It’s one of the premises of this blog that video games can do things and mean things that their creators may not have necessarily intended, as they don’t have absolute control over the context in which the media is consumed. So the RE5 trailer, for example, may not have been designed with any explicit racist intent and still leave a bad taste in our mouth because of the meanings we attach to white-skinned people shooting hundreds of black-skinned people.

Likewise, I have no idea whether God Hand sets out to critique the depth of video games and how far the players have come (or not) since the Final Fight days, Maybe the developers simply wanted to come up with some really schlocky stuff. Regardless of what they wanted, though, this is one reading of what they ended up with.

P.S.: Welcome to the blog, thanks for the comments, and yeah, the blog theme was not an accident.

Do you actually mean that? Or are you just being “publicly optimistic”??

http://www.gamespot.com/search.html?type=11&stype=all&qs=godhand&x=0&y=0
God Hand is an action title by veteran designers from the Devil May Cry and Resident Evil teams.

Yes. A Japanese developer. Just as I suspected. Eternal friend of the “Black Man”. The good ‘ol Japanese who, aside from giving us wonderful things NOT related to games (TubGirl, Octopus Tentacle Porn, etc.) have brought us such high minded, inspirational characters as:

The Golliwoggs of LocoRoco
Balrog From SF2
That “pimp” fighter guy from art of fighting (Mickey Rogers)
Zack from DOA

Need I go on? In your “about” page, you mention being a fighting game aficionado, so I’m sure you’re very familiar with these characters. It’s funny, because as far as I can recall, the only time the Japanese think it’s acceptable to include black characters in a game is when there’s an inflatable ball to be held, some ass to kick, or pink/yellow/.orange spandex to be worn.

I salute you for giving them the benefit of the doubt, but I really don’t think they’re being high minded at all. To me, it just seems like business as usual.

Having said that, I’m chomping at the bit over news of the AI controlled sidekick being considered for RE5. He’ll be a pale, angsty, frail fellow by the name of “Colonel Jim Crowe”.

PS – Very interesting site. I just noticed that your Blog theme is “White as Milk”. How funny is THAT considering the context