Hot Game Girls

There is much talk about the highly sexualized appearance of female characters in videogames. On one side of the debate, arguments really, are the individuals who act as though they are utterly appalled whenever a character has even a hint of cleavage. On the other side there is the rest of the world who resoundingly cries out, "More! More TNA please!" People have a tendency to forget that this is entertainment. You know entertainment! It's fantasy wish fulfillment in the form of electronic media. 

The individuals who champion the anti-boob side of the debate seem to want to inflict artsy fartsy high-society games upon us. Somehow a female character with giant boobs cannot have a real depth of character apparently. No, they all must be proportioned like twelve year old girls and cut themselves for emotional reasons. While that is an exaggeration, the fact of the matter is that there are games on the market where the female characters are not just eye candy.

Let's examine two well-known video game characters, Samus Aran and Princess Peach. When Samus Aran was first introduced to the video game loving public no one knew she was in fact, a girl. She wore a power suit and blasted aliens with extreme prejudice. It was not until the game was complete that players discovered that she was a woman. Princess Peach on the other hand, has constantly been in need of rescuing. There are a few instances where she has shown pluck and resolve beyond simply being a videogame plot victim, but mostly she was plot candy for most of her existence. 

The two aforementioned characters began their existence as 2-dimensional sprite images with little in the way of sexualization, outside of how Samus wore a little less whenever the player completed Metroid with greater speed, eventually ending up in a swimsuit looking outfit. However, over time fans and eventually the artwork of the publishers moved into sexy or at least hyper feminine areas. The sexualization did not detract from the characters at all and simply made them seem more real. In the case of princess Peach it explains why Bowser kept kidnapping her and why Mario always jumped over pools of lava and threw fireballs at man eating plants to rescue her. I'm sure she makes a nice glass of iced tea, but come on... we know the real reason people.

The Gamerz Paradox in this situation should be believability versus eye candy and retail sales. Do you really believe Mario and Bowser would have spent their time kidnapping or rescuing a chubby emo goth chick who cuts herself and writes dark poetry? Does the random ordinary girl down the street warrant launching yourself atop giant grinning bullets or getting bitten on the ass by oversexed turtle soldiers? Surely, she would need to be rescued but that's when you put together a team and storm the gates. Solo adventuring heroes are a different story. It's a lot easier to believe someone is trying to rescue the princess when she has "Dat Ass".

When it comes to a character like Samus Aran it also makes sense that she would be very fit physically. She has a solid body type and her skin tight zero suit just makes for beautiful eye candy. She is a mercenary and must retain maximum physicality, so of course she's going to be blessed with the sexy. 

The Truth About Modern Gaming

The truth about modern gaming is that, at its heart, it is nothing more than a rehash of much older ideas. Some of the best games ever created are decades old in comparison, yet people still want to play them at times. If this were not the case ROMs and emulation would not be as popular. I sincerely doubt that people create ROMs and ISOs solely to back-up a game they own, even ancient games from the Atari and NES era.

The modern gamer's paradox is that older games often had more substance and much higher levels of difficulty compared to the current fare. However, their graphical capacities are sorely outdated when they are compared to modern design capacity. The older games seemed to take more chances and even utilized tongue-in-cheek stabs at political correctness that either amused or abhorred people. Who can forget the number of censored games that came to the United States and other western countries? Often the original versions had much more daring cover art and the games had darker, or more disturbing, elements.  Nintendo, for instance, was notorious for its censorship. One example was the decision to remove a gay bar from ENIX's 1992 release of Dragon Quest/Warrior III among other changes. The decision to remove ritual murders and the ability to choose a male or female bed mate in the Buccaneer Island area was also changed in Ultima VII.

While many of the modern games and game companies allow far more violence and disturbing imagery, most are not doing anything that can be considered new in the world of gaming. They simply have the option to showcase what many developers desired to do all along. The main difference for modern gamer's is that they have better game play experiences due to advanced consoles and computer systems. The graphics and sound for most games created currently are far superior to anything created even seven years ago.

However, despite how much the graphics and sound have improved, many current games do not have the overall depth that old school games portrayed. Developers cram so many bells and whistles into current games that they often lack logical consistency and even more frequently they release games that have exceptional glaring errors far in excess of most older games.

Therein lies the Paradox. Is it better to play an older game with dated, if occasionally beautiful, sprite based graphics and limited options, or a modern game with dozens, if not hundreds of options and a massive graphical and sound upgrade? Which is a better game, Chrono Trigger or Final Fantasy XIII? I have my personal opinion, and I'd think that most who have played these two games will have a similar one.