User:MoonJet/Black Orchid

Reception

Lucas Sullivan at GamesRadar claimed "For some old-school gamers, B. Orchid stands above Chun-Li as the iconic First Lady of fighting games." Sullivan examined her appearance in the 2013 Killer Instinct game, stating "Orchid's attire this time around actually matches her profession: secret agent, looking to expose UltraTech as the evil megacorporation that it is." In a review of the aforementioned 2013 game by Polygon, Arthur Gies stated "It can be a little hard to handle some of the more blatant stereotypes and overt sexualization of Killer Instinct's currently available roster of characters," highlighting Orchid and Sadira as examples. Gies attributes Orchid's sexualized pre-fight cutscene as a reason for this. Rob Bricken at Topless Robot included her as one of the ten "most ridiculously stereotyped fighting game characters," who praised her design, but also felt that she "[may be] the fighting-game world's most blatantly objectified female character."

Pedro Vázquez-Miraz, author of the study Review Of A Recent Article By Díez-gutiérrez (2014) And Qualitative Review Of The Video Games Analyzed In Díez-gutiérrez Et Al. (2004), noted her as "hypersexualized", while reasoning "she is dressed with tight and provocative clothing, representing the stereotype of the femme-fatale." Retropolis magazine author Trev was negative of her being the only female character in the original Killer Instinct game, due to "[boosting her] sex appeal to 300%," and estimated her measurements to be "around 100-40-90." David Surman, author of Gaming, Uncanny Realism & Technical Demonstration, mentioned the game Killer Instinct "set a precedent for the promotion of games using still images of highly rendered computer-generated representations of the games player-characters. Debates around the realism and function of hyperreal game characters were yoked to this new marketing strategy," while citing Orchid as an example, due to her "large breasts and oriental 'mystique' made her the first of a succession of clichéd fantasy images to occupy this new gaming image culture." Surman also considers Lara Croft of the Tomb Raider series to be Orchid's "[successor to] this phenomenon." Game design Celia Pearce, writing for Playing Dress-Up: Costumes, roleplay and imagination, listed Orchid as one of the four examples of female characters who "reveals a male fantasy about watching women in battle, rather than a female fantasy of empowerment."