games where the player can trans their gender

@Tradegood I think I played a demo of his game when I was a kid. I had zero clue what was going on.

Also this game just oozes British.

As an aside, something I’ve been thinking about is Etrian Odyssey has included 0 prounouns for player characters since day one, the intention of the game was always to use your imagination and it leaves plenty of space to do that. The copious amounts of player character portraits are not gendered and cover a very broad spectrum.

Calico gives you tons of flexibility, and you can choose to jump in and change your character at any time. However I can’t remember if you choose gender or it’s not specified.

https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/58bc9fcf17bffc35906b2c61/1607994420189-EJ0NM716P0U8EKJRBTUP/Character+Creation-min.gif

When I went in that coffin in Dark Souls 2 I had a helmet and armour on that pretty much completely obscured my character’s appearance, so I didn’t realise it had changed and had no idea what the coffin did. Some time later I noticed and thought the change was a bug until I posted on an internet forum about it and someone filled me in.

Dunno how exactly applicable this example is to the thread, but in I think Disgaea or maybe one or more of the other Nippon Ichi games you can take high level characters and have them reborn at level one with higher base stats. Nothing stopping you changing gender when you do it.

A little story about transing gender in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Not sure if this is the right thread for this, so just let me know if there's a better option:

The ebay listing for my old Switch sold today, so I called up the Nintendo customer service line to help me with transferring my Animal Crossing island to my new console (I had some trouble a few weeks ago). Fortunately, after about an hour of troubleshooting, we got everything moved over successfully (thanks for the suggestion @treefroggy).

I‘ve barely touched the game in over two years, but my partner and I put a lot of time into our village — It’s full of personal touches, little inside jokes and some good memories. Every once in awhile I've wanted to start it up just to hang out and kick it with our villagers, but being unable to change my old name has just made me avoidant. Starting a new island from scratch seemed like too much slow progress to get through, and I knew neither of us would stick with it very long.

So today, with the old island on the new console, I was finally feeling motivated to figure out a solution for our little paradise of deadnaming animals. I'd start over. I'd take some photos of the rooms I wanted to remake or remember, dump whatever I wanted to save outside on the ground, delete my registered villager from the account, and start fresh on the old island. Oddly enough, the process I went with resembled moving — Taking each item, one by one, until the room was empty, deciding what to toss or leave behind to avoid making the whole process too miserable, and making periodic trips outside to get the stuff out — even in the goofy simulacrum of AC the slow progress of watching a familiar home return to an empty room was weirdly emotional.

I dumped whatever I wanted to keep on the beach (as one does), emptied my old bank account, recorded vids of the DLC vacation homes I'd made, and then deleted the account. I'd tackled social security, driver's license, credit cards and now most importantly, registration with Mr. Nook on the Island of Nonamé.

Before you delete a registered user, they make it very clear that not only will your stuff be gone, but so will any villagers' memories of your old character, they'd all be Eternally Sunshined — Perfect! While I was 'packing' everything up I grabbed a small photo from my mantle of Goldie and remembered that she'd given it to me for being a close friend. I'll still have the photo, but I'll be meeting her for the first time again soon.

One thing I was a little worried about were the attributions of donations in the museum — It was about a 50-50 split between my partner and me. I was wondering if mine would retain my old name or just disappear. After starting the new save, I was relieved to see my former contributions listed as "anonymous donor." Amazing!

So, I'm really happy! I've avoided it for years now despite wanting to revisit. It felt like it wasn't an option, so all that time was just gone. I'm excited to have access again to a game I love. There's a weird sense of closure — my partner joked that it was the final step of coming out.

If anyone wants to hang out or help me out getting restarted, let me know! I'll probably be jumping in pretty regularly for the next couple of weeks. It'd be cool to see some new faces too : )

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@safety_lite that’s all very fun and legit. Though I want to say with very careful save file hacking, you can edit your town and still play online, meaning you could just change your name. But then you wouldn’t have as great a story here. Also your switch most likely isn’t hacked or hackable anyways heheh.

I’m very down to play, I have two other people I want to link with, but I need to update my switch first!

@safety_lite this is so relatable lol. I remember hiding all my in game outfits when people would “come over” and frantically buying dude clothes from the shop back in 2020 to keep up appearances lol. Also have not touched the game since coming out because I can‘t change my deadname and I don’t feel like starting over

@TracyDMcGrath Wow! Ha, I did the exact same. It's funny charting the gradual progression through old snapshots.

Honestly, I thought it would take a lot longer, but it wasn't too bad. Rebuilding the house with expansions should only take a few short visits over the next week or so (since I just dumped my life's savings on the beach for new me). The longer timeline will be gathering DIY's and music from KK, but I'm fine recollecting those at a slower pace.

Just need to request KK Cruisin' later today and I'm all set.

Had a similar ACNH experience to you @safety_lite, which I actually talked about here a long time ago

Also about animal crosisng and anarchism, this was my island’s flag lol

In part 3 of the essay that Gaagaagiins shared there is some talk about diversity and identity in new horizons and that resonated with me because that game came out at a peculiar time in my life, which was 4 months and 2 days before I came out as trans.

The island in a way was a safe place for me to express my queerness in a time when I was struggling a lot with pre-coming out anxiety and depression, and the feeling that I had to come out but not being ready at that moment.

My island became a place where I could dress as I had always wanted to and hangout with some irl friends without them questioning me about it. That and posting screenshots of my character wearing cute dresses on social media were ways for me to express myself and to allow my friends to perceive me as queer without having to come out and that was especially helpful to me because it was during the first months of the pandemic.

Sadly the game did failed me in one very important way
 there is no way to change your name in the game, and since I had used my deadname for my character, I had to say goodbye to the space that allowed me to be myself before coming out, delete my save data and start again.

Now I just have the countless screenshots and photos that I took to help me remember my time on that island.

I am actually tearing up after reading your post and re-reading mine. I didn't actually know that you could access your island as a new villager or hack your way out of being deadnamed by all the animals. I could never get back into ACNH sadly. But I have started playing the first two Animal Crossings since, which I had never played before.

I would pay a lot for some of the outfits I managed to pull together on that island

This thread made me go through my acnl photos. I bought my 3DS and the game almost two years after coming out. Like some of you with New Horizons, it was an outlet to express myself through. I worried after the fact that it might've been an unhealthy escape, but
 (more on that later)

I've told parts of this story elsewhere already: I came out, started transitioning, and got a full-time job to pay for it within the span of about four months. I was living with my family at the time unfortunately and they were mostly unaccepting—to the point that I felt safer leaving a steady job and moving to a new city to get away from them. I immediately slid into poverty, lost too much weight and my transition ground to a crawl. Part of how I coped is I would spend absolutely every morning in New Leaf as part of my daily routine, for almost four years.

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I didn't do much in it besides download new outfits and dig up fossils and hit the money rock. I forget what else gets reset every day that you can do. I paid off my house but never developed my town beyond the public works projects or came up with a coherent interior design. I just wanted to hang out as my in-game self. I was super gutted when I lost my save botching a softmod. This was before ntrboothax and I didn't understand the SD card's file structure or know for sure whether a save could be restored after modding, and I was probably out of space on my drives so even if I'd done a proper backup of the whole card I wouldn't have been able to spare the space it took up.

More pics

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I tried to start a new town but I had no desire to rebuild after losing so much progress. It wouldn't have been the same.

I think that I needed some source of gender-affirmation to turn to during the time I played it, so in retrospect I think the game played a positive role in my life. When I corrupted my file I probably convinced myself that it was for the better so I could move on faster, but those might've been tougher years without it. I was seriously poor and drifting from shitty apartment to temporary apartment to shitty apartment to nice apartment with shitty people etc. My parents were so controlling and neglectful throughout my childhood, and I was so robbed of any time to transition my gender expression that it completely sneaked up on me just how unable to function I was when I left home. I didn't know how to take care of my appearance so for a long time I just would always feel like a mess and this only made my dysphoria worse. I've come a long way since then.

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This talk is making me consider picking up the switch entry but I don't know if the time for it has come and gone. Maybe if there's another pandemic.

Bonus pic

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@connrrr nice place, but you wouldn't want to live there

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@ç©Ž last pic, your character looks a lot like mine, I started with that hat so it's my favorite, same hair, and went with the :3c face for a long time.

After searching for a bit in my early 20's decided I'm not trans, but I sure do love girl clothes and dressup lol. in ACNL especially I have a ton of sick dresses. The monarch(?) butterfly dress was my favorite, so good.

ACNL actually has a ton of better clothes that are missing from ACNH imo

Just thought of one:

In _Fire Emblem Fates_, the first 6 chapters (prologue through chapter 5) of the game remain the same across all three paths, _Birthright_, _Conquest,_ and _Revelations_. At the end of Chapter 5, you decide which route to play. After playing through these first few chapters you unlock a feature called "The Branch of Fate" that allows you to skip to this point and begin a new path, retaining the exp and stats you have accumulated. At this point, you are allowed to re-enter character customization and change your character's gender

This is actually the optimal way to play the game! (at least for _Conquest_, the hard one)

Here is Zoran's _Conquest_ playthrough where he introduces the [character creator](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-VFQkQS4-Q&list=PLFud0P_vaA34XuVCWFIefwsshRUboc9kg&index=2&t=356s)

[Here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2P5IWWogTw&list=PLFud0P_vaA34XuVCWFIefwsshRUboc9kg&index=7), a few episodes later, he changes MC's gender and explains the gameplay upsides

These animal crossing stories are great <3

I'm reminded of being in middle school and logging onto [The Palace](https://theoutline.com/post/3964/the-palace-game-history) chat rooms. That was a place you could spend hours making different [dollz](https://web.archive.org/web/20081216011559/http://www.thedollpalace.com/) and expressing yourself online anonymously. Definitely not a safe environment for teens, but an environment where you could take chances expressing yourself without it being public like on MySpace or AIM.

https://i.redd.it/ngw4pvbwii941.jpg

You could be whoever you wanted, including the feminine urge to dress up and act like Austin Powers for an evening. Oh behave!

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Also, Youtube recommended me this funny seminar about lgbtq neopets (these algorithms are getting too good). Despite Neopets being kind of a historically prudish site that silenced people for using the word gay up until 2021 (!)
 it obviously was another subculture online where people could be queer or furry or whatever felt right.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXk5b7TrmGc

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Elden Ring. You can have body type A or body type B. I've switched between the two multiple times based on how I was feeling.

### I am now offering free/pro-bono Animal Crossing New Horizons Gender-Confirmation-Savegame-Operations to any hackable Nintendo Switch system

Espgaluda (2003)

Manic bullet hell shooter by Cave for arcade and PS2, with a sequel on Switch. From its ten-year-old HG101 article:

Your character switches gender, from male to female or vice-versa (and also sports a different outfit, somehow). Why? For variety’s sake, and “visual impact”, according to the designers.

More character info at Giant Bomb.

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Glad to see our old Super Tempo post linked here, haha.

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