Thursday, July 01, 2010

Hubba hubba

Thanks to the prevailing wisdom that all video gamers are hormonally charged heterosexual men, most developers design their wares with that demographic in mind. As such, it should be no surprise that big-breasted babes abound in much of the software sold in stores today.

That doesn’t mean gay guys are left with no one to ogle when they fire up a game on their PlayStation 3s, Xbox 360s or Wiis. In fact, more than a handful of hunks have paraded across the screen over years, with the following list highlighting the hottest:


Guile (Street Fighter series)—The Street Fighter series has hosted a number of hotties over the years, but Guile stands head and shoulders above the rest thanks to his military background. (After all, who doesn’t like a hot guy in a uniform?) He loses a few points for the weird ‘do, but everything else is so spot on that it can be overlooked.


Leon S. Kennedy (Resident Evil series)—Leon Kennedy proves you can be fashion-forward even while working to rid the world of zombies. Thankfully, he seems to be a looker even without the bomber jacket, tight jeans and manicured mane. Now Capcom (the game’s producer) needs to give him a few alternate outfits to prove that point. Here’s an idea: Maybe he could run around in his tighty whities in the series’ next sequel?


Kratos (God of War I and II)—Why is this guy hot? Well, for starters, his designers were inspired by Greek mythology—Hercules in particular. Unfortunately, they also made him sociopathic. Considering it looks like he stepped, dripping with sweat, out of a particularly steamy piece of Gladiator fanfic, I’m willing to give him a pass for not being completely sane.

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

You say gamer, I say gaymer

If you’re gay and you’ve been surfing the Web for any amount of time, you’ve likely come across “gaymer” once or twice. The increasingly common portmanteau—a word formed by joining two others and combining their meanings—refers to gay (as well as lesbian, bisexual and transgender) folk who are fond of video games.

Gaymer is hardly the only gay portmanteau around. Everyone’s heard and used “gaydar,” of course, and “gayborhood” is making its way into more and more headlines--not to mention water-cooler conversations--every day. Go to UrbanDictionary.com and you’ll find even more examples of this typographic trend, including “gayngsta,” “gaythiest” and even “gayby boom,” which refers to the present-day increase in gay and lesbian parents.

Just because a few Net denizens glom onto a new word doesn’t mean it’s going to be accepted by the masses—or that it will be admired or adored by the few. Take gaymer: Although the neologism has only been around for a few years, it has been both championed and reviled in that short span of time. Atlanta’s Chris Vizzini liked the word so much he built a website, Gaymer.org, around it. Head over to GayGamer.net, though, and you’ll find a slew of people who are far from fans of the term.

David Edison, the site’s associate editor, counts himself among that crowd. “I’m not crazy about cutesy slang that incorporates the word gay into any rhyming syllable,” he says. A recent poll on the year-old site found that 34 percent of visitors agree with him (they’d like to stick with the old standby, gamer), while 27 percent prefer to call themselves gay gamers and 39 percent go with gaymer.

And I thought I had too much time on my hands ...

I'd love to know how long it took to make the following stop-motion video, which could easily be called "The *real* Paper Mario," or something clever like that.



(Via f*ckyeahfamicom.tumblr.com)

Guile's theme goes with everything

Don't believe me? Check out the following video, which incorporates the Street Fighter II character's theme song into a clip from Scooby-Doo:



Even better are these two clips (here and here), which incorporate Guile's theme song into scenes from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and The Lion King, respectively.

For more evidence that Guile's theme goes with everything, check out GuileThemeFitsAll's YouTube channel.

(Via neogaf.com)

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

'The Creation of Mario'

What do you get when you combine Michelangelo's "The Creation of Adam" with the man who created Mario, Shigeru Miyamoto? Well, if you're artist Eric Proctor, you get the following:



I'm not sure which of the following elements is my favorite, to tell you the truth: The inclusion of the gender-bending Birdo or the perfectly-placed leaf sprite stolen from Super Mario Bros. 3.

To see more of Proctor's work, check out his deviantart page.

(Via gonintendo.com)

Those were the days

I came across the following photo (shot by Taylor Bamrick) while perusing Flickr the other day, and it took me back to the so-called "good old days" when my friends and I would sit around and play the latest NES games for hours on end.



Sadly, I sold my NES many years ago. Sure, I can play plenty of the system's games on my Wii thanks to the Virtual Console, but it's not really the same experience, is it? (Especially since you can't play any of its Zapper-enabled games on Nintendo's latest console. Grrrr.)

Monday, June 28, 2010

Seth Green, eh?

On the one hand, I think the following commercial, which the folks at Nintendo of America are using to promote the soon-to-be-released Dragon Quest IX, is funny. Hilarious even.

On the other hand, I'm not so sure it's actually going to push American gamers to buy the Level-5-developed RPG.



What do you think?

See also: 'Let's play: Which box art is better? (Dragon Quest IX edition)'

LTTGIMV: The Go! Team's Milk Crisis

LTTGIMV = Late To The Game-Inspired Music Video, by the way. (Yeah, I'm not sure why that acronym hasn't caught on either.)

True story: I was completely oblivious to The Go! Team before this past weekend, when I perused a commenter's YouTube channel.

I can barely understand a word of the song ("Milk Crisis") that accompanies the following video, but who really cares when said backdrop features dancing apples, bears, flowers and trees?



See also: 'Sock It 2 Me'

Sunday, June 27, 2010

Teppei Okada tries his hand at Donkey Kong

Those of you who saw this post from a few days ago will remember that Okada is the professional violinist and music teacher who has made a name for himself by playing pitch-perfect renditions of various video game theme songs.

In the following video, for instance, he not only plays Donkey Kong's main theme and backing track, but plays the game's sound effects, too.



His take on Tennis (below) is even better, in a way.



See also: 'It's one thing to play a pitch-perfect rendition of the Super Mario Bros. theme song on the violin ...'