Chimera Star Junction

Formerly known as: The Porno Game, From Japan to the US.  Hello all, and welcome back to my non-linear series “Bringing Up Old Shit”.  Last time I spoke on the stupid comparisons between the franchises of Grand Theft Auto and Saints Row, the latter of which I was hesitant to even call a franchise considering there are currently only two entries.  Today I speak on something a little more family friendly: Japanese eroge games.

Eroge games are games that focus on sexual situations, and in Japan they have a big, loyal following.  Now I’m just a simple yet superbly epic young man from Virginia.  I’m one of the greatest video gamers I know, and yet I still get frustrated when I play Rockstar Games presents Table Tennis because I swear the game cheats.  Eroge games were never on my radar because a)internet porn is free and b)most of the games are in Japanese only. 

At one point in my life I decided to do a long — and I do mean long — study of the Japanese gaming culture, but after several years my computer decided to crash and all the data was lost.  I could do it again if I wanted but I would have to go through a huge number of games I either can’t understand or have to go through a million loopholes to translate or tweak my computer’s localization settings just to get error messages. 

Years.  Over those years I went through good games, bad games, clean games, dirty games, violent games, sickeningly sweet games, and I can say this about eroge: soap operas with boobs.

Yahtzee, the infamous video game reviewer for Zero Punctuation and a lot of other shit that I don’t pretend to follow, threw me off big time when in his latest review (LoZ: OoT 3DS) had this particular graphic.  It’s in my last post but for those of you that are too lazy to backtrack, here you go:

Of course the Nintendo 64 version of the classic game has the gold medal, and nostalgia’s best friend Fantasy World Dizzy takes the silver, but while I can get the joke, I was still laughing with tears in my eyes at the bronze.  Ladies and… who am I kidding?  Gentlemen and possibly gay gentlemen, the third place prize goes to Illusion controversy magnet RapeLay.  Do I even NEED to go past the title to say why this is a problem?

Well I will, because I have a lot to say.  RapeLay is a “game” that puts you in the shoes of forgettable Japanese guy #4573, son of some politician, serial rapist, possible pedophile, protagonist of the “game”.  After he’s arrested for — big shock — attempting to rape a schoolgirl, a family (another schoolgirl who ratted on him, her younger sister and their stupidly well endowed mother) relaxes, but you, being the protagonist, get free because your father is just as fucked up as you.  And the first part of the game has you systematically violating these women, from the youngest to the oldest and back to the one that ratted him out, and then you go into the process of fucking up their minds as well.  Then after you do that, you’re done.  You can keep “playing” if you want, but there’s no goal after you’re “done”.  There are endings, but the endings are good, as in they have you, being the rapist protagonist, being murdered, and they all revolve around getting the women you repeatedly violate pregnant.  Yes, abortions are encouraged.

When this game hit the states (technically Amazon), people are up in arms.  Plenty of congressmen were ready to hang themselves by their belts and plenty of otaku geeks were sporting huge biceps overnight.  Suddenly the world knew more and more about eroge games and more importantly the company Illusion.  Suddenly the politicians that want to rid the youth of video games had more fodder for their cannons, pun intended. 

And imagine me, sitting in my dorm room while all this goes down.  My study of Japanese games was paused, my interest in eroge games was as a minimum, I only maintained playing one because it was a long one and I was actually enjoying the story (had little sex in it actually).  My words though: “Like you ain’t beating your meat to this shit…”

Hundreds, maybe thousands of websites alone are devoted to translating this games for an American audience.  Some companies do it flat out.  These are the games we know about.  What people don’t know about are the American companies that do the same thing, only more smutty.  Yes, smutty.  Because as Americans we do everything as hardcore as Americanly possible.  We had a porno game known as Custer’s Last Stand, where the goal was to brave arrows to rape a tied up Native American (First American for the PC crowd) woman in terrible pixelated graphics.  Leisure Suit Larry revolves around a big headed geek going around on the quest to get laid.  Then they gave his nephew a game, and it was okay at best.  Too many glitches.

Not to mention the pornographic companies that populate Silicon Valley and the rest of the country, making two-bit porno games for a non-discriminating audience.  End of the day, however, just like with the movies starring Lacey Duvalle or Asa Akira, they have the same goal: for you to beat off to it.  Much like the post I posted much earlier in the month, I want to visit the Valley just so I can catch Lacey Duvalle walking around with her goodies out for us to leer at and… maybe touch.  I’ve seen it happen on film, I want to participate.  Hey, if you’re reading this flood her Twitter account with that request from me.

I suppose the point I’m making, rather poorly in fact, is that we have all this uproar over pornographic games when it’s no different than pornographic movies with interaction and, to a certain crowd, a sense of basic accomplishment at completion.  Except for RapeLay.  You don’t want to “win” that “game”. 

Maybe most of the hate is focused unfairly on that company too, Illusion that is.  The very reason their games are only available in Japan is because of the backlash they knew they’d receive in international markets.  Having rape as the plot device actually isn’t nearly as bad as the fact that they seemed to put in a tremendous amount of detail to make it as — I assume — real as possible.  Yeah, played it once.  Then I was done.  Won’t lie: I got more bored than disgusted, and I was pretty disgusted at times.

The company is known for this “rape simulator”, but actually their catalog is filled with “happy sex” games, and a true video game connoisseur might even go so far as to say that with proper funding that they could create one hell of a case study of a game combining some of their more innovative elements.  Much like television, when sex is used as an element rather than a selling point, you can make something great.

Look at the new game out, Catherine.  Personally I can’t wait to play it, as soon as I get some money.  How many games examine relationships and personal evolution as an exclusivity?  Atlus always has pushed the boundaries of standards and now they’ve done it again.  What sells the game though?  Sex appeal.  Katherine is a beautiful woman.  Catherine is the definition of fatal attraction.  There’s more to the story, yes, but that’s innovation, and humor from what I’ve seen so far, all rolled into one, seductively sexy pizza-eating package.

But a lot of people aren’t going to get that far, with the game, in the game, or in any capacity whatever.  Here’s what’s great about examining relationships and/or personal evolution: you get to see exactly how far their examination of a topic goes.  If someone just picked up… let’s keep it in the Illusion family; if someone just picked up A-Ga, they would see a stiff game with weak gameplay and somewhat well done CGI sequences, some of them with sexual relations, both hetero and lesbian.  At one point you see a rape scene, and at that point the average gamer (i.e. - the otaku with the massive right arm) stops caring about what the game is about and suddenly learns how to record live movies.  Honestly, I went through that game once and I didn’t know what the hell was going on because everything was in Japanese.  Then I read what was going on, and as flimsy as the story was it was a little (emphasis on the world “little”) compelling.  If people took kept their hands on the keyboards then it wouldn’t be such a big deal.

With Catherine, people have already associated the game with a pot of golden wank, disregarding the actual disc and content to focus on the title character’s busty image.  I can’t buy this game used because I fear I’ll be touching another man’s DNA on the case if I do. 

What, you thought it was an eroge issue alone?  Play Mass Effect 2 and you see Miranda’s ass take up 33% of the screen in 33% of the shots that she’s in.  Play Ninja Gaiden and every woman has sweater puppies bigger than the watermelons they use as measuring tools.  Play Street Fighter and if it isn’t Chun-Li’s or Cammy’s legs (prominently displayed of course) then it’s a woman fighting in heels.  Speaking of heels, what’s up with Mortal Kombat and every woman outside of Sheeva fighting in heels?  Sex appeal?  Undoubtedly.  Logical?  Not by a long shot.  There’s no reason in the world for Sonya Blade, a special ops agent, to be fighting evil overlords and demonic beings in heels!

But don’t get it twisted: I’m not saying sex appeal is wrong.  As much as I tolerate Fable 2, the women in that game looked like Ukrainian accidents.  But when you have so much sex appeal that you almost have to choose between actually playing a game or fluffing the magic dragon, there’s the real issue.  Best example? 

Costume made of her hair.  Featuring in the game that literally lets you play with one hand.  Come on, SEGA, is this what we’ve devolved into?  Has the Sonic well really run so dry that we have to go for flat out… I can’t even think of a clever term for this.  At least TRY to cover it up.

At least eroge games know what they’re out to do.  For the consumer: squeeze off some knuckle children.  And maybe they’re out for a good story or a decent game too.  It happens.  As for the American side… well, what can I say?  Let’s just end this with another picture:

Versus other series they do, where the protagonist of the sequel is indirectly a disciple of the first protagonist or closely related through supporting characters.  They also go off into the wild blue yonder in a fashion similar to the first protagonist, sometimes to follow them.  Think about it.  KOTOR.  Revan.  KOTOR 2.  Jedi Exile girl, indirect disciple of Revan. 

Dragon Age.  Warden.  Dragon Age 2.  Hawke, who vanishes after the events of DA 2 in a fashion similar to what the Warden apparently did (Witch Hunt DLC). 

Also known as “Deception: The Rise of the Casual Gamer”

Hello, all, and welcome to the first installment of “Bringing Up Old Shit”, where I talk about something in the world of games or music that is STILL an unnecessary issue today.  Today, in the inaugural post, I think it’s only appropriate to speak on the lingering stupidity of the average gamer (i.e. - more than likely YOU reading this) who thinks it’s fair to now compare Rockstar’s flagship franchise Grand Theft Auto and THQ’s runaway hit franchise Saints Row 2.  However, it may not be fair to even consider the latter a franchise, not yet.

The biggest argument between the games is the level of realism vs. fun.  Sadly, for most of these people, fun equates to over-the-top scenarios and crazy nonsense like jet packs.  This is part of the reason that San Andreas is considered the best game in the series by the commercial crowd.  Let’s backtrack, however, because I haven’t gone into enough exposition (exposition: talking shit out ASAP).

Grand Theft Auto is credited with birthing and expanding the sandbox style of game.  Putting you into the shoes of a criminal, the original titles put you in the shoes of a criminal doing odd jobs for various purposes, at first as some random guy, then as the ill-fated Claude Speed.  You may remember the top-down view. 

The franchise hit a watershed with Grand Theft Auto 3, a 3D crime drama featuring the “mute asshole” Claude, doing odd jobs for various purposes after getting betrayed by his bitch of a girlfriend Catalina.  The game took place in Liberty City, the benchmark for New York City clones, and was a living, breathing place.  Rockstar followed this up with Vice City, a journey to the past with lead character Tommy “Sociopath Charlie Sheen” Vercetti.  Vice City was an homage to Miami, down to the drugs, the music and the excess of pornographic films with poorly named pornographic actresses (I prefer fake gov’t names over shitty stripper names any day).  The story could have been seen as a drawn out rip off of Scarface, but it was fun.

Then we were given San Andreas, controversial for many a reason.  For one, it started a black character (Carl “CJ” Johnson), which a lot of people figured would be a downside.  With this, considering the West Coast gang culture the game was rooted in, came excessive use of the dreaded n-word (NIGGA!) and G-funk from good (Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube) and bad (OG Loc, sometimes incorrectly pronounced Og Lock) musicians.  Hard language was introduced (more than “shit”) and of course the infamous Hot Coffee mini-game was discovered by curious people.  The map was literally an entire state, featuring three cities, hillbilly country and a desert, and the experience on the whole was an over-the-top rags to riches tale that ended up right back where it started: the ghetto (people are crying…).

Now, not too long after San Andreas took over the world of gaming (still carries the title as highest selling PS2 game of all time unless I’m mistaken) and the seventh generation of consoles was getting big, THQ and Volition decided to step into the open world game market with a very hyped product known as Saints Row.  Featuring an ensemble voice cast (something I need to touch on later), the game was seen by many as an clone of San Andreas, only it focused on the gang aspect because it WAS about gang life.  You job in the game was to take over the city by taking out the rival gangs, period.  While innovative in gameplay, especially the Activities vs. Respect aspect, the game itself was met with general acclaim, not the critical acclaim that made GTA so popular.

In addition, it was over-the-top without being so over-the-top, which was seen as a head scratcher.  The game was dark, to a degree, and somewhat hard to play.  Your silent protagonist was given four lines of speech, most of them hilarious, and the ending didn’t just hint at a sequel but assured it.  This was NOT the GTA competition that people expected.

Then we were given the big guns.

In 2008 Rockstar released the highly anticipated Grand Theft Auto 4, the first seventh generation GTA title and, according to reviewers, the most critically acclaimed.  Featuring a revamped Liberty City and a long, serious story, the adventures of Niko Bellic were eventually supplemented with the interweaving narratives of Johnny Klebitz, Jewish 1%er, and then Luis Lopez, Hispanic club owner and gun-for-hire, making the episodes from Liberty City one of the most talked about and beloved games in history.  This is fact.

Also in 2008 we were given Saints Row 2.  Whatever shadow of GTA this game had been in was gone; they’d shined a light on it and broken away.  Focusing on sheer fun and reckless, nihilistic pleasure you were thrown into the ugly sneakers of the person you played as in Saints Row and tasked with restoring your gang to the glory it was once known for.  The goal was exactly as it was before but giving your protagonist a voice, giving every possible silly action a reward and recklessly throwing seriousness to the wind didn’t just strike a chord with greatness.

And immediately the comparisons began.  The completely unwarranted comparisons.

While reviewers loved GTA4, the common fan wasn’t necessarily a fan: they were upset at the lack of the over-the-top game that GTA had become and heaved a sigh of lost love at CJ and his crazy misadventures with the gangs and pimps and government officials and blind street racers.  They missed the jet packs and airplanes and Hot Coffee.  Thus, in those eyes, Saints Row became the new king of the yard.  I repeat: completely unwarranted. 

See, with the birth of Saints Row, something unprecedented happened: extremes could be explored.  Notice how both the adventures of Claude and Tommy were relatively balanced affairs.  They blended seriousness and crazy antics pretty well, and they came out on top each time.  However, with the 3rd Street Saints in place, GTA had an opportunity to experiment with less zany and more story.

I made an early comparison between the games, partly because I knew what was going to happen: GTA 4 was like a show on AMC.  Saints Row 2 was like a show on FX.  I like the show Wilfred.  As great as that show is, it’s WAY over-the-top right from jump.  A dog that only one person can speak to.  Yeah.  A perfect compliment to Louie I admit, but still, that show made me say “Wow…” first time I saw it. 

Now go to AMC.  The new flagship program (isn’t not really new but I haven’t gotten into it yet for real) is Breaking Bad.  From what I’ve seen of it, it’s a hard show.  Gut wrenching.  We’ll see; I’ll speak on it more one day after I’ve watched it.  As far as I’m concerned AMC is still for movies.  Yeah, I’m like that.

So we’re comparing two fantastic products with two completely different approaches.  At the end of the day they both do the same thing however: they entertain us.  Whether you’re watching a man in a dog suit off a Haitian woman or a Cancer-ridden man cook meth, you’re entertained.  With two distinct methods of doing it, how can you be mad when one isn’t necessarily your cup of tea?

The simple show references don’t just end with AMC vs. FX though.  My favorite, my absolute FAVORITE way to distinguish the games is the voice acting.  Saints Row enlists an ensemble cast, the most stereotypical people you can find, save for Keith David who is quite simply just the greatest voice actor who consistently voice acts (Julius, Goliath from Saints Row, Captain Anderson from Mass Effect).  You know who the voice actors are and you love it because you know full well that some of these people have no business having the voices that they do.  It’s over-the-top fun.  Like Wilfred.

Shift over to Grand Theft Auto.  I don’t know who the hell voices Niko Bellic but he’s terrific.  Who voices Roman or Kate or even Florian for that matter?  While there are plenty of big name actors and actresses always involved with the Rockstar giant they may not be the most well known.  They are always a fantastic fit, however.  Always.  Bryan Cranston is great, but unless you were big on Malcolm in the Middle there’s a good chance you didn’t know about him until Breaking Bad broke big.

Again, this is the style of the games.  While GTA focuses on a serious sort of story (even The Ballad of Gay Tony was more serious, admit it) we have the Row focusing on “good times” as Shaundi would say (and I hope she still says). 

I suppose my biggest gripe with the fans is how they seem to want the same kind of story, the same kind of game time and time again.  For all the hate that the serious GTA got, it’s hard to deny that it was a good game.  Was it TOO serious?  Arguably.  Half of the game doubled as tutorial and having to play escort with so many people was annoying, but hey, it blended into the game.  There was an equation that was eerily unspoken along these lines:

53R10U5N355 ≠ FUN

Bull.  It MAY mean that the average gamer is stuck in a stagnant state though.  Far be it from me to say that there is only one form of fun, and don’t think I’m implying that anyone is right or wrong in their line of thinking (actually I am) but what does it say when people don’t think you can have fun with serious things? 

This is a reflection on the gamer market as it stands today.  I was having a conversation with a good friend of mine once about the Kinect and he is not a fan.  I was trying to convince him otherwise, despise my misgivings about the thing myself, but his argument was that it catered to a casual market versus a hardcore demographic, the latter being something we both fall into.  I agree, but where once the hardcore gamers were the majority, now the majority is the casual gamer, the people that play Burnout Paradise for a couple of hours then go out to concerts and have sex with possibly underage women.  I like Michael Jackson, but there’s not a single hardcore gamer that will want Michael Jackson: The Experience as a hardcore gamer.  Now I hear Michael Phelps is going to be the star of a swimming simulator.  Pardon my French, but what the flying fuck is that about?

Some will say that the Wii is to blame for the casual gamer getting the leg up over the hardcore subscriber.  I won’t blame the console but the simple (but still fun) sports game that came with it.  That’s a casual game.  We can’t blame the consoles so much because at the end of the day it’s a business.  Businesses are about making money primarily, you know, like college or strip clubs.  Why do you think Capcom releases the same game over and over?  Because they know their market and they know the market will buy the product.

The Kinect IS geared to the casual gamer, yes.  However, it can still be used to accommodate the hardcore gamer, or the rare in between people who like to play Burnout Paradise for a day and go out to the occasional concert and have sex with decidedly legal women. 

What does this have to do with GTA and Saints Row?  Saints Row is, not surprisingly, more accessible to the casual gamer NOW than GTA.  Having such a realistic, gritty approach doesn’t appeal to the average “I think I’ll play a game to see how they are” gamer so much as base jumping naked on a hooker and flashing her right after.  Maybe the actual equation should be more like this:

1MM3D1∀T3 FUN ≠ 53R10U5N355

And again, this speaks to the type of gamer.  I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t a bit bias in my line of thinking, because I am.  I’m part of a generation of gamers that turn their nose up at any that don’t know who the four grand bosses of Street Fighter 2 are.  I’m part of the generation of gamers that placed The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time into a category of greatest games ever and manages to break down every reason according to the song playing at the time.  I don’t hate casual gamers; I hate casual gamers that act like they know shit.  The greatest population of people that down GTA and praise the Row are these people.  Last thing I need is some jerk that thinks he knows games tell me that Sonic Adventure was better than the original Sonic the Hedgehog.  Yes, this has happened.  That’s all I’m saying.

The moral of this story:

Before you get too excited, let me remind you of a few things.  One, this is Poison, from the franchise Final Fight, one of Capcom’s many forgotten properties.  Two, she is arguably the first significant “trap” in video game history.  For those of you that don’t know what a trap is, I direct you to Bridget from the Guilty Gear franchise.  For those of you that don’t know about either Poison OR Bridget, I direct you to this comic that perfectly explains what the hell a “trap” is:

You’ve Been Warned…

Now, I have Poison up here because she’s one of the more interesting new characters to be placed within the confines of the latest dream mash-up Street Fighter x Tekken.  What we know so far is that all the Street Fighters are going to have their super attacks and all the Tekken folk are going to have super moves custom made because they can’t stand up to a fireball.  We have one Final Fight character in Poison and a slew of Tekken people save for the current protagonist Jin Kazama, who looks to share that title with Ryu in the highly anticipated and not-at-all stupidly titled Tekken x Street Fighter. 

The game looks like SF4 and is going to feature a tag system, but I don’t know, I’m still not sold on this.  Honestly, as epic a battle as Ryu vs. Kazuya Mishima should be, EVIL Ryu vs. DEVIL Kazuya just sounds like a duel worthy of Final Fantasy proportions.  I just think I can play out my dream battle now with Chun-Li and Cammy vs. Nina Williams and Julia Chang, also known as the “Chris Lamb Epic International Lesbian Wet Dream Battle Royale Extravaganza Mark 3”.  There is no one or two; the CLEILWDBREM3 is so epic that it actually manages to tear apart time and space and skip straight to three. 

God have mercy on your souls, Capcom, if you release SUPER Street Fighter x Tekken, because then I have to introduce the Chris Lamb Epic International Lesbian Wet Dream Battle Royale Extravaganza Mark 3… With Cheese.  I don’t need the extra cholesterol though, you jerks. 

Jokes aside, this is a strange idea.  I don’t know why the Street Fighter/Capcom Vs. craze is back, but it is, and like I was telling @kidkoopa89 earlier, another iconic fighting franchise needs to jump on that and do ANOTHER versus game soon, you know, to get all the fanboys and hardcore gamers’ mass’ erect…

Ah, finally, I have the perfect way to enjoy a good drink while playing current generation Final Fantasy games, save for the MMORPG ones.  A lot of you seem to hate the thirteenth one so this might just make it a bit more bearable.

EDIT: technically this game can be played with any Final Fantasy that features voices.  If there are voices, enjoy.  Personally I wouldn’t mind trying this masterpiece with a revamped Final Fantasy IX… wait, there’s singing in Final Fantasy IX… AND VIII… well, pardon me, ladies and gentlemen.

*drives to liquor store*

EDIT #2: screw it, play this with ALL Final Fantasy games with named characters.  Why discriminate?  Grab some Smirnoff and Hardees Monster Burgers and have a good ass day!

• Every time a character says “you know?”: one sip
• Every time you lose a battle: five sips
• Every time you defeat a creature for the first time: three sips
• Lose to a sub-boss: four sips
• Defeat a sub-boss: two sips
• Discover the cliche sub-boss that is the strongest enemy in the game: one sip
• Lose to the cliche sub-boss that is the strongest enemy in the game: two sips
• Defeat the cliche sub-boss that is the strongest enemy in the game: down the drink
• Every time you watch an unnecessary cutscene: one sip (you don’t need the hangover)
• Every time you use a summon in a non-critical battle: seven sips
• Every time you can follow the story with total ease: down the drink (you’ve earned it)
• Every time you DON’T joke about how the characters are the same from the previous game: one sip, two if it’s Tidus
• Every time you engage in something that’s not a battle and actually has relevance to the story: three sips
• Finish the game: two drinks down the hatch
• Finish the game in twelve hours or less: get pissy drunk because you more than likely have no life

A dynamic game, the rules will consistently get more and more… more.  So have fun, preferably use a light beer or cider or something to avoid getting completely drunk too soon, and for the love of God, do NOT make a simple joke about gray haired Tidus every time you see Hope.  Seriously, I did get pretty wasted when I did that…

Oh, and yes, I did pick the characters in those pictures intentionally.  Sazh and Fang were my favorites from XIII, Balthier is my favorite from XII, and Lulu is my favorite from X.  Yes, Lulu.  Auron is a close second.  Yes, lust plays a part.  How can you not love a wonderfully well endowed woman that wears belts as a skirt?