There are, in the human mind, very few vital needs. Food. Shelter. Clothing. The beast with two backs. And, ever since we discovered we could make other people farm the food and kill the meat, and just pay them with other stuff to do it, we’ve been trying to satisfy those needs more fully, but with a new problem added in: boredom. So we spend a lot of time amusing ourselves too, which led to video games.
And, inevitably, games and sex met. This was not the glorious, light-from-the-heavens union we see in romance flicks. No, it was, and still is, the awkward, horribly embarrassing fumbling of that first time. And there’s no sign that gaming and doing it are going to get any better at the act of uniting, as witnessed by these five disasters.
1.
BMX XXX
We figured we’d start with the game that is the most infamous for looking at gaming demographics, looking at the jiggle physics engine, and deciding that it was going to be a jackpot: the one, the thankfully only, “BMX XXX”.
The first problem with “BMX XXX” is that it’s about as sexy as an ashtray with a loogie in it. Topless polygonal women, on bikes, poorly performing BMX stunts. Seriously. This is supposed to be arousing to people who don’t have a weird fetish why, again?
Secondly, the audience it was aimed at wasn’t allowed to play the game. Sure, they can swear it was aimed at adults, but it’s not. If adults want to have, ah, stimulating visual experiences, they have the Internet. They pay good money for the Internet, probably, and it in turn delivers them pretty much anything they want for free at ridiculously high speeds. So the only audience is horny teenagers, and not even all horny teenagers, just the teenagers not willing to lie about their age for the sake of seeing movie trailers.
Thirdly, the game was terrible. As in, the developers thought all they needed were boobs, and they’d sell millions upon millions of copies. Well, it didn’t QUITE work out that way. As in, at all. This game is probably still rotting on GameStop shelves as we speak. Even “Superman64” has sold better than this game.
And what’s sad is that we’re just getting started.
2.
The Later Leisure Suit Larry Franchise
How great the fall of Lawrence, he of the polyester one-piece suits. His first few games were a satire of the ’70s dating scene, with a nerd on the make who had to jump through insane numbers of hoops with a substantial amount of wit. Then, slowly, things just went straight down the chute.
The most recent Leisure Suit Larry games are actually really weird. They’re obviously aimed squarely at the kind of guy who doesn’t really play games all that much, unless it’s Halo. And more to the point, the franchise is aimed squarely at adults, you know, people who are actually supposed to click that “Yes I am over 18” link that all the teenagers click too on websites that we’re not supposed to refer to here. So all they have going for them is the humor. In fact, that was the entire appeal, an adventure game aimed squarely at adults that didn’t involve Ren Faire costumes.
And it’s not funny. It’s painfully not funny. It’s “Meet the Spartans” not funny. You sit there, baffled, wondering who told the writing team that they were cranking out anything other than a great argument for women never to touch them. What were they thinking?
3.
Sex Station 7
This image has nothing whatsoever to do with the cheesy animated porn first person shooter. It’s just the cleanest image that came up when we tried to Google Search this turkey. Seriously. Trust us. Do not Google this game’s title, and any retinal scarring/self-hatred is YOUR fault.
“Sex Station 7” claims to be two things: fun and arousing. It is one thing: neither. The idea is that you’re in a first person shooter game, and you’re trying to protect a bunch of women who run around in only panties from some genetic engineers. Or something.
Anyway, if you’ve seen a dirty movie, you know that these “women”, who resemble blow-up dolls more than anything else, are grateful. So grateful that they will, in fact, drop everything to have sex with you, even though they just escaped bare-naked through a combat zone. So you can watch two pieces of plastic engage in sex with poor hit detection. But at least they have dead eyes, just like real porn stars!
