My PSM Video Game Girls Swimsuit Issue ranking is the gift which keeps on giving. Not only did this lead to me doing a deep-dive into the history of video game advertising and expose me to a forgotten era where sexy beach volleyball games were all the rage, but it’s also reminded me of some other strange trends in console gaming history. In particular, both of those articles hinted at the very sudden rise and fall of “adult” video games in the mid-2000s.
Now, to be clear, pornographic and sexy video games had existed for decades prior to the mid-2000s, but there’s some very important context to that statement that bears mentioning. First of all, these adult games were largely relegated to early PCs, which had no oversight and less mainstream appeal compared to consoles at the time. Secondly, a lot of these games were either unauthorized bootlegs or very low budget affairs with limited distribution, so you couldn’t just rent them from your local Blockbuster if you wanted to play them.
With that in mind, video game consoles in particular were viewed as childrens’ toys throughout the 80s and 90s. While there was a push for more violent and transgressive content in the PS1/N64 era, sex and nudity weren’t explored until the PS2/GameCube/Xbox era (and even then, not without controversy). The massive success of Grant Theft Auto III and its sequels really opened the floodgates for adult-oriented games in consoles. With this landmark success, publishers and developers were finally confident enough to acknowledge that most gamers were now in their 20s and 30s and, therefore, interested in mature subject matters. While most publishers would leverage this by exploring increasing levels of violence and mature themes, others decided that there was a different angle that could be exploited to stand out and market their games: sex. The aforementioned era of sexy beach volleyball games was an early, “safe” exploration of this theme, but these were fairly tame affairs, all things considered: lots of suggestive content, but no outright nudity or sex acts depicted. However, they would soon be followed-up by far more explicit titles which banked on promises of full-on nudity and explicit depictions of sex to sell their products.
So, what is the distinction between games that are “adult” and games with “sexy” marketing? For example, Fear Effect 2‘s ads make it look like it’s a goddamn lesbian porn game, but the game itself has no explicit content to speak of. Does it deserve to be considered a part of the “adult” game boom? I would argue no. In order to make it onto this list, the game itself has to be centered around sexy/adult content, to such a degree that removing it would severely impact the overall experience. For this reason, Death By Degrees (a game I’ve always mentally-associated with the sexy video game boom since the marketing entirely revolved around Nina Williams being hot) and BloodRayne (whose marketing was so sex-obsessed that they had a topless feature in Playboy!) do not make the list either, despite being fairly prominent “sexy” games of the mid-2000s. While sexiness is a part of those games’ identity, it has no real bearing on how they play.
Also, in case it wasn’t obvious, I’m using the term “adult” with heavy emphasis on the quotation marks around it: these “adult” games were very juvenile in their handling of explicit content. As a result, they were often more popular amongst teenagers who felt like they were witnessing forbidden content when they got ahold of these games.
Now, a couple final, quick notes before we get into the list:
- First of all, I’m not going to cover Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball or its sequels here. I’ve already discussed it here. And here. And here. And here (and more besides, but you get the point – it would be redundant for me to go over it again).
- Also, while it is extremely relevant to this discussion, I’m not going to go over BMX XXX. This is because I already did a whole bonus section about it in the aforementioned sexy beach volleyball article (which I definitely recommend reading if you have not!). BMX XXX was actually one of the first console games to bank its success entirely on the presence of adult content. However, it might have actually been too early, because its juvenile, tasteless handling of nudity and “mature” themes sparked a ton of controversy, which caused the game to get banned from stories and then bomb commercially and critically. If it had come out a few years later, it might have just been another one of “these” games and avoided half the controversy it stirred up… probably still would have bankrupted Acclaim though.
- Finally, God of War deserves a mention. It came out right in the middle of this sexy game revolution, was one of the first mainstream, successful, critically acclaimed games to feature nudity and sex, and marked a turning point in the acceptance of this kind of content within the industry. However, as you’d expect, the sex and nudity isn’t really the focus of God of War, but rather an element to try to sell the dark and edgy tone of the game. God of War would be just as good if it hadn’t featured sex and nudity, so while it doesn’t qualify for this list, its influence on adult content in video games cannot be understated.
With that established, let’s start with the first entry in the “adult” video game boom…
The Guy Game
| Console: PS2, Xbox |
| Release Date: August 30, 2004 |
| Developer: Topheavy Studios |
| Publisher: Gathering |
What is it?
This is one of the most notorious games of its console generation, up there with BMX XXX, Manhunt, and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. The story behind The Guy Game is wild. It was the brainchild of Jeff Spangenberg, a game producer and programmer who founded Iguana Entertainment (and created Turok!), was fired by Acclaim, and then founded Retro Studios (who developed goddamn Metroid Prime!). Months before Metroid Prime was scheduled to release, Nintendo forced Spangenberg out of the company, because he was a terrible boss by all accounts. The guy was never in the office, and he spent his time (and Nintendo’s money) buying expensive cars, inviting strippers to his house, and then filming them for his personal softcore porn website, Sinful Summer… which was being hosted on Retro Studios’ own servers. Suffice to say, Nintendo weren’t happy, so they bought out his shares of the company to get him the fuck out of there. Pissed off at Nintendo, he decided to use his buyout money to found Topheavy Studios and make his dream game, a game which would appeal to gamers just like Jeff: The Guy Game…
How does it play?
The Guy Game is just a trivia gameshow-style game. You pick one of twenty quizzes, then answer twelve general knowledge questions as fast as possible to get “money” (which basically just functions as your score; it doesn’t really matter how much money you get, you can’t use it to buy or unlock anything afterwards).
The twists to the standard trivia game formula are what make The Guy Game truly shitty though. Each question and answer is intercut with video footage of three or four “hotties” who are also being asked the same questions. In the first half of the quiz, you have to guess whether they get the question right. In the second half, you have to guess what answer the girl gives out of two options… As you may have noticed, this is a 50/50 guess either way. If you guess correctly, you get a small bonus (worth around 50% of your answer if you’re quick enough). If you guess wrong though? You lose the amount of money that you would have gained, which is a massive score penalty for a pure 50/50 guess that you could not possibly know the answer to. This would be annoying enough on its own, but your score on each question is tied to a “Flash-o-meter”, which you need to max out in order to uncensor the games’ nudity. If you max out your score on the trivia question and the girls’ answer, then you need to get nine out of twelve questions right to see any nudity. Let that sink in. If you get more than a couple of these questions wrong (or don’t even try to risk answering them), you won’t get to see any of this game’s “sexy” content, thereby defeating the entire purpose of the game. As a result, The Guy Game leaves you with two options:
- Play the game as intended: answer questions to the best of your ability, and then try to get lucky with your guesses. Odds are that this is going to go poorly and you won’t see any nudity, forcing you to replay the quiz now that you know what the answers are, and then go through the motions until you max out your flash-o-meter… AND THEN you would need to replay the quiz FOR A THIRD TIME, because you’ll still have missed out on any nudity from before the flash-o-meter was maxed out. Did I mention that each quiz is very slow and drawn out, taking around half an hour to complete? The game, as intended, is a fucking blue balls simulator.
- Or, if you’re just here for titties, you do the obvious thing: you look up the answers. Obviously this defeats the entirety of The Guy Game‘s “gameplay”, but it is slightly more palatable than the alternative. Still, going through the motions of playing this fucking quiz show to see some disappointing nudity is just not worth the tedium this game puts you through.
That’s not even the end of the gameplay though. Each quiz also has a minigame intermission where you can score some bonus points. These all have very juvenile names, but they boil down to a bunch of physics-based, ball-rolling activities (eg, beer pong). These are… functional, I guess, but they’re so superfluous that they give you the option to disable them in the menus and can be outright skipped. Hell, they don’t even count towards your flash-o-meter, so there’s literally no incentive to play them.
Finally, it’s worth mentioning that The Guy Game is intended to be a party game where you play against up to three other players simultaneously. With this in mind, some of the design decisions make a bit more sense. For example, in single-player, maxing out your money is kind of pointless outside of filling the flash-o-meter, but in multiplayer you’re actively competing for a high score against other people. The random swinginess of guessing what the girls’ answer will be could also be kind of funny when you’ve had a couple beers and illicit substances… but, then again, at that point you’re just getting horny with the boys, and isn’t that the start of the real Guy Game?
How does it look?
The Guy Game looks incredibly cheap. It’s basically just a bunch of basic blue and orange menus and, every once in a while, you’ll get a short, cheap-looking FMV sequence that was shot on-location during spring break with real, amateur girls. Its graphics are about as basic and functional as you could possibly get.
How sexy is it?
The Guy Game came out at the height of Girls Gone Wild’s popularity, so it is perhaps unsurprising that it is strongly aping that format. The bulk of this game’s nudity comes from young women on spring break who have been coerced into joining a trivia show where they compete for money and, for each question they get wrong, they have to flash a crowd of onlookers. There’s also a final challenge at the end where the girls are strongly coerced into taking their tops off in order to get an advantage (eg, having to jump rope uninterrupted for as long as possible; taking your top off starts you with a full one minute already on the clock).
As you’d expect, this is all very exploitative. These girls are all a bunch of amateurs, many of whom probably didn’t really understand what they were signing up for… and, honestly, it’s not all that arousing. Most of them are awkward and they aren’t really trying to be sexy or alluring. Also, by the very nature of this format, they’re literally just girls plucked off the beaches rather than professional models, actors or sex workers, so many of them are fairly plain-looking. Look, there are some very pretty women in this game and I’m not really trying to put anyone down here, but professionally-made media often casts from amongst the most attractive and appealing men and women available. In comparison, many of the girls here just look “normal”. It’s just another reason this game gives you to question why you’re not just going on the Internet instead for your spank material.
The other source of nudity in The Guy Game is that you have to pick an avatar to represent you at the start of the quiz… and of course this avatar is a goddamn stripper who removes more and more clothing the higher your score gets. Around two thirds of the way through the quiz, if you’re doing well, then she will be completely topless, and she’ll do a BMX XXX-style strip show at the end of the quiz for the winner. Unlike the girls in the FMVs, these avatars clearly are professional sex workers, but they’re all definitely a particular “type”: namely, they’re all rocking extremely fake-looking implants.
Also, if you know anything about The Guy Game, then you will have noticed that I have conspicuously failed to mention a very relevant aspect of this game’s notoriety: one of the girls who appears nude in the game was seventeen at the time of filming. She had lied to the producers and said that she was of age and Topheavy Studios did not properly vet the women they were exploiting for the game. The underaged girl also claims that she did not understand how the footage was going to be used, so there’s also some question about how this disclosure was handled. In any case, the courts decided that The Guy Game constituted child pornography and ordered all copies of the game be pulled from sale. For transparency’s sake, I did not play enough of the game to reach the section with the minor in question, but it’s something that definitely needs to be mentioned when trying to determine how “sexy” this game might be.
Oh, and this isn’t exactly “sexy”, but it’s worth mentioning: every single time you score points, the phallic arrow on the flash-o-meter gushes out a fountain of cum. I wish I was joking.
Who are the characters?
For a game about a bunch of random, amateur girls on spring break flashing the camera, there are a surprising number of “characters” in The Guy Game. Most obviously, there’s the host, Matt Sadler. He seems like he’s actually a pretty decent gameshow host and gets in some fun banter with the girls. Regardless, he is far more tolerable than Steve and Dick, the “colour commentary” who are basically just typical shock jock types (if there’s a dick or boob joke to be made, then by God they will make it happen). Then there’s also “Lucky Lacy”, who introduces each question with a handful of dumb lines which get repeated way too frequently. Oh, and then there’s the stripper avatars, all of whom have their designated stripper names.
What’s the verdict?
Suffice to say, The Guy Game sucks. That disdain doesn’t even come from anger about this game being exploitative either: for what it’s worth, the girls seem to be having a fun time (although the extent to which they realized what they were signing up for is debatable, and the fact that a minor ended up in the final product is insane). No, the issues with The Guy Game come down entirely to its extremely cheap overall feel, lack of engaging gameplay, and the idiotic way that it hinges everything on random guessing, which torpedoes any pretext of “sexiness” through utter tedium. I went through only five of the twenty quizzes in this game and it took me six fucking hours! For a twelve-question trivia game, it moves at a lethargic pace. Hell, it’s not even trying to be particularly funny either; most of the writing is dryer than Ben Shapiro’s wife. Even BMX XXX injected some (extremely obnoxious) humour in to try to give you something to latch onto. Guy Game, why are you so bad that you’re making me look back on BMX XXX positively???
Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude
| Console: PS2, Xbox, PC |
| Release Date: October 5, 2004 |
| Developer: High Voltage Software |
| Publisher: Vivendi Universal Games |
What is it?
Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude was obviously released in order to capitalize on the sudden interest in more “adult” games on consoles, but it did so with pedigree. Six Leisure Suit Larry games were released on MS-DOS between 1987 and 1996. They were all well-received and are considered cult classics of the adventure genre. However, by the mid-90s, the popularity of the adventure game genre had waned and the franchise went on an extended hiatus. During this time, publisher Sierra Entertainment would get bought out, twice. In this second acquisition with Vivendi-Universal, they announced that the Leisure Suit Larry franchise would be revived, with a new game entering production. However, series creator Al Lowe, who had been involved in the creation of all six prior games, would not be involved in this new sequel.
To be frank, I’ve never played a Leisure Suit Larry game before. I am aware that fans of the franchise consider Magna Cum Laude to be one of the worst games in the franchise, but it seems that this is more due to its deviations from the franchise’s established tone and formula, rather than objective measures of quality.* The game reviewed somewhat decently at the time, so I’m legitimately curious to see if it’s actually as bad as its reputation might suggest.
*Its sequel though, Box Office Bust? That one’s apparently utter garbage. However, it released well after the adult game boom had dried up and toned down the sex and nudity to be more in-line with the original Leisure Suit Larry games, so it doesn’t really qualify for this list.
How does it play?
Magna Cum Laude certainly takes inspiration from its old school adventure game roots. You’ll explore the comedic grounds of Walnut Log Community College and the surrounding area as Larry Lovage (nephew of franchise protagonist, Larry Laffer) tries to make his way onto the dating show, Swingles. While the game is now in full 3D, you’re still examining and interacting with various people and objects you come across. Classic adventure games would often require you to make correct dialogue choices or solve esoteric puzzles, but no… that’s all been stripped away here. Nearly everything you do (or attempt to do) in Magna Cum Laude is tied to a minigame, and you’re barred from proceeding until you can successfully complete them. This is what really differentiates Magna Cum Laude from its adventure game predecessors and makes it so contentious.
Unfortunately, for Magna Cum Laude, these minigames are just not very fun. At best, they’re kind of dull, but at worst they can be infuriating (often due to unfair difficulty, inconsistent registering of button inputs, lack of direction, or all of the above). Do we really need to sit through an arbitrary, piss-easy minigame every time we have a conversation with somebody? Do they think that making dialogue choices or solving puzzles was too old-school…? Oh, and there are more-than-ten-second loading screens before and after every minigame and scene transition, which add up to a considerable amount of waiting time during a playthrough.
Gameplay’s one thing, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t bother to mention the actual main point of Magna Cum Laude: the comedic writing. In this regard, Magna Cum Laude is clearly inspired by American Pie, as Larry goes through campus life getting into all manner of similarly-raunchy exploits. While I do like a good sex comedy (American Pie, Superbad, and EuroTrip are all hilarious), Magna Cum Laude is just kind of flaccid. The copious amounts of visual gags can be funny, but the actual writing, dialogue, performances, and comedic timing rarely landed for me, leading to a game that was more awkward than humorous. Suffice to say, that is a back-breaking issue for a game that’s leaning heavily on comedy to carry it over the finish line.
How does it look?
I’m a bit torn on Magna Cum Laude‘s graphics. On the one hand, the game has a very exaggerated, comedic, cartoony art style. Larry looks like a little gremlin; his character design is incongruent with everyone else in the game, but that works thematically, since he’s supposed to be this weirdo outsider on campus. The design of the campus is also appropriately hyperbolic and colourful, as you’d expect from a cartoonish teen sex comedy setting. While the environments and Larry’s character model definitely look dated, their art style keeps the game looking halfway decent at times.
However, there things fall down are in the female NPC character models which are just… not good. Like, don’t get me wrong, the male NPC character models aren’t great either, but the game does not shove them in your face like it does the ladies. These female NPCs are intended to be a bunch of cute, doe-eyed, bimbo dolls to oogle at (like the box art portrays them), but the textures on the character models are so low-res that they’re bordering on PS1-quality.
How sexy is it?
Magna Cum Laude is a bit of a weird case. On the one hand, it’s primarily aiming to be funny rather than sexy, so the unappealing character models, the pathetic horniness, the endless barrage of sex jokes, and obsession with objectifying barely-legal women can be chalked up to comedy. There’s just so much to talk about with how this game handles sex.
At the start of the game, Magna Cum Laude is more desperate and sex-obsessed than it is truly sexy. Larry will encounter (and lust after) all manner of buxom bimbos dotting campus, but they’re generally out of his league, not particularly interested in him, and aren’t really meant to be all that arousing. Most of your attempts to woo them will end in embarrassing mishaps that you’re not really supposed to find all that sexy.
Anyway, then you reach the library and find a character who will sell you the ability to view naked character models of women you have completed quest lines for. This same character will also sell the ability to replay their questline and see them strip down… Oh, and when you complete the game, you can earn the ability to make all named female NPCs appear naked at all times. It honestly felt kind of gross and disrespectful to just strip them down like this and completely objectify them. Like, say what you will about Dead or Alive Xtreme, but those games have always tried to straddle a line of taste and respect with its female characters (even if they do cross that line on occasion). By the late-to-endgame of Magna Cum Laude, the game can feel like a self-serving teenage boy’s fantasy… and not a particularly appealing one for that matter (especially since the nude textures are PS1-quality).
Click here if you really want to see this game’s nudity… (NSFW, OBVIOUSLY)
On top of all of this, you spend nearly half the game waiting for loading screens, and the developers seemed to realize this, because they have loaded these with eye-candy as well. These include multiple slides of every named female NPC stripping down suggestively (or even with outright nudity in some cases). Also, for some reason, they also include a bunch of images of real-life models dressed to look like the female NPCs…? This is already a baffling enough decision, but it gets worse, because they look absolutely nothing like the characters they’re supposed to represent.
That said, this is a truly raunchy game, easily on-par with any R-rated teen sex comedy that had been released by 2004. It easily earns Magna Cum Laude the title of the most “adult” game in this entire article. For example, there’s an early moment in the game where Larry tricks a shy, nerdy girl into getting fucked by her teddy bear with a strap-on dildo. There are also multiple, on-screen sex scenes which are fairly graphic by video game standards. In fact, the game originally received an AO rating from the ESRB, so they actually had to censor all genitals (including Larry’s lil’ micropenis) and cut some of the sex scenes in order to release with an M-rating. That said, there is an uncensored version of the game available on PC that restores all cut content. I didn’t play that version, but during my playthrough I discovered that you can remove some of the censorship using an Action Replay (or patch codes if you’re emulating) in order to see some more nudity… think “Barbie dolls with pubic hair” and you’re pretty much there.
Who are the characters?
Larry Lovage is an arrogant, selfish, manipulative, goblin-looking, desperate, little pervert. It gets to the point where he loops around to being kind of charming… but then he immediately loops right back around again to being a hateable asshole. As the protagonist of a teen sex comedy, this will suffice, and he doesn’t become insufferable like some of his contemporaries. The guy spends all his time obsessing about sex, but in a purely-selfish manner. He’ll comment on whether he thinks every woman he encounters is hot enough for him or not, as if he was some sort of supreme gentleman. He has a particular disdain for “fat chicks”, who he apparently campaigned to have expelled from campus some point in the past.
His attempts to woo ladies and get his rocks off all end up involving underhanded manipulation and violation of consent. You’ll get women drunk, lie, and peep on them in your desperate attempts to get laid (although at the very least he won’t commit unambiguous rape when given the opportunity to do so). I get that some of this is just par for the course with teen sex comedies, but I’m playing this game in 2025 and time has not been kind to ol’ Larry Lovage. Thankfully, most of his attempts to get laid end in comedic mishaps (assuming you don’t blow it earlier by failing the minigames). About the only positive trait you can pin on him is that the guy never, ever gives up, but it really needs to be reiterated that Larry is a dick-headed loser who deserves to fail in life (which is kind of the point).
What’s the verdict?
Magna Cum Laude feels like if American Pie was only about Stifler getting into antics. There’s a bit of fun to be had with that idea, but American Pie is so beloved because of how it balances the rauchy humour with some really heartfelt moments. If we didn’t have Jim, Oz, and Vicky to feel for, all of Stifler’s escapades would feel so hollow (hell, even Project X understood this… it just wasn’t enough to compensate for how much that movie sucks). Without a supporting cast to root for, having to watch Larry Lovage manipulate woman after woman just wears you down. Because of this, the times when he actually does manage to get laid feel entirely unearned (not to mention that it goes against his entire motivation of needing to get onto Swingles in order to get laid). I gave Magna Cum Laude a good eight hours of my life, but I was having such a bad time that I eventually had to drop it before reaching the credits. I did do some save importing to see some of the end-game content… but I honestly kind of wish I didn’t. Seeing some of Larry’s conquests and the “nude code” just left me feeling dirty. Call me a prude or whatever the fuck you want, but Magna Cum Laude was not my cup of tea.
Rumble Roses
| Console: PS2 |
| Release Date: November 9, 2004 |
| Developer: Konami & Yuke’s |
| Publisher: Konami |
What is it?
Rumble Roses was one of those “sexy” video game franchises that I would always catch my eye while browsing at the local Movie Gallery as a teenage evangelical. “One of those games,” I’d smugly think while rolling my eyes, before moving onto some WWII shooter or whatever. However, like Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball, these games would end up taking permanent residence in my memory. I think the reason for this these “lurid” games tease you with imagery suggesting that the sexy content on offer is extremely salacious, but the reality is often far less explicit than what is promised. As a result, I’ve always had a fascination with these kinds of games… are they really that hot?
Only one way to find out!
How does it play?
So, here’s the thing about Rumble Roses: the developer, Yuke’s, had been developing the mainline WWE games for years by this point. As a result, Rumble Roses is actually an extremely solid wrestling video game at its core, playing exactly as you’d expect it to. You’ve got your strikes, grapples, counters, submissions, and all sorts of flashy “lethal moves” that you can pull off to try to exhaust your opponent. It can also feel kind of slow and stiff (it is a wrestling game, after all), but I did not mind this too much. It gives Rumble Roses a more deliberate feel, compared to the fast-paced strategy and reflexes of a fighting game. You legitimately could remove the fanservice from Rumble Roses entirely and it would still be a fun enough game to stand out, which is more than you could say for many of the games we’ll be going over today.
However, Rumble Roses‘ biggest black mark against it is the lack of available modes. You’ve got exhibition (which allows you to select a custom 1v1 match), story mode… and that’s it.
In an attempt to make up for this lack of variety, Rumble Roses has an interesting “alter ego” mechanic. This allows you to turn each of the eleven characters into a “face” or a “heel” (basically, a good guy, or a bad guy). You can make “vows” (basically self-imposed challenges) before an exhibition match which are worth a certain amount of face/heel points. If you accomplish this vow’s requirement, you get the points and then, if you reach a certain threshold, that character will switch from face to heel, or vice versa. This results in a different character name, design, and outfit, and it changes their personality to boot! It’s a very fun and interesting system, which basically incentivizes you to play out your own storylines over time.
My only other major complaint would be that the game fucking cheats. When you perform a strike or a grab, the game will just randomly decide that your opponent is going to counter you now. It doesn’t feel like an AI reacting to your moves naturally, it feels like a 1/4 chance of any move you use being countered instantly. It doesn’t ruin the game’s feel (you’ll still absolutely dominate if you’re good), but it does feel very cheap when you’re trying to avoid taking any big hits.
How does it look?
Rumble Roses looks quite impressive for a PS2 game, with lovingly-detailed character models, lively stages and lighting effects, and some pretty wild (and painful-looking) animations. While I would say that the game looks pretty great overall, it’s not all sunshine and, er, roses. The facial animations look a bit odd at times, but most disappointingly, the game’s much-ballyhooed mud wrestling matches look terrible. The mud effect looks really bad, especially because it never makes the girls’ faces or hair dirty. I never really understood the appeal of mud wrestling, but Rumble Roses sure as hell didn’t do anything to elucidate me.
How sexy is it?
Within moments of booting up Rumble Roses, you will have no doubt that this game is selling itself entirely on fanservice. The opening cinematic goes on for nearly five minutes and spends so much time fixated on the girls’ assets that you’d be forgiven if you thought that this was a DOAX game. The game leans right into it at every opportunity: all of the girls are dressed in sexy attire and, MY GOD: I’m more of a boobs man, but I have to say that Rumble Roses has the most lovingly-sculpted asses this side of Metal Gear Solid. It’s straight-up distracting how good they look. This is thanks in part to a surprising amount of body diversity for a game of this ilk: while most sexy games will make all their girls busty and svelte, Rumble Roses‘ ladies all have well-defined muscles, wider proportions, and just a little bit of bulk to them. Take my main, Dixie Clements: she’s a beefcake with a Texan cowgirl accent, and a distractingly well-rendered ass. Even the more spritely women look like they could crush your skull just by flexing, which is a nice change of pace!
From a graphical presentation standpoint, Rumble Roses is already a very appealing game. However, from a gameplay perspective, there isn’t really much sexiness to write home about. Some of the moves you can pull off are vaguely suggestive, and the idea of two girls getting physical with each other has some general appeal to it, but the gameplay isn’t really exaggerating this any. It plays about as sexy as a normal wrestling game would, for the most part.
Who are the characters?
As a wrestling game, you know that Rumble Roses has the most colourful cast in this entire article, to the point where I’ll just let the developers themselves tell you how fun they are:
Each character also has their face/heel alter ego, which you swap between if you complete their story mode, or if you use the vow system during exhibition matches.
I should also probably mention that Rumble Roses has a pretty insane story. You’d think it would just be a simple wrestling tournament narrative, but no, you’ve got an evil conspiracy with a mad scientist that culminates with a fight with a goddamn robot. It’s ridiculous… but, then again, I unironically love the stupid narrative of the Dead or Alive games, so I can’t really fault Rumble Roses for this. In fact, having all these grandiose stakes and twists is actually super appropriate for a wrestling game!
What’s the verdict?
While I actually really enjoyed Rumble Roses, there’s something I’ve been dancing around here: there’s basically no reason to play this game over one of the mainline WWE games. It has barely any modes, a pretty limited roster, and no customization available. The only thing it has to stand out is its fanservice, but even the mainstream wrestling games were dabbling in that at the same time, so this isn’t even all that unique. Basically, you don’t really have a reason to play Rumble Roses, unless you are more interested in the fanservice than you are in the wrestling… in which case, fair enough.
Playboy: The Mansion
| Console: PS2, Xbox, PC |
| Release Date: January 25, 2005 |
| Developer: Cyberlore Studios |
| Publisher: Arush Entertainment & Groove Games (and Ubisoft, oddly enough, in Europe only) |
What is it?
With the push for adult content in mainstream video games, it’s perhaps no wonder that Playboy finally decided that it was time for them to stick their fingers into this growing medium. This also would have coincided with the slow decline of print media, so I imagine that Playboy were hoping to expand their audience to new mediums. The resulting game is as much a celebration of Playboy as a brand as it is an emulation of the Playboy “fantasy”.
How does it play?
Playboy: The Mansion is heavily inspired by The Sims. It looks and plays very similarly: you will spend a lot of time chatting with people, forming relationships, and managing “needs” meters to keep everyone happy. The social side of the game is very simple: characters’ meters will show whether they desire romance, casual conversation, or business conversation, and their mood is also influenced by a need for refreshment, comfort, and intellectual stimulation. These desires are very simple to manipulate, which makes the social aspect of the game fairly easy. At one point, a celebrity was furious at me because I banged his girlfriend multiple times. I threw out a couple apologies and, after a minute or two of this, we were suddenly great friends, he was performing interviews for me, and I was still banging his girlfriend.
Also similarly to The Sims, characters’ looks and outfits can be customized to your heart’s content (and you have a ton of options to pick from!). You also get to customize, decorate, and furnish the in-game mansion as you see fit. You’ve even got callbacks to the most broken aspects of the first Sims game: you can sell the mansion’s stairs and doors, which traps NPCs from leaving the mansion, and even potentially softlock yourself if you don’t have the money to replace them.
However, the big thing which makes Playboy: The Mansion stand out compared to The Sims is that there is a tycoon-style business sim overlaid on top of everything. This actually forms the meat of the gameplay, as you need to manage the publication of each issue of Playboy. In order to do this, you need to hire journalists, photographers, and playmates to provide content for each issue. However, just hiring people isn’t enough, because you will need to network with various celebrities in order to get cover photos, interviews, and essays in order to fill out the necessary content for each issue. This ties back into the social gameplay, as celebrities will not visit the mansion very often on their own. Instead, you need to throw big parties in order to form relationships with these celebrities and convince them to contribute to the magazine.
The business management aspects of the game are more complex than I was expecting, and there is a great deal of fun in getting all the pieces of an issue together and then putting it out to publication. You can only ask a celebrity to contribute a cover photo, interview, and essay once each (and only female celebrities can provide cover photos), so you’re incentivized to network broadly as much as possible. In addition, your playmates can only provide one centerfold for you, but they will often be upgraded to celebrities afterwards and can provide other contributions as a result. As you interact more with the games’ systems, you’ll also start to tailor each issue towards the publics’ shifting interests in order to maximize your returns and fame.
All that said, this gameplay loop does become very repetitive after a couple hours, with the only real incentives to keep playing being to complete in-game missions, and earn unlockable items, outfits, and locations. By the time I’d put out seven issues or so, I was already getting very bored with the repetitive loop. The only thing that kept me sticking around was that, after twelve issues, you get to declare your “playmate of the year”. It was kind of cool to go back through your accomplishments and decide which month’s playmate was your favourite, but it was ultimately rather unceremonious, and the idea of working towards another year of busywork made my soul leave my body. Suffice to say, I did not see things through to the credits.
How does it look?
Playboy: The Mansion has a very cartoonish, exaggerated art style. Given the limits of technology in 2005, this was probably the right call… but even then, the game does not look particularly great. Character animations are uncanny and often go on for far too long. Thankfully, there is a fast-forward button which makes this more tolerable.
The camera is also a pain in the ass: if you zoom in to what I’d consider a reasonable level, it will often clip into objects, forcing you to push out to a bird’s eye view more often than you’d like. This can be alleviated somewhat by making the mansion’s walls invisible, but it does not help when you go into photography mode and discover that nearby objects are blocking your perfect angle…
How sexy is it?
Unlike most of the “sexy” games from this era, Playboy: The Mansion allows you to see boobies immediately, easily, and on-demand. Right at the very start of the game, you can go up to your playmates and choose what they will wear. There are a ton of options available, including several topless outfits. These polygonal boobs are often ridiculously gargantuan, in part because of the cartoonish, exaggerated art style.
As you would expect, this game also has on-screen sex scenes, although these are not particularly sexy. You basically just get a short, looping animation of a girl dancing and then riding you for about two seconds before she finishes. As you would expect, the characters are still in their underwear the whole time as well, so it looks more goofy than arousing.
The game also has a “cheats” menu where you can spend reward points earned during gameplay. Included amongst these options are “implants” and “ridiculously large implants”. These are both misnomers though, because even the standard implants cheat is insane looking. Thankfully, you can toggle these on-and-off as desired, but they look so fucking stupid that I would only recommend them for the sake of comedy (speaking of which, they can be combined with “big head mode” for maximum cartoon buffoonery). If that’s too silly for you, you can also buy archive photos of Playboy covers and centerfolds.
Look, I know you want to see what the ridiculously large implants look like. I did too, I get it. Click here to find out. NSFW, obviously.
Those, apparently, are normal implants. Here’s what this game considers “ridiculously large”:
In my opinion, the “sexiest” aspect of Playboy: The Mansion is the photography suite. For one thing, the character models are of a much higher fidelity here than they are in the rest of the game, so they’re actually approaching what you could call “attractive”. You’ll also have to engage with the photography system on a regular basis in order to set that month’s cover image and centerfold. Once you have chosen your celebrity or playmate, you can dress them up however you want (with every single outfit also having a “topless” option, naturally). While you do get to move the camera around and zoom as desired, you have no control over how your subject poses. Instead, they will go through the exact same preset series of animations every single time. This is particularly annoying, as it means that nearly every photo you take will look similar to ones you have previously taken, unless you’re willing to wait a long time for some new pose to show up. There is a little bit of variety available if the subject decides to interact with a nearby object (eg, lying on a nearby couch), but then they’ll just go through a preset animation for that object, so you’ll be in the same problem again before long. The images you take will actually show-up in your published issues of Playboy in-game, albeit in incredibly low-res fashion. This suite is very primitive by modern photo-mode standards, but for a 2005 game it’s a pretty cool feature.
Unfortunately, the biggest hurdle that Playboy: The Mansion holds between you and your erection is that the balance between business sim and sexy game is way off. Like, this game has a whole relationship system that ends with sex, but there’s not really much reason to ever bother with it, other than the novelty of it. It just wastes time when you have more important things to do, and traps you into some lengthy animation loops that aren’t even all that sexy. Unlike The Sims, where characters can get rewarded if they desire sex, there’s no incentive to even have it in Playboy: The Mansion, which is wild for a game that’s supposedly all about sex. I very quickly got to a point where I’d chat characters up just enough to get them to agree to do a cover shoot/essay/interview, and then moved on to the next NPC so I could get that month’s issue done.
As a gentlemans’ lifestyle brand, Playboy has always pushed for a “classy” and “tasteful” tone, but in my opinion Playboy: The Mansion doesn’t really achieve that. I’ve been struggling to find a way to properly describe how it handles its “sexy” content (eg, Outlaw Volleyball and BMX XXX were trashy, The Guy Game is sleazy, Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude is desperately horny and juvenile, etc). On the one hand, the ridiculously gargantuan boobs at every turn and the way that everything is just saturated in sexual imagery comes across as fairly juvenile. On the other hand, the sheer, business-like way in which it incentivizes you to just ignore all the titillation going on around you is just… weirdly pedestrian. I’m going to settle on “lurid”, because there’s just too much in-your-face sex and nudity for me to call it anything else, but goddamn does this game leave such a weird impression.
Who are the characters?
You play as Hugh Hefner himself in this game, as you work to build the Playboy empire from the ground up. Perhaps more notable though is this game’s plethora of surprising celebrity cameos and real-life playmates. I didn’t get to see everyone in my playthrough, but notable names included Carmen Electra, Jose Canseco, and the entire lineup for Smile Empty Soul (most notably including infamous IC2S regular, Sean Danielson). Apparently you can also encounter Andrew W.K., God’s Not Dead 2‘s Melissa Joan Hart, and fucking Uncle Cracker…? It’s a strange lineup, and while you can’t get these public figures to do anything raunchy with you, it’s still pretty funny to be throwing a party and invite motherfucking Sean Danielson to visit.
On top of all this, the Playboy brand is basically treated as a character in-and-of itself in this game. Every loading screen will give you bits of history and quotes from the magazine, you can unlock the aforementioned covers and pictorials, and there’s all sorts of branded items available in-game. It almost makes Playboy: The Mansion feel like a digital history lesson, although I can’t help but feel like it’s a bit cynical: this game’s release would have coincided with the decline of magazines as an entertainment medium, so it feels like an attempt to revitalize interest in the brand.
What’s the verdict?
I actually kind of enjoyed Playboy: The Mansion. The business management gameplay is enjoyable, it feels good to personally bring an issue over the finish line, and it’s cool to see the photos that you took show up in-game. That said, the game really fails as a “sexy” game, with a lot of the more explicit content feeling entirely superfluous. It leaves the game in this weird in-between state, where you’ve got all these huge-breasted women walking about, but they aren’t really what you’re focused on, unlike nearly every other “sexy” game. And then, when the business management aspects wear thing, what’s really left to keep you playing? I dropped Playboy: The Mansion after about six hours, but I was already very bored by that point and only really playing to see what would happen when I picked playmate of the year. The answer: basically nothing. If I had forced myself to try to complete all the missions, I might have really grown to hate Playboy: The Mansion, but I do think that those first few hours are legitimately worth playing through if you’re interested.
7 Sins
| Console: PS2, PC |
| Release Date: May 13, 2005 |
| Developer: Monte Cristo |
| Publisher: Monte Cristo & Digital Jesters |
What is it?
I had never heard of this game until I started researching for this article, and there’s a good reason for that: 7 Sins only released in European markets via C-tier French publisher/developer Monte Cristo. The game came and went with very little fanfare and, considering that Monte Cristo declared bankruptcy a couple years later, it probably didn’t do all that well for them. I couldn’t even find any interesting information about its development or release: it’s just another one of those games that no one ever heard of and which were quickly forgotten.
So here I am, all these years later, looking up games that released around 2005 which had strong sexual content and 7 Sins comes up. I look it up: “7 Sins is a life simulation video game where the player must get to the top of the social ladder and make decisions related to the seven deadly sins.” Sounds… kinda interesting, I guess?
Guys… I was in no way prepared for the insanity that this game throws at you.
How does it play?
The closest analogue to 7 Sins would have to be The Sims, but this isn’t a simple porn knock-off like Singles: Flirt Up Your Life*, as 7 Sins has plenty of twists which differentiate it. For one thing, you only get to play as a single, pre-made character. You are tasked to reach a score threshold as you play through a series of open-ended levels, making your way from a lowly salesman to the kingpin of Apple City. You’ll have to perform well in various minigames in order to successfully complete many of the game’s available actions**. I’ll go over some of these minigames later, but they are all extremely simple (eg, press five buttons in sequence as fast as possible, rotate the analog sticks precisely, trace a line, etc) and none of them are any fun. There are also loading screens before and after every one of these games, which makes their frequent interruption of the gameplay all the more irritating. Finally, the controls in some of these minigames are very fickle (especially the line tracing and eating minigames), which makes them particularly frustrating to play.
The other big twist on The Sims‘ formula is that, instead of managing a bunch of menial tasks, you instead only have to manage your character’s libido, stress, and anger. As you interact with the world and the characters inhabiting it, three meters corresponding to these emotions will begin to fill. If any one of them fills up to the maximum, then your character snaps: if they’re stressed, they have a panic attack and run away. If they’re angry, they’ll put hands on the nearest person and then escape. If they’re too horny… they fucking dry hump the nearest person and then flee the scene, what the fuck! Suffice to say, you do not want to have any of these meters to fill… but that is where 7 Sins gets truly unhinged.
In order to reduce the three meters, you need to perform an action corresponding with that emotion and give yourself some release. For stress, you may choose to wash the dishes or try some fancy perfume on (basically, do some self-care). That’s simple enough, but for anger things get substantially more insane. You can commit acts of theft or vandalism, swear at passers-by, punch your boss in the face, beat up a gimp… or you can piss on bugs!?? This is performed through an actual minigame where you control your stream of piss and snipe bugs in the toilet or houseplants (complete with a fucking “HEADSHOT!” pop-up). That’s pretty minor though compared to the goddamn fucking animal abuse minigame, where-in your character fantasizes about killing a bunch of birds, cats, and bunnies to sate their anger.
Libido is, of course, the most well-developed and jaw-dropping of all of these meters. On the lower end of things, you can stare at womens’ boobs (there’s even a fucking minigame where you need to keep your eyes trained on her tits). Why this would make you less horny is anyone’s guess, but such are the ways of 7 Deadly Sins. Stepping up from that, you can upskirt women, peep on them in the changing room, or just straight-up grope everyone around you. And then, of course, there’s full-on sex acts, which plays out in the background while you complete a variety of minigames meant to abstractly represent your horizontal tango. I was legitimately shocked that there was a game released on PS2 that was this explicit, especially since it would have come out around the same time that “Hot Coffee” was occurring.
In addition to this, your actions will generally relate to one of the seven deadly sins. If you sin too much, you will be unable to sin again until you atone for this through some sort of minor good deed. It’s a pretty strange system, since you can atone in mere seconds through some very simple actions, so it only really acts as a bit of tedium to interrupt the game’s flow.
Most of the game revolves around speaking to various characters in the levels and increasing your relationship with them. This is done by selecting dialogue options, many of which have a corresponding “type” symbol (eg, business-minded, philosophical, anxious, jokey, etc). If that type appeals to the character, then your relationship can increase to the next level and you’ll get more dialogue options. Of course, this also is the primary means by which you, er, come to fuck damn-near everybody in sight.
And that’s pretty much 7 Sins. You just repeat dialogue options until you max out your relationship with a character and then have lots of sex. Sure, sometimes there will be another goal on top of that, but maxing out your relationships will always facilitate that goal (eg, in the first level you need to get a lot of money, and the easiest way to do that is to get a lover and then convince them to buy a bunch of crap from you). Suffice to say, the gameplay loop gets repetitive fast, and the constant interruptions to do minigames and purge your emotion meters get really annoying.
*I’m not going to cover Singles in this article, because 1) it was PC exclusive and 2) it was always intended to be porn, rather than an “adult” game like everything else I’m covering here.
**Man, what was it with this early-2000s trend of relegating the bulk of gameplay to a series of minigames?
How does it look?
A sexy game that released on the PS2 is always going to struggle to be arousing, but this game’s graphics are sub-par even by PS2 standards. Character models are ugly and unappealing and, since they are going for a fairly realistic art style, they can’t even fall back on stylization for some appeal. It’s not the worst-looking game in this article… but it’s not far off.
How sexy is it?
Despite claiming to be about all seven deadly sins, so much of 7 Sins revolves around sex (and the various ways to have it), that it’s about 95% of the way to being a full-on porn game. The game operates on porn logic, with nearly every objective being resolved by fucking some other character. However, 7 Sins doesn’t really feel like a porn game for one massive reason: there’s no actual nudity.* Sure, the game will let you fuck nearly every character (men and women alike) in several different sex positions and locations, and you can engage in BDSM and other kinks… but you do this all while partially (or even fully) clothed. For a game that depicts on-screen sex acts, it makes the game’s sexual content feel a lot more awkward. Add in 7 Sins‘ poor graphics, and this game struggles to be arousing at all.
Even if that’s not factored in, sexy isn’t really the word for 7 Sins – it’s just straight-up sleazy. Everything your character does is scummy, selfish, and hedonistic. In every single sexual scenario we go through, we know that our character is lying, using the women for self-satisfaction so he can quickly discard them, or manipulating them so that he can exploit them later (including filming sex tapes non-consensually so you can sell them to become famous, or using love potions to remove womens’ inhibitions). This goes doubly-so if you play your character as a sexual assaulting maniac. Sure, if you grope someone who isn’t into it, your relationship takes a major hit and your anger meter will increase, but these are temporary penalties at most and they don’t really matter if you weren’t planning on forming a relationship with that character anyway. As a result, you effectively have no true consequence to fucking sexual assault… y’know, unless you, the player, have some goddamn morals.
*Actually, there is some nudity… sort of. During my playthrough, I was pretty surprised when one of my lovers stripped down into see-through lingerie. There are a few women you can romance in the game who will wear this sort of negligee, but they are few and far between. To be honest, this is close enough to outright nudity that it makes it even more bizarre that they didn’t bother to go that far throughout the rest of the game. Also… goddammit, I’ve never needed to have this many footnotes when discussing a game, but there’s so much ridiculous shit in 7 Sins that I just can’t help but go onto long-winded tangents which would interrupt the flow of the article if I didn’t break it all up like this.
Who are the characters?
There are over one hundred NPCs in this game, all with their own preferences, personalities, and designs, so I can’t really go over them all. There are a couple of recurring characters, but even then, they’re ultimately just stepping stones on your journey to the top of the social ladder, so we’ll focus instead on our protagonist. Your unnamed main character is a smarmy douchebag who uses and abuses with utter abandon. He has zero qualms about doing anything, no matter how immoral, if it will bring him some sort of pleasure.
I’m also not sure exactly how intentional this is, but he’s also clearly, severely mentally ill. Who in their right mind gets so horny that they just start dry humping people and then run away crying? Or gets so mad that he has to whip his dick out in the middle of a store to go piss in the houseplants? Or just grabs womens’ boobs because he can’t control himself, like a living embodiment of the pervert Pikachu meme? Imagine if this was real-life and you were watching this guy acting all smarmy and then suddenly freaking out and fleeing the scene as tears stream down his face. It’s straight-up laughable.
Of course, the main character is also a goddamn psychopath. If the lies, manipulation, and selfish behaviour didn’t make that obvious, the fantasizing about animal abuse should make that undeniable. The guy reminds me of Lou Bloom from Nightcrawler, if he was somehow even more slimy.
That said, you get some hints of depth towards the end of the game. The entire final level is a dream where, after “winning” at life, the main character is still unsatisfied. He dreams about people he encountered along the way not respecting him, so he spitefully and retributively humiliates them in his dreams. Naturally, the final part of this dream is a fantasy world where every conventionally attractive female character in the game is his personal sex slave. The fact that he’s gotten everything he wanted, but still is so insecure that he needs to dream up enemies and crush them hints that the main character is ultimately a rather pathetic person at the end of the day.
What’s the verdict?
Look, I’ve just spent several paragraphs going on about how unhinged, ridiculous, tasteless, and sleazy 7 Sins is… but, in spite of that, I kind of enjoyed it. For most of the games on this list, I played enough to get a concrete idea of the game and what it’s all about, but I just had no desire to keep playing for long. For 7 Sins though? I spent seventeen hours playing this game from start to finish and had a pretty good time doing it. 7 Sins might be a worse-made game than Playboy: The Mansion from an objective standpoint, but I sure as hell had more fun with it.
To 7 Sins‘ credit, it’s got that quality that makes The Sims, Civilization, Minecraft, and Hitman so great: thanks to the open-ended level design, you get to set little goals for yourself and then accomplish them one-by-one. Each level is inhabited by far more characters than you actually need to interact with in order to accomplish your objectives. As a result, you can choose how much or how little you want to get to know these characters and uncover their secrets. And, of course, you can just act like an unhinged dickhead to your heart’s content, but the cartoonish, over-the-top tone keeps it from getting too unpleasant (although your mileage may vary on that point).
7 Sins is somewhat poorly designed and very repetitive, so I struggle to say that it’s a good game by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s so uniquely outrageous that I actually wanted to keep playing to see what would happen next. If that’s not a point in this game’s favour, then I don’t know what is.*
*I should probably caveat this by saying that I played this game with save states, essentially save-scumming dialogue choices, keeping my emotion meters from maxing out, and ensuring that I passed nearly every minigame. If you play the game “as intended” so that you’re guessing every dialogue choice, dealing with your character freaking out all the time, and having to repeat failed minigames over and over, this game would be SIGNIFICANTLY more tedious and frustrating. I’m not going to dock the game for things that modern technology has rectified, but if you bother to check 7 Sins out, I STRONGLY recommend that you play the game this way. This goes doubly-so for the final level, where you run a minigame gauntlet which could be borderline-impossible to complete without cheating.
Rumble Roses XX
| Console: Xbox 360 |
| Release Date: March 28, 2006 |
| Developer: Yuke’s |
| Publisher: Konami |
What is it?
While the first game was a PS2 exclusive, this sequel to the previously-covered Rumble Roses makes the jump to the Xbox 360. It attempts to correct its predecessor’s criticisms, while doubling-down on the fanservice to stand out better from other wrestling games. How would it fare? Read on to find out…
How does it play?
Unlike most sports games, Rumble Roses XX is not an iterative, bare-bones sequel: there have been some pretty substantial changes made to the formula, for better and for worse.
On the positive end of things, XX has addressed the main criticism of the previous game and added a bunch of new game modes. This substantially increases the amount of variety available to you. You can now do a single 1v1 match, tag matches (!!!), 1v2, 1v3, and a four player royal, plus a couple of more unique game modes: street fight and queen’s match. Street fight essentially turns Rumble Roses XX into a small arena fighter, with health bars and the winner decided by best of three rounds. The mechanics of Rumble Roses XX aren’t really suited for this, so it doesn’t exactly make for a great fighting game… but, dammit, I’ll be honest, I kind of prefer the more fast-paced gameplay that street fight mode delivers compared to the more drawn-out wrestling gameplay. As for queen’s match, this is basically a standard 1v1 match, but you make a dare at the start and the loser will need to perform the dare at the end of the match (which plays out in a post-match cutscene or minigame).
However, there is a caveat to all of this: the scripted story mode is now completely removed. Sure, the first game had a really stupid story, but it was enjoyable and its absence here is definitely felt. In its place, there are a few preset, “ranked” matches that you can perform in to create your own storylines, but this is nowhere near as interesting or rewarding without the interstitial cutscenes to establish the characters’ relationships.
The saucy “XX” in the title alludes to this game’s new tag mode, which is a welcome addition. This mode features XX moves, which is basically a double “lethal move” performed by both tag characters. If you both have at least one killer/lethal move point available, then you can perform the devastating attack and have a higher chance of getting a successful pin off.
Unfortunately, Rumble Roses XX has a very significant flaw: the wrestling gameplay feels noticeably worse than its predecessor in multiple ways. First of all, hits have significantly less impact when they land, making the moment to moment bouts feel less satisfying. The controls also feel stiffer, more finnicky, and more awkward. Perhaps most frustratingly, counters have gotten much harder for you to pull off, but the AI will still automatically counter you just as much as they did in the first game. Seriously, at one point, I launched an opponent into the air and went for a second strike to hit them as they landed, but the second they hit the ground, they countered my attack, which would have been impossible for you to do. It’s fucking bullshit, especially because all counters now increase your humiliation meter and leave you open to a devastating H-finisher. Oh, and on top of all of this, you need to mash all of the face buttons harder and faster than you did in the first game in order to escape submissions and pins, which legitimately started to make my hands hurt before long.
How does it look?
Thanks to the additional horsepower provided by the Xbox 360, Rumble Roses XX looks way better than the first game. The character models are of a much higher fidelity and the arena stages really come to life with all the additional lighting effects and pyrotechnics that they can throw at you. That said, in hindsight, this does very much look like an early Xbox 360-era game: it looks pretty good overall, but it’s definitely rough and not that impressive compared to many of the Xbox 360 games that would come out after it, whereas the first game was quite impressive by PS2 standards.
How sexy is it?
So the “XX” in the title is alluding to the new tag team feature, but we all know that it’s actually intended to be salacious. In that regard, XX is a step up from its predecessor, as it leans harder into the fanservice. This manifests in a number of different ways.
First of all, there’s a new photo mode, where you can choose to photograph a single character or a duo, dress them up, and then pose for photos that you can save to your Xbox HDD. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: photo modes are always going to make your game sexier, especially for a game like this that’s showing off how good the graphics have gotten in the generational leap.
XX has also added more character customization. You can now change your character’s outfit, with a few alternate colours available for each style (and, of course, you’ve got bikinis unlocked from the very start of the game if you’re wanting maximal skin exposure). Additional outfits can be unlocked and purchased through gameplay.
If you’re looking for some kink, XX also puts more of an emphasis on humiliation compared to the first game. There are more actions which will trigger humiliation, so your bar fills much faster now. When this fills, the camera zooms really close in on the character as they suddenly freak out and act embarrassed in comical fashion. The queen’s match dares also play into this shame kink, as you can force your opponent (or yourself) to do some sort of mildly-embarrassing task for your amusement.
…unfortunately, all of this sexiness is completely invalidated because they nerfed Dixie’s ass into oblivion, what the actual fuck, game!?!! I am not fucking kidding, I am dead serious when I say this: I am legitimately angry right now. Dixie used to have an ass you needed two hands for, but they made it practically flat in XX. This is a fucking Hague-tier travesty, and single-handedly makes me prefer the first game over XX.
Who are the characters?
Rumble Roses XX brings back all the characters from the first game, including their alter egos… and that’s about it. Surprisingly, there are no new characters or redesigned outfits, as far as XX‘s cast is concerned this might as well just be an HD remaster.
However, XX does introduce a character creator, which is a cool feature, but it is extremely limited and disappointing overall. You have very few preset faces, hairstyles, colours, and outfits to choose from, so your character is unlikely to feel like “yours”. This does bring in a bit of an RPG system where your actions can increase your character’s muscle tone, which is sort of interesting if you’re willing to put in the time and effort. I was pretty excited about the character creator, but it was so underwhelming that I immediately just went back to the established characters.
What’s the verdict?
As much as I want to love Rumble Roses XX, it feel like a lateral step from the first game at best. While the new modes and customization options are nice, the worse-feeling wrestling is such a major issue that I can’t ignore it. Like I said before, you’re probably not playing Rumble Roses for the wrestling gameplay, so this may be a moot point for some of you, but I definitely enjoyed myself more playing the first game. Even then, I might have still given it a slight edge, but Dixie’s ass legitimately pissed me off so much that the first game is better, hands-down.
Pocket Pool
| Console: PSP |
| Release Date: March 23, 2007 |
| Developer: Hyper-Devbox |
| Publisher: Conspiracy Entertainment & Eidos |
What is it?
By 2007, the sexy game boom was well and truly over. In spite of this, developer Hyper-Devbox still thought that there was enough gas in the tank to give it another shot. Trying to find some way to market their handheld billiards game, somebody came to the exact same conclusion as the folks at Acclaim when BMX XXX was pitched: just add boobs. While they had initially tried to secure a license with Girls Gone Wild, this never came to fruition, so instead we got this: a random, M-rated pool game on the PSP.
Since there’s scant little to even talk about with this game, let’s take a look at Hyper-Devbox. Unlike BMX XXX, this game at least did not cause them to go bankrupt. In spite of that, it doesn’t seem like they have been doing all that well either. The studio has since put out a swathe of phone games and crypto bullshit. Better than leaving your developers homeless though, I guess…? Their website doesn’t even mention Pocket Pool either, so make of that what you will.
Oh, and in case you look into this game further, I’m pretty sure it is completely unrelated to a Switch game that’s also named Pocket Pool.
How does it play?
It’s a billiards simulation, and it plays how you’d expect a billiards sim to play… I’m not sure how else to describe this. You’ve got lots of different game modes in case you’re very specific about how you like to rack ’em up. I guess that it’s hard to translate how hard you want to hit the ball into a digital medium, and you can’t really do any fancy trick shots, but I don’t really have any major complaints about how Pocket Pool plays. It’s entirely serviceable.
How does it look?
Again… it’s a billiards game on PSP. It looks acceptable, considering the hardware.
How sexy is it?
Despite what the cover image promises, you do not get to oogle hot ladies as they line up their shot. Instead, the “sexy” content is entirely relegated to window-dressing and unlockables. You can have an image of a sexy underwear lady plastered onto the billiard table and there might be a poster of a model in the background of some stages. Other than that, you can slowly unlock over one hundred and fifty images of semi-nude models by winning matches. These images are rather tasteful overall, but they’re disappointing considering that they earned the game a full-on M-rating. I’m talking tame, softcore, teenager-appropriate images that wouldn’t be out of place a spicy underwear ad, aside from a handful of images with nipples visible through see-through tops. If you’re here for sexy content, then Pocket Pool is definitely not worth the asking price.
Since we’re really having to stretch to find anything sexy in Pocket Pool, I’ll also mention that the game has a bunch of silly innuendos when you’re trash-talking an opponent, a few of which got a laugh out of me due to the bad voice acting and writing:
Get ready to go down!
Do you even know how to handle a stick?
Sometimes it’s not good to suck!
Who are the characters?
Pocket Pool puts in a token attempt to have some “characters”, which are basically just JPEG avatars that show up when it’s your turn to play. What makes this particularly funny to me though is that there are several male options, all of whom look like a bunch of out-of-fashion, douchey nobodies. Like, who buys Pocket Pool, but is then too insecure about the idea of “playing as a chick”…?
What’s the verdict?
The game I played the least by far for this whole article was Pocket Pool. There’s just not a whole lot to it. You play pool and sometimes you get to look at semi-naked ladies… that’s it. I played for about an hour, got in a couple matches, and saw everything relevant that there was to see (thanks in large part to the cheat code that lets you unlock everything in the gallery). I have played pool a few times in my life and it’s not really something I’m into, so Pocket Pool‘s fairly tame window dressing sure as hell didn’t make me want to spend any longer than I had to. If you’re looking for an on-the-go billiards game, then it’s entirely functional, but its gimmick just reeks of desperation and makes the whole thing feel more pathetic than it needed to.
And that was the end of the “sexy video game” boom of the mid-2000s. Despite considerable interest and investment, it all ended with a flaccid squirt rather than a glorious climax. Why is this, exactly? Well, the obvious answer would be that a lot of these games were of poor quality and did not sell well, but the real answer would have to be Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and Hot Coffee. That controversy kicked off around June 2005 and, almost instantly, marked a chilling effect where publishers were not willing to risk pushing the envelope and drawing the ire of the United States government. Aside from some small-scale indie titles on PC, erotic games wouldn’t see a resurgence until Sony’s abandonment of the PS Vita, which brought about a whole new surge of hentai-adjacent titles… but that might be an article for another day.
This was a real roller-coaster of an article to get through: unmitigated trainwrecks, stuff I’d wanted to check out for years, surprisingly compelling experiences, and some absolutely mediocre drudgery that made my soul want to leave my body. With that said, let’s rank these sexy games (including their less-explicit predecessors from the beach volleyball article) by how much I enjoyed them:
And here’s how I would rank them based only on how sexy they are:
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