REAL ANSWER: The character designs in a lot of 80s action games were made as direct references to lead actors from 80s action movies — Stallone, Arnie, etc. The developers thought that people who liked one would like the other, so they tried to keep everything in sync. When you’d see an action game with a buff guy on the cover at Blockbuster, you’d go: “Cool, it’s just like Rambo!” and get the game. These games were made with the idea that male kids and teenagers would be playing them, and those were the kinds of heroes they liked.
As gaming developed, though, there was more opportunity for Japanese devs to replicate the style of manga and anime for their characters in-game and out-, so that’s what they did. There were a lot of manly manga protagonists in the 80s/90s, but they started going away around the turn of the century when new art styles appeared in trendy places like Shibuya and Akiba, then spread into games. At this point, all JP games just used mangaka as their character designers, so there was no longer a disconnect.
Modern Japanese protagonists aren’t manly because A) a lot of ‘em are drawn by women who prefer the cutesy, bishy, effeminate men they see in shoujo and josei manga and B) Japan in the 2020s has now been completely neutered by increasing American cultural dominance, and their men have cripplingly low self-esteem and zero sex appeal, so there’s no longer any desire to represent idealized depictions of them in fictional escapist entertainment. SORRY!!!!!!!
To throw a bone out to my friends who prefer playing as Body Type B protagonists, let me just say that I like playing as silly, well-designed cartoon characters, and those have mostly gone away, too. The industry has changed!
After thinking about it, I think it's mostly difference in style. There's less macho men because they're less common in anime-style games, and yet, anime-style games are the most popular or at least the most produced video games in the East (not only Japan).
If you see anime nowadays, the main characters are mostly young or teenage boys without much muscles or no muscle at all (been like this since a few years ago). The last buff MC I can think of is Mash from Mashle. And while it was popular, it was mostly because of the comedy not the character itself. I heard that even JoJo, where all characters are buff (even the women), was more popular among the older generations. ?
Not only that. I remember that most characters in live-action anime-adaptation movies are made pretty/beautiful, too. Like that Kenshin live-action movie, for example. He was East-Asian brand of handsome (aka pretty). Meanwhile, handsome/macho men are usually seen mostly in more realistic settings, like police, crime, and delinquent drama or movie (like Crows Zero).
That kinda reflects in their video games, too. Non-anime games like Elden Ring, Tekken, and Yakuza are full of manly men, while anime-style games like most JRPGs and Genshin Impact, for example, are full of East-Asian brand of handsome men (usually pretty), with manly/rugged men as side characters sometimes.
So, yeah, it's more about different in art or graphic style. Also, maybe difference in target audience. Anime games are tailored for majority of anime lovers, while non-anime games are tailored more universally
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