Some people from the Video Game History Foundation (VGHF) have been looking for a Vietnamese woman named Ban Tran for several years. The reason for this was because Ban developed the game Wabbit, which was released in 1982 for the Atari 2600. In Wabbit, they play a girl named Billie Sue who will protect her carrot crops from rabbits. Wabbit is also the first game for home consoles to have a female protagonist. VGHF therefore considered it important to find Ban to celebrate the women who were involved in developing the games from the past.
Ban did not turn out to be so easy to find as her name was actually Van Mai. She was born in Vietnam and came to the United States as a refugee at the end of the Vietnam War. She eventually learned computer programming and was hired by developer Apollo after seeing an ad for the job at a local newspaper. She had never made a game before, but her concept, which was specifically aimed at little girls, impressed Apollo.
Via the link below you can find the long and interesting article about Van Mai and how VGHF finally managed to find her or you can check out the summary in the video above.
gamehistory.org
Games, Industry,
Video Game History Foundation, Van Mai, Wabbit
.
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