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• "Have You Heard the News? He's Gay!"

  I'm still not done with Mother 3. You could say I'm savouring it (something Mackey can surely appreciate). I'm coming close to the end though, so I'm in an adequate position to talk about the game on message boards. This is an especially fun way to waste time because Mother's papa, Shigesato Itoi, never struck me as a convential game designer. He's a writer first, something that I think comes out clearly in his games. For instance, I was talking with a dapper gentleman in a tophat about some of Itoi's characters in Earthbound and Mother 3. Both games feature at least one gay character. This is nothing new in Japanese-developed games and anime, where gays and transvestites serve the same function as our own laughtracks. Everyone laugh at the flamboyant man fretting over his shoes and dress! It's funny 'cause men aren't supposed to do that! The difference with Itoi's characters is that the player is not really supposed to laugh at them. They're vital to the plot, but they just so happen to be gay. Read More... Posted Nov 13 2008, 07:19 PM by Nadia Oxford with | with 7 comment(s) Filed under: earthbound, mother 3, mother 2, nadia oxford, homosexuality, shigesato itoi, gay characters, gay

• Alternate Soundtrack: Ai Cho Aniki vs. Xiu Xiu

  I'm just going to go ahead and assume that our readers are curious enough gamers to already be aware of the Cho Aniki series of games, popularly revered as the most homoerotic series to ever be published on home consoles. Exclusive to Japan for the past sixteen years, the first (and arguably least provocative) Cho Aniki game for the Turbo-Grafix 16/PC Engine was released for the North American Wii Virtual Console last week. The one that people really remember, though, was the 1995 sequel Ai Cho Aniki, in which you finally got to play as the musclebound meat cakes Samson and Adon, flying around psychedelic environments and battling, well, weird shit. The game's energetic mardi gras soundtrack is certainly charming, a wonderful bonus of being one of the early CD-based console games, but it lacks a certain sense of irony inherent in its source material. Read More... Posted Sep 16 2008, 10:30 AM by Derrick Sanskrit with | with no comments Filed under: alternate soundtrack, derrick sanskrit, turbo-grafx, homosexuality, cho aniki, xiu xiu

• Flying Gay Men Invade Virtual Console!

  The Cho Aniki series of aggressively-gay horizontal shooters has always been easy joke fodder; for about three or four years in a row, a Cho Aniki screenshot/caption tag-team appeared in nearly every issue of EGM. Through the march of time, Boong-Ga Boong-Ga has since replaced Cho Aniki in the "Oh, those wacky foreigners" category, but we've never been graced with an American release of any Cho Aniki game...until today. The VC still lack Earthbound, Majora's Mask, and Yoshi's Island, but today Nintendo decided to rectify the dearth of TG-16 shmups on their digital download service by releasing the first Cho Aniki game. I can't tell you if it's good or bad, but I can tell you that it's weird. Everything I know about the Japanese view of homosexuality is based on portrayals of gays in Japanese media, which boils down to the stereotype of male homosexuals being buff bodybuilders (with a surprising lack of mustache), and that the mere presense of gays is a joke in and of itself. A still image of Will and Grace would probably be considered the height of humor in Japan. Read More... Posted Sep 08 2008, 04:00 PM by Bob Mackey with | with 4 comment(s) Filed under: wii, bob mackey, virtual console, homosexuality, shmups, cho aniki