I say this to my friend whenever he plays Soul Reaver. When I first saw the game, I thought maybe it had a 2-player mode so I told him, “Let me be the red reaver!” and he replied, “There is no red reaver.” “Why the hell not?!” I snapped, incensed that they would have a ‘blue’ character and not accompany him with a ‘red’ counterpart.
I always dug 2 player cooperative games, for the most part because of the level of patience required with your partner. These games seemed classicly definied as having a ‘blue’ guy and a ‘red’ guy. Some had even more variation- in Contra III, player 1 ‘blue’ was Caucasian, while player 2 ‘red’ was Latino! Talk about diversity! And in most of the Metal Slug games, you can even choose different genders!