4 Great Moms in Gaming

This Mother’s Day Handsome Phantom wants to take a moment to recognize the importance of moms in gaming. In a medium so flooded with shaven head white dudes standing in front of explosions, or high heeled clad warriors in miniskirts, archetypical characters like mummsies don’t get the recognition they deserve. So without further ado, here are four of the bestest mums in gaming.

1. PokeMom – Pokémon

Good moms are always there for you, and PokeMom is literally there for you. In every game. She lovingly gifts you a starter Pokémon and wishes you luck in your coming battles, and that you may drive your enemies before you and hear the lamentation of their women.

Most importantly, PokeMom supports your dreams. She full well knows that you’re gonna take that little creature and pit him in fights against other animals, wild and domestic, and that at some point it’s going to get seriously injured. But she loves and supports you anyways. I wonder if moms overuse emojis when texting in the poke-verse?

2. Marguerite Baker – Resident Evil VII

Don’t give me that look. Margeurite Baker is a fantastic mom. For those of you who don’t know, Marguerite Baker is the wife of Jack Baker, the annoyingly unkillable antagonist of Resident Evil 7. Highly recommend picking up this game or watching here on YouTube. A lot of you might be hating on Mama Margeurite here, probably because she’s a fungus zombie who shoots spiders out of her lady parts.

That’s fair.

But ultimately, her character is just trying to keep her family together. When we first meet her she becomes terribly upset when her husband, Jack, treats their guest a little rudely by…you know… throwing intestines in his mouth and stabbing him and stuff. We’ve all had that family dinner.

You’re still hung up on the spiders coming from lady bits aren’t you? At some point we all get the birds and bees talk, and Marguerite was just doing that in a very unconventional manner. I don’t know, they’re from Louisiana. They do things different in the bayou.

3. Your Mother – Fallout 3

It helps if you say “your Mother,” in a Liam Neeson voice. Fallout 3 had a great opening segment for character creation. You are literally born into the world as your character into the loving arms of post-apocalyptic Liam Neesons. Unfortunately,  you’ve just spent three hours trying to make your character look less like a Mad Max hipster when (Liam Neeson voice) your Mother dies due to unexpected medical complications.

Seriously; not everyone gets to celebrate Mother’s Day with their moms, for a lot of reasons. The mom in Fallout 3 is still a great mom, because she leaves behind a legacy of love, and that’s pretty damn great. You as a gamer, and you as a person, can use that legacy to fuel your mission in the wasteland. And blow up super mutants. Go ahead champ, you’ve got my support.

4. Dr. Bridgette Tenenbaum – Bioshock, Bioshock 2

We’ve looked at some non-traditional moms so far, and we aren’t stopping now. Bioshock sends you into the capitalist objectivist dream gone horribly wrong in the underwater city of Rapture. Post-modern facial aesthetics and rampant scientific horrors have taken control of this city, and you as the player are charmed by an Irish average Joe to beat the hell out of the city’s leadership. With a wrench. It’s fun.

Along the way you meet Dr. Bridgette Tenenbaum who has found herself the surrogate mother for dozens of little girls in Rapture. She cares for these orphans and tries to get you, the player, to care too. She doesn’t want you to harvest their magic bug insides and blood and stuff to get stronger. Oh, damn, I didn’t mention she also experimented on all these kids and now they look like glowy eyed zombies? Well there’s that.

Sometimes moms make mistakes, and Dr. Tenenbaum has certainly made a pretty big booboo. But she also spends the whole game trying to fix that mistake, and that can be a pretty hard thing to accomplish. What Tenenbaum reminds us is that not all mothers are biological. Not all mothers choose to be moms. And those moms are pretty god damn great; even if they’re mad scientists. Probably especially if they’re mad scientists. Imagine what she would pack you for lunch?

Happy Mother’s Day! To all moms! Single moms! Southern-fungus-zombie moms! Moms who aren’t here, and moms who want to be. So call your mom, send her a card (better late than never), and let her know you’re grateful she never shot spiders at you with her hoo-ha or injected you with psychic sea slugs.

We want to know what you think! Who are some of your favorite video game moms? Is your mom a video game mom? Most importantly, when are you gonna finally settle down and stop playing Nintendo (it’s a Playstation) all the time!? Let Handsome Phantom know your thoughts and you could get a shout out on the next Adventure Mode!