Token Minorities Presents: The 13 Hottest Men of Gaming, In Color

Okay, so 90% of the hotness that people talk about in video games is generally about the female characters. Occasionally, however, we get a Hottest Men of Gaming list like the one mentioned in the last post. Never have I seen, however, in my eight years of writing about video games, even one Game Guy list that included people of color to any significant degree. (Girls of all races, creeds, and colors are ogled in the Gaming Girls lists. Hurray for color-blind sexism.) So! As Jay-Z says: this is history in the making.

Number 13 goes to a Capcom character by the name of El Stingray from the long-forgotten pro wrestling arcade game, Saturday Night Slam Masters. He is not to be confused with El Fuerte, the latest addition to the Street Fighter IV cast. (For shame. Luchadores do not all look the same.) El Stingray makes it on to the 13 Hottest Men of Gaming list for a handful of reasons:

• His butt looks great in spandex.
• Actually, he looks pretty darn good in general for being 16-bit.
• At 5′5″ and 163lbs he’s a catch for the men and women who like them wiry and muscled but not too tall.
• His arch-enemy, the Great Oni, is nicknamed “Pale-faced Devil”. Honestly, anyone who fights against pale-faced devils gets a standing ovation from me right there.

Wikipedia says he’s an “ultra macho ladies man” so guys, no luck there. On the other hand, he does wrestle in spandex with buff, sweaty men. Hmmm.

The #12 spot belongs to one Michael LeRoi, from the Acclaim game Shadow Man. Being of questionable living status doesn’t seem to stop people from wanting to have sex with Lucas Kane from Indigo Prophecy, so being an amnesiac-zombie-hitman-cum immortal-voodoo-warrior shouldn’t stop our Shadow Man from making it on the list. Maybe the zombie slave thing means he’d be more of a bottom than a top? His soul belongs to one Mama Nettie, a centuries-old voodoo priestess who inhabits the body of a woman in her twenties, and she has to have sex with him to maintain her eternal life. Older women, submissive sex, and a penis charged with voodoo energy - yum. Plus, apparently he was an English Lit major in college. I wonder how many times people have called him “articulate” or “well-spoken”.

Joe Higashi from Fatal Fury and the King of Fighters series won 11th in my heart and mind, partially because I have a soft spot for Thai boxers, partially because I gotta admire a character whose movelist changes probably no more than twice in the many games he’s appeared in, but mostly because he shows you his cute butt when he taunts.

Finally, Lieutenant Samir Duran of Starcraft: Brood War notoriety gets 10th place for his sexy voice alone. The fact that he can use Lockdown and Cloak only adds to his kinky sex potential appeal. He would have placed significantly higher if it weren’t for the fact that he is Zerg-infested at one point in the game, and I don’t want to find out of that’s transmissible through bodily fluids.

That’s it for today - tune in tomorrow for 9th through 6th place!

pat m.

The 25 Hottest Men in Gaming

So Bonnie over at Heroine Sheik posted an interesting breakdown of the “types” of men generally found in this (admittedly rather lackluster, this-post-is-worthless-without-pics) list of the “25 Hottest Men in Gaming”. Do you like your men brawny? Slender and effeminate? Pyramid-headed? And so on.

The assumption that both sites leave untouched: white. That’s right, the list in question is full of cracka-ass-crackas, something that no one else seems to notice. While the original list doesn’t have any pictures, I scrounged up a few pics of the individuals who seemed to have promise as potential non-whiteys. Behold:

Altair from Assassin’s Creed:

Hwoarang from Tekken:

And Iori Yagami from King of Fighters:

Even the ostensibly Asian guys, Iori and Hwoarang, look pretty white to me. Incidentally, I didn’t know that Iori played bass guitar. Nice.

Looks like my next feature is going to have to be hottest men of color in video gaming.

pat m.

Cranky Old Man Ramblings: Video Games and Free Time

Okay, so maybe I’m not really that old. But considering I’ve been playing video games since practically before I could walk, I think I’m entitled to take up the Cranky Kong position every now and then.

I leafed through this post at 1up called “Why People Don’t Finish Games Anymore” and figured I’d post on something I’ve wanted to write about for a little bit. Whether it’s generally true that people don’t finish games compared to the SNES days or not, I have no idea, but it’s personally relevant to me, for most of the reasons listed in the article - some games have too much content, others too much grinding, others simply don’t work, and I have more work (and more income) compared to the grade school days where I could reliably count on getting maybe five games a year - but less time to play them. Well said, Ms. Oxford. But for me that’s hardly where the discussion starts.

I tend to experience video games in one of two ways. If it’s a game that is ultimately skill-driven - something where I aim to get more technically proficient, usually in order to dominate my friends - then I’ll pick it up and play for as long as I feel like. These games are really where my heart lies, for the most part; I prefer the “game” part of “video game”. This isn’t just because I like winning, though - it’s also because the experience is, by its very nature, brief. If I’m by myself, I’ll mess around in Capcom vs. SNK 2’s training mode for 15 minutes or 50. I can play Bleach 2 DS on a train and not feel like I’m interrupted every time I have to turn it off and transfer. These kinds of games require very little of time to make an experience - I don’t have to make time for them.

The other category of games are largely plot-driven - while there’s skill involved in playing through something like Ninja Gaiden DS or Resident Evil 4, my end goal isn’t to get better at slashing up zombie ninjas or anything, it’s to finish the single-player experience. These games require a much more significant minimal investment of time for for me to “warm up”, as it were, and I usually try to finish these in 3-4 sessions if possible. (Incidentally, this is why I’ve sworn off most role-playing games, as most RPGs take at least 20 hours to complete these days, and most of the time I stop caring about whatever is going on after the first twenty minutes. I’m a fickle guy.)

The thing is, the average level of narrative quality still horribly blows in the world of video games. While there are plenty of moments where I sit down and relish a particularly well-designed level or game mechanic that does something that other media could never do to tell a story, those times are the 10%, largely upset by the 90% of the time where I’m either a) impatient or b) embarrassed by how abysmally bad the writing is. Over the past year or so, I’ve found myself watching movies more than usual just because the stories are usually more interesting and thought-provoking (even the bad ones!), and - and this is huge - the entire story can be told in under three hours. This is how I want my games to be. Hello, episodic content. (Also: why I love the Phoenix Wright series.)

To complicate the situation, I am no longer the video game blogging world’s Most Eligible Bachelor (I love you, Shiyuan!), which means that the time I set aside for story-telling is now communal time. There are some people who like watching their significant others play video games, but she is not one of them (and I’m glad, because most of those people are boring. Watching someone get a perfect FF7 save is NOT quality together-time). This means that, ideally, my games need to have a story that is digestible over the course of an evening, more or less, and be an experience that is worth playing and watching. Once again, one of the only games that manages this is the Phoenix Wright series - a case can usually be finished in 2-3 hours or so, and it’s something that can be played fairly easily together. There are some other games that fit here - I watched people play Metal Gear Solid long before I ever picked them up and played myself, and I think the Resident Evil and Silent Hill series might be feasible here too (babygirl loves horror movies; I get nightmares easily). I’d welcome more suggestions in the comments, because frankly, this kind of thing is what makes me slow to adopt new systems.

Incidentally, all of this is one of the major reasons I love my DS. Sure, the dual screen thing is neat, and the touch screen and the mic have their moments. But really, I love that, due to design restrictions or maybe just cartridge space, most games are designed in easily digestible chunks and can be finished in around 10 hours or so. That’s my sweet spot.

pat m.