What a fun and original idead.... not. Jill of the jungle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jill_of_the_Jungle was out in 1992, and was one of the first game I played (after prince of persia)
Seriously, this whole thing is bullshit : the "Damsel in distress trope" is older than videogames and even early ones poked fun at it.
I really don't understand how people can fall for this garbage. A subset of videogames are based on heroic epics where one of the challenge the hero could face is the abduction of his loved one or general orpression of women (does it remind you of something?). It exist since the epic of Gilgamsesh so the dawn of humanity. Note that it pretty much only exist for plateformers, rpgs and the likes which may pass for peoples that don't play videogames for the entirety of videogames, but really aren't.
So videogames based on heroic epics use heroic epics tropes. What a surprise. Note that this trope is one among other, and not used specially more often : saving the world form destruction is a classic, avenging one's parents and loved ones is another, quest for riches and fame, quest for love, and most often than not, like in the final fantasy stories, all of the above.
Now videogames is a field for the young and educated, so for the left. They didn't wait for the pseudo intellectual clique to include women in their plot, and most often than not, the firstgame are more feminist than the sequels, due to marketing that try shamelessly to pander to a "males gamers" and completely miss the mark.
Lara croft is often reduced to her boobs, but if you played the first and second games , it's obvious that she's a sucessful highly educated archeologist who can play four instruments, in in incredible shape and generally a total badass. The command and conquer serie, especially the early one but a lot of strong women in their senarios, including our beloved Tania, who is a freedom fight, a badass and slighly sadistic (remember her cry of glee as she gun down USSR infantrymen?). And marketting almost blew the first serie by making Lara a bimbo before coming to their sense and destroyed the second with the hillariously bad red alert 3.
So first thing she ignore the cultural contex of the subject she try to analyse,second she exclude whole subgenre in favor of plateformers and arcade games, the third is that she ignore the conflict between marketing and the devs.
Fourth, she analyse japanese games from a purely western point of view. I have zero knowlege of japanese cultrue so I cannot do better, but I thing it's pretty clear that Mario is some form of parody of western tales, with a plumber instead of the prince, unecessary girly princess captured by the turtle king... It is a play on her precious "damsel in distress" trope.
Fifth, masculine and feminine qualities? Really? Try to say that as a man "hey girl you're strong and courageous, that's not feminine at all".
Sixth second degree is a thing, you cannot just ignore it.
But no, she got an internet martyr aura, she got trash talked so now she's unironically a damsel in distress and she got a license to say anything without beign questionned. That and her supporters try so hard to be above "the average white male gamer, a brutish creature".