Start Your Engines

Cindy (who’s known as Cidney in Japan) puts a progressive spin on Final Fantasy‘s longstanding “Cid” gimmick. As the head mechanic of the Hammerhead garage, her skills are required to repair a custom-made car that breaks down in the desert. She finds various ways to upgrade the vehicle after this meeting, but her knowledge isn’t limited to cars. At one point, she dismantles an imperial generator and helps save a nearby metropolis in the process. Cindy is driven to succeed and passionate about her work, and it’s great to see a woman in a role that would have traditionally been filled by a man. Some critics take issue with her appearance, but Cindy proves that pretty girls can get dirty too. Blue collar jobs aren’t just for men and butch women. Cindy Aurum may very well be the feminist icon we’ve all been waiting for!

Almost all of the mainline games in the Final Fantasy series feature a character named Cid, and most of them are mechanically inclined in one way or another. A number of them were considered for this list, but I feel that Cid Pollendina from Final Fantasy IV is the best fit. As the head of Baron’s corps of engineers, he designs airships for the kingdom and keeps them in commission. When his party needs to traverse the underworld, he modifies an airship to withstand intense heat. When they need to return to the surface, he retrofits their ship with a powerful drill. Perhaps more so than anyone else on this list, Cid’s identity is tied to his mechanical knowledge. The old man is proud of his technical skills and works well past retirement age in order to demonstrate his prowess on the job.

Nearly every other class from Team Fortress 2 has already been discussed on this site, so it was only a matter of time before the Engineer got a little recognition. The soft-spoken Texan spent a decade in the oilfields before earning 11 PhDs in various fields of scientific study. Needless to say, his background has made him uniquely qualified to solve problems on the battlefield. The Engineer specializes in the construction of buildings, and he’s able to maintain them with his trusty wrench. If things get too heated, he can also pick up his buildings and redeploy them elsewhere. Although his skills are suited for supporting roles, the Engineer can defend himself when he has to. He has a selection of high-tech weapons at his disposal, and he can aide his team by constructing everything from sentry guns to teleporters.

Slippy Toad is a childhood friend of Fox McCloud and flies alongside him as a member of the StarFox team. He’s relatively inexperienced as a pilot, however, so he often finds himself in hot water. His friends are constantly saving his amphibian ass, but Slippy’s contributions cannot be overstated. As the team’s resident inventor and mechanic, Slippy created many of the vehicles that the team uses during the Lylat Wars. He was responsible for both the Landmaster tank and the Blue-Marine – which are used for land-based and underwater missions respectively. He has also revised the team’s Arwing spacefighters to make them more versatile in battle. He can be a liability during missions since his enthusiasm outweighs his skills as a pilot, but the StarFox team would be lost without his mechanical know-how.

Sonic the Hedgehog’s sidekick doesn’t get the credit he deserves. He can run just as fast as Sonic can, he can use his twin tails as makeshift helicopter rotors, and he happens to be a mechanical genius. The master engineer has invented airplanes, rocket ships, race cars, and submarines. One of his vehicles could even travel to different dimensions! Tails is a quick study, and a simple glance is all he needs to understand the inner-workings of advanced technologies. He proudly claims to have built a TV out of paperclips, and I don’t doubt the story one bit. He’s obviously a prodigy, and his mechanical knowledge has become more and more apparent with time. It’s not hard to look smart when you’re hanging out with the likes of Sonic and Knuckles, but Tails would be recognized as a genius in any arena.

The Lombax species has an instinctive affinity towards gadgetry and machines, and the aptly-named Ratchet is no different in this regard. Although he was a mechanic by trade, Ratchet longed to see the galaxy. When his dreams could no longer be confined to a single planet, Ratchet built himself a ship and set out to visit new worlds. He uses all kinds of gadgets and weapons during his adventures, and he becomes an intergalactic hero after meeting a small robot named Clank. Ratchet proves himself to be a resourceful mechanic who can make seemingly anything out of scrap metal, but some of his ideas are better than others. He has a long history of stupid inventions that includes bathroom toys made of anti-matter, a nuclear-powered rocket sled, and electric undergarments called “Stunderwear.”

Almost all of the combatants in the ARMS Grand Prix are defined by their extendable arms. These arms are made out of springs, noodles, and pretty much everything in between, but there’s nothing especially unusual about Mechanica’s arms. She idolizes the ARMS fighters, however, so she decided to build herself a special fighting suit so she could join their ranks. What better way to show appreciation to your role models than punching them in the face with a robotic suit of your own design? Although she’s only 15, the ARMS superfan honed her engineering genius at her local scrapyard before devising a way to enter the battle arena herself. She could have just watched the action from afar, but her robotic armor levels the playing field and lets her hold her own in a venue she has no business being a part of.

Lin Lee Koo proves once again that you should never judge a book by its cover. Although she’s only 13 (inside and out), Lin has intelligence beyond her years. She looks and speaks like a typical teenager, but she’s a genius with a profound interest in anything relating to machines. She’s especially fascinated by transforming battle mecha called Skells, and she acts like a screaming fangirl when she’s around them. She knows everything there is to know about the machines and even writes Skell fan fiction in her spare time! As an expert engineer, Lin is a member of a division that develops and maintains the Skells. She’s regarded as one of the organization’s top talents and proudly describes herself as the division’s “top all-around fix it gal.” It’s always nice when someone finds work in a field they’re passionate about.

Tron Bonne is yet another teenage girl who happens to be a mechanical genius. She’s the only daughter in the Bonne family of air pirates, but she’s clearly the brains of the operation. Tron designs all of the family’s machines, and her inventions include airships, transforming fighting mecha, and giant enemy crabs. To her credit, Tron pilots these machines herself after building them. She also created an army of loyal, all-purpose support robots – called Servebots – that are at her beck and call at all times. The feisty mechanic has a tendency to mock her rivals, but her self-confidence is not entirely misplaced. Tron acts like a typical 14-year-old girl and is prone to violent mood swings, but her inventions speak for themselves. There’s no telling what she could accomplish if she wasn’t so temperamental.

Video games are often criticized for how they portray female characters, but this list demonstrates that young women are often depicted as being more capable than their male colleagues. Lucca is a brilliant inventor who is defined by her creativity. She’s only a few hundred years removed from the middle ages, but she still manages to design a short-range teleporter and a prototype battle robot. She’s also smart enough to unlock the secrets of time travel and resourceful enough to repair an advanced robot that was built thousands of years in the future. She was inspired to learn more about machines after her mother was injured in a freak accident, and she refused to let her emotional baggage define her. Lucca insists that nothing can beat science, and she models her life around this line of thinking.