gaming where the avatars equip the main weapons in their right hands and off-hand weapons in their left.
This lack of attention from game designers is curious, but this probably has to do more with programming than it does an actual refusal to acknowledge the existence of left-handed people.
Link from the Legend of Zelda
Link, the hero of the Zelda games has been a left-handed video game character in all the incarnations of the series, except for the latest release for the Wii. Right-handed people founnd the movements of the Wii controller awkward and the Link character for the game will equip the sword in his right or left-hand depending on the user's choice.
Aya Brea from Parasite Eve
At least in the first incarnation of this video game game, Aya wields her gun in her left hand, nor does it switch throughout the days of the game. Aya is consistently left-handed. The people of New York may cheer her on as she faces the evil mitochondrial parasites of her foe, but determined gamers know that the secrets to her success are not her parasite abilities, but the advantages Aya Brea gains from being left-handed.
Barett from Final Fantasy VII
Calling him a left-handed video game character may be a stretch. Barett permanently attached a gun to his right hand, but this arrangement would effectively make him left-handed, even if the character had not picked up a pencil in his left-hand since birth. Yes, it means he still shoots with his right, but the fact that only one of his hands has fingers earns him a spot on this list of left-handed video game characters.
Sephiroth from Final Fantasy VII
Sephiroth ranks up there with Kuja from Final Fantasy IX as one of the most memorable villains in a game, but what sets Sephiroth apart form the villain in nine is that sinister edge. Not only is he not someone many people would want to meet in a dark alley, wielding his sword in his left hand gives Sephiroth an edge in fights that is only countered by the Knights of the Round materia. He is also the snappiest dresser in the list of left-handed video game characters.
The Space Marine from Doom
The novels name the marine Flynn Taggart, but ID Games did not give the character a name in the game. Blasting alien demons must have been more effective in the video game because the main character of this video game is left-handed.
Other Left-handed Video Game characters
Sadly, more time and web pages have been devoted to gender-bending video game characters than left-handed video game characters. Compling a list of left-handed video game characters required looking at images on Google to figure out the handedness of characters for the more popular video games.
A fair number of Final Fantasy VII characters are left-handed, such as Tifa and Cid. Bowser, Jr. from the Mario Series and Shadow the Hedgehog appear as left-handed characters from time to time. Samus Aran makes this list for the same reason Barett from Final Fantasy VII does. Her gun is attached to her right hand..
Sources
List of Fictional Left-Handed Characters
Parasite Eve. Square Enix, 1998.
