Good morning,

Spanning a real range of brow heights today, so I hope you enjoy them all. It’s about computer games btw.

OTHER BIG NEWS, I will be away for the next two Fem Fris so you have Saxey’s amazing mind, live and direct to your inbox, for first two weeks of September! Stoked for us all, these are always a treat.

Here’s a really good, long article about the early days of Atari through the eyes of the women who worked there. It’s pleasingly nuanced in a way that the pullquote below sums up nicely; you can have an experience you are grateful for that was also not an unmixed good. Make a yrself a nice cup of tea and settle in:

Two years after she started, Shirley moved to the production office; after that, customer service. In 1986, she became that division’s director, sitting in on executive meetings. Shirley left Atari in 1999 with a salary of $125,000. “I know people who had psychological issues after Atari. It never prepared us for the real world,” Shirley said. “Nobody could have asked for a better experience.”

https://kotaku.com/sex-pong-and-pioneers-what-atari-was-really-like-ac-1822930057

I have searched the newsletter archives and it seems that I have never written anything about Princess Peach, which is at this stage incredible. This is the thing I like about Princess Peach, it’s that when you play Mario Kart she is pretty much a heavyweight and can compete with Bowser and Wario, but also while wearing a pretty dress. Not a lot of people on the internet have written about Princess Peach, so if you have, please send me a link! If you have not, you night like to consider pitching it if that is the sort of thing you do. Anyway, this week, enjoy some thoughts on Peach from Shigeru Miyamoto (a man and the originator of the Mario universe):

It was important to us in Super Princess Peach for Peach to be Peach-like. […] As for what “Peach-like” means, it’s that free optimism of a Princess. She has never seen herself as “protected” by Mario. Our image of her is one of strength.

https://shmuplations.com/mario20th/

Finally, I know how to treat a lady right, when that lady is a Fem Fri subscriber; it’s classic Toast articles. Have at it, Zelda fans of all or no genders:

if Link were going to hang up his sword and spend the rest of his life in peaceful retirement on a farm somewhere, Malon would be it. She gave him a horse. He’s been to her house. Her dad likes him. She’s got cute red hair, and she’s not trapped in the body of a ten-year-old or a fish princess or anything weird.

http://the-toast.net/2014/09/02/links-romantic-options-ocarina-time-ranked/

Have a great weekend and I’ll see you in two weeks time!

Alex xx.