The 30 Most Iconic Black Characters in Video Game History

The first Black video game characters were more stereotypes than … well, characters. Street Fighter II’s Dee Jay was probably seen as a course correction, but he might as well have been called Jammin’ Jayson the Hip-Hop Kickboxer. In the 1987 Commodore 64 game, Street Beat, writers called Rockin Rodney’s stereo — get this — a “ghetto blaster.”

The history of Black characters in video games has been undeniably murky, and even attempts at diversity in the 2000s and 2010s were suffocatingly clumsy– i.e. the sexualization of Sheva in Resident Evil. Stranded between white-centered games, Black video game characters were often rendered as tokens — parts of thoughtless diversity quotas to be marked off a haphazardly created checklist for a corporate bigwig to simply look like they tried. But through time, sincere innovation and, frankly, more Blackness in the gamer world, Black video game characters have grown to become genuinely indelible parts of American culture.

Today, to celebrate Black History Month in the best way OkayPlayerGo can, we take a look at the 30 most iconic Black characters in video game history. Without further ado, let’s go.