In the 1980s, she was a video game pioneer. Today, no one can find her

Video game historian Kevin Bunch he remembers having sent a dozen letters in the mail in 2019, each with the same name. The white envelopes traveled to different addresses in Texas, some arriving at their destination safely, others returning with a bright yellow note: “RETURN TO SENDER. ATTEMPT – UNKNOWN. UNABLE TO FORWARD. “

But even the letters that did it did not find their true target. The post may have been opened by people with the exact name that Bunch had written, of course, but they were not the specific person he and many others tried to track down for more than a decade.

Her name is Ban Tran, and I suppose you have no idea who she is, or what she has to do with video games. It’s a shame too, because Ban Tran has made a notable contribution to the gaming industry, and yet it has been erased from history.

It is true that the gaming industry is notoriously bad at preserving its own history. Even modern games can be lost to ether, as services are phased out or titles stop being printed or supported. It is even worse the further you step back, especially when it comes to women. It is not just that women in technology are routinely overlooked, although that certainly plays a role in this mystery. The cultural norms surrounding marriage make it more difficult to control.

“One of the most difficult parts of writing about women in the history of games”, game historian Kate Willaert he said, “is when they take on a new name after publishing some work and suddenly their body of work is split in two or ‘deleted’ entirely.”

Photo: Getty Images

Some women in the gaming industry tell Polygon that they purposely kept their surnames after the wedding, because the credits in the games sent refer to them in a specific way. If these women get divorced, credit becomes a nightmare between what the legal papers say, what the Internet prints and what list of game credits. There are measures to help solidify identities, with industry sites like MobyGames displaying different aliases for game developers. But some women don’t want to take any chances – not in an industry where gambling credits determine whether or not you get your next job.

“I feel like it shouldn’t matter,” said one developer, “but in this industry you never know.”

Another issue here is that Ban Tran is a very common Vietnamese name; in Texas alone, the blank pages show more than 100 results. Bunch tried to send letters only to people who could theoretically fit the age group, but that still leaves a lot of room for error.

Why look for Ban Tran in the first place? Let’s start with a surprise test. Who is the first female character in video games? Many would say Mrs. Pac-Man, but she is not a real person – she doesn’t even have her own name. Honestly, it is difficult to determine who exactly should receive the honor here, because it depends entirely on what criteria you use and whether or not we are considering all arcade games, consoles and PC games.

“The first female playable character on the screen is probably in an arcade game from [game developer] Exidy called Punctuation”Said Willaert. This, too, was almost lost in time. There is no longer how to play the game and there are no screenshots of Punctuation connected. Print ads or brochures promoting the game don’t really show what Punctuation looks. We only know what is in the game through descriptions in specialized magazines, which, according to Willaert, say that the game is a “battle of the sexes”.

“We couldn’t even find a working office, although some collectors and historians from Exidy are keeping an eye out,” said Willaert.

If Mrs. Pac-Man discarded, and there is almost no evidence that Punctuation existed, the next best example is a game called Wabbit. Launched in 1982 by the Texan developer Apollo, Wabbit is a title for the Atari 2600 that has the distinction of being the first console game with a female character named playable that is not off-screen. At the Wabbit, you control Billie Sue as she tries to protect her carrot crops from irritating rabbits. It is a shooting game where you try to compete against the rabbits for a high score.

“It is colorful, it has these objects clearly identifiable on the screen, it is fast and it is very unique,” said Bunch. “Wabbit it’s probably one of the best games the company has released. “

WabbitThe existence of is a curiosity not only for what it portrays, but for how it came about. According to Willaert’s research, Ban Tran was hired by Apollo after sending some “outrageous” game concepts to the company – ideas that were far beyond the capabilities of video game hardware at the time. Despite his bizarre ideas, or perhaps because of them, Tran got an interview.

We don’t know what Tran’s background in technology was before that, but she must have had some experience, because she immediately jumped and played a game alone. While a former worker said that Apollo does not require experience to enter, Tran’s quick ability to create “intense” game concepts surprised those around him, especially since there weren’t many women playing games at the time. In addition, Bunch noted, “The [Atari 2600] it is not an easy machine to develop! ”

Wherever Tran came from, his time at Apollo did not last. The company went bankrupt about a year later, and while Tran spent some time working on other projects, no one knows what happened next. She may not be in Texas yet, and she still can’t go for Ban Tran. Is she still around?

Willaert is determined to find out, because she is in the middle of producing a 50-part YouTube series about playable female protagonists.

“Most of these characters are treated as footnotes in the history of the games – if they are mentioned – so I wanted to challenge myself to dig up enough information to give everyone their own ‘chapter’ in this series,” said Willaert.

She has been working on this project for a decade, the time that she and other internet detectives have been trying to find Tran. So far, despite using other game historians, making a call on social networks, and sending many physical letters, the search for Tran hit a wall. We cannot ask Tran if Wabbit was influenced by the existence of Space invaders, or what your other wild ideas apparently were. We don’t know what she did, or if she’s still in technology. We don’t even know if it’s still called Ban Tran.

Willaert and Bunch have many more questions, because what little we know is totally fragile. First-hand accounts of the few Apollo developers with an online presence don’t even remember who she was, except to know that she was Vietnamese and was determined to be hired. These developers assume that it should be called Ban Tran, because that’s what the fan sites say its name was. But they are not sure; they can’t remember. Where did fan sites get their name from in the first place? Like Punctuation before her, Tran’s contribution to video games is hanging by a thread.

“She seems to have become something of a ghost,” said Bunch.