Oh no! It’s teh Rogers!

For the record Tim, I had originally heard of Rumble Roses from The Magic Box… but I will admit it was your E3 article that got me fully pumped for it. I mean, when I first glanced at the game description the concept didn’t fully register in my mind. Like, I saw it was an all female wrestling game and was starting to read more about it but I quickly got distracted looking at MGS3 screens or whatever. But then I read your E3 write-up and I was like… “wait?! that’s what it was about!?”

So yes, I will give credit where credit is due. Thank you Tim Rogers for throwing a metaphorical rock labeled “OMFG Rumble Roses” at my face. It’s given me something to get excited about other than waiting to die.

Now then, as Tim mentioned in his article, Hideo Kojima was talking to Tim about Rumble Roses and mentioned “The girls might be mad topless yo’.” And Tim was all like “No foolins!? Oh snap that’s off the hizzook!” And Hideo Kojima was all like “I know d00d! It’s gonna totally wr0ckz0r!” Then Shaquille O’ Neal walked in and was all like “Sup bitches!” and Tim and Kojima totally flipped out. High-fives were exchanged all around and everybody played “Shaq-Fu” until the sun came up.

In short, Kojima says there is a strong possibility of a topless mode. All I can say is “Why the hell not?” If you’re going to have this sexplosion of epic proportions a little nipple isn’t going to hurt anyone.

But this game is definitely blowing some minds. Even Greg Fischbach, president of Acclaim, was watching in shock and awe (“shock and awe” is a registered trademark of Sony Corporation all rights reserved). Remember, this is the president of fscking Acclaim, the same company that brought you hookers on bicycles and tasteless game advertisements on cemetery headstones. Tim says he took notes. I can’t say I’m surprised.

Also, Tim got personal with Tomonobu Itagaki at the show, and learned he is not fond of American women. He says “They don't understand men. They don't understand men one bit." I don’t know if Mr. Tomonobu had a bad experience with a hooker or what, but maybe he should lighten up. American women are great once you give them lots and lots of money and pretend you care about their feelings.

I’m going to hell.

For more on this, as well as THE FUTURE, check out Tim Rogers’ brilliant E3
report. Because Tim Rogers is keeping his finger on the pulse of the gaming industry.

And frankly, he’s doing a damn good job of it.

That’s the thing, previous games that promised full-on titillation just didn’t live up to expectations. DOA: XBV was surprisingly lackluster and BMX:XXX… well BMX:XXX was from Acclaim, let’s just leave it at that.

But what you say is true, Konami does not mind being explicitly blatant with what their game really is, a bunch of scantily clad chicks getting themselves into various suggestive wrestling positions. Personally, I love how Konami is being so up-front with Rumble Roses. Tecmo skirts around the issue so much, as if they’re trying to convince themselves that their shallow fighting series sells on anything other than sex appeal. That’s why Tecmo will never put nudity in a DOA game, because that’d just be admitting that the DOA games are nothing but sub-par fighting games that appeal to perverted gamers. For the love of god the DOA Xbox bundle in Japan comes with a body pillow. DO YOU PEOPLE KNOW WHAT A BODY PILLOW IS!? DO YOU?!

The fighting system sounds innovative though, especially the “humiliation gauge” whereas the more you make the other wrestler look stupid the more pissed-off she gets. As long as the gameplay is solid and the girls have some shred of personality, this game should be more than a simple boob fest. Personally though, I want to see some mini games.

And for the record, I would buy “Final Fantasy: Foxy Boxing.”

Yeah, I will admit that I lost a bit of interest when I found out the game was being developed by Yukes, the same Japanese company responsible for all the trash wrestling games I don’t play. Games like “Smack Down! Here Comes the Pain” (Here it comes! Look out!) But I also think this game might have a lot more going for it than other wrestling titles. First of all, since the game isn’t based on an actual wrestling property the designers won’t need to accurately model a mess of WWE wrestlers and all their signature moves. I mean, for a WWE game you have to include about forty odd characters or somebody’s going to get pissed that their favorite isn’t included. Plus there’s all the work that goes into making the characters move and act like their real life counterparts. But Rumble Roses can easily be limited to around 10 or 15 characters and still appeal to everyone’s tastes. And Yukes can spend more time tweaking the gameplay rather than making sure The Rock’s eyebrow does that little “what you talkin’ about?” thingy correctly. So far the graphics definitely look a lot better than other wrestling games out there, and it has the backing of Konami, the greatest video game company ever. Hell, even Hideo Kojima thinks it’s ten different shades of cool.

Right Tim?

But you’re right, this isn’t going to be game of the year, hell, it probably won’t even win wrestling game of the year. But it easily fits into any healthy young male’s video game collection, and as long as the game is fun I’m sure it will be a great party game. Four player mud wrestling extravaganzas? Yes please.

Hey, aside from some trash games like “Ephemeral Phantasia” and “Cy Girls,” Konami is probably the best game company out there. Yes you damned fanboys, better than Squaresoft. They constantly release solid titles and keep on pushing new innovative games out the door. And Hideo Kojima is their vice president, and we all know that Hideo Kojima will rock you like a proverbial hurricane.

Anyhow, the problem with DOA: XBV was that the gameplay itself was terrible, so Tecmo came away looking like they were a bunch of asshats selling a game based on nothing but sex appeal. If your polygonal boobs aren’t backed up by a decent game then you just look stupid - I mean, look at BMX:XXX. But as long as Konami can make sure this game has some half-way decent gameplay then it more than justifies the inclusion of boobies. In short, if your game is going to feature scantly clad women, it better not suck.

And god Silent Hill 4 looks amazing. I just wonder if it’ll stand up to the just-as-awesome-looking Resident Evil 4. Only time will tell…

Look Shrubey, I’m sorry Konami isn’t making “Rumble Richards” or whatever but you’re going to have to look somewhere else for sexy guys. Go play a football game or something.

You know, as I mentioned my household began receiving digital cable recently. This comes along with a slew of new channels for me to rot my mind with, including one called The N” which seems to be Nickelodeon for teenagers. Though most of the shows on “The N” are complete youth-ruining trash, I have to show love for a channel that plays re-runs of “The Adventures of Pete and Pete,” the greatest television show in the history of forever.

I’m dead serious, Pete and Pete rules.

Anyways, on this channel is a show called “Degrassi: The New Generation,” the latest installment in the long running series of Degrassi teen dramas. My thirteen year old sister watches this show religiously so I decided to check it out. In the episode I watched, apparently one of the kids had a crush on some girl named Liberty, and you see a small dream sequence followed by him waking up panting and looking under the covers in disgust.

Yes ladies and gentlemen, some teenage kid just had a nocturnal emission, on television.

If a kid can have spill his seed all over himself on a show aimed at kids, I see no reason why the video game industry can’t have some girls wrestle around. But the reason that this sort of thing sticks out in the video game world is because of what you said, the game industry is fairly devoid of cheap sex appeal. I mean, the game world has it’s share of sexy female characters, but rarely are they portrayed in an overly sexual manner. Maybe this game does cheapen the artistic side of the game industry, but it’s still no worse than anything on MTV. Sex will always be a part of our culture, but as long as Konami can keep this game’s handling of the topic relatively mature I don’t see any problem with it.

It is kind of obvious that Rumble Roses borders on sexist, but like DOA:XBV I’m sure the girls will have some sort of vague ghost of a background which will serve to make them seem more like characters rather than sex objects. Will it be tacked on? Most likely. But at least it’ll be there. Seriously though, the wrestling world would be interesting to me if these various surprise challenges and heated rivalries weren’t scripted. The Rock doesn’t really hate The Undertaker or whatever, so I just can’t get excited when they yell at each other on TV. Hopefully this game will have some sort of a story mode that actually intrigues me, because traditional wrestling is just too fake to make me feel anything for the characters. Hell, some sort of fancy text adventure would be awesome, choosing what to say to your opponent before the fight, or trying to get on a character’s good side and form an alliance. Yukes and Konami could make this game awesome if they wanted to.

And they should totally incorporate the Rez trance vibrator into this game somehow. It just feels right.

That’s the thing, all the people who complain about these games refuse to acknowledge that virtually everyone is intrigued by sex, and we shouldn’t fault a company for giving people what they’re going to seek out anyway. If you don’t like it just ignore it. There’re bigger problems in the world than a wrestling game.

And the worst part about that crossdressing Cloud cosplayer is that he seems to have no trouble picking up girls… or guys… oh god my eyes…they won’t stop burning!

Wait, I should’ve said that he has no trouble getting picked up by guys. See, because that guy dressed as Laguna is… oh screw it, I’m no good at puns.