While some of you knew about this long ago, many of you will be surprised (but not really) to learn that video games have finally decided to openly acknowledge their gayness. Good news, to be sure – they'd clearly been repressing it for a long, long...
While some of you knew about this long ago, many of you will be surprised (but not really) to learn that video games have finally decided to openly acknowledge their gayness. Good news, to be sure – they'd clearly been repressing it for a long, long time – but there's a problem. Now that they're out, they're making up for lost time. They're not content to just be gay. They're being super, super, astronomically gay: not demure, clandestine Anderson Cooper gay; not shirtless and fencing George Takei gay; not even zesty, mincing, owning-the-caricature Scott Thompson gay, but gay in a way that used to only exist in the stereotypes of 13-year-old-glue-huffin' heshers. Greased, ripped Rip Taylor on crantinis and amyl nitrate getting nailed by a rainbow gay. The proof? The upcoming
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European release of Muscle March.The gist is this: a variety of bandits have swiped the city's supply of bulk-up powder, and it's up to the muscliest, oiliest men (and man-like bears) in town to chase them down and get it back. For some reason, everyone is constantly posing, and when the leader of the pack passes through a wall, everyone following must pose in the same position to pass through. This being the Wii, that means that players must strike the poses themselves. In real life. Where they can be seen.
The visuals are what make it, though. Almost everything has a schizophrenic caricaturization to it – like it was designed for gay people by someone who only learned about gayness from, well, video gamers. And the only time before this that homosexuality was approached by a videogame was in Postal 2 – the Wikipedia entry for which used to contain the phrase, "The company defended the game by pointing out that the player does not have to kill gay characters and that the gays in the bar will fire back."Oh wait, no, wrong – I forgot about Cho Aniki.
In Cho Aniki, players control two bethonged musclemen, firing white hot energy out of holes on the top of their bald heads, in an effort to defeat a bodybuilding villain who has stolen their galaxy's protein. If you fail to collect enough power-ups on a level, one of the dudes will fall in love with the boss and leave you. Also, the graphics are handled by an acid-scorched, molested-as-a-child-by-William-S-Burroughs Terry Gilliam.
In short, Cho Aniki boiled homosexuality down to just its fuzziest, crowd-pleasingest aspects – loving muscles and ejaculating – and it was still rejected by the mainstream. The problem was that it tried to be gay at a time when video games just weren't ready to be gay. They were new in town, they had a lot of pressure to fit in, and they spent all their time with kids who just wouldn't have it. Also, another problem Cho Aniki had was that it was nightmarishly fucked up. But now, things are a bit more permissive – video games are free to admit that they're gay, and free to depict homosexuality openly, honestly, and accurately.
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