A Retrospective On Sex In Videogames

Thanks to GameCritics for its (semi-NSFW?) feature discussing the history of sex in videogames, intended to "excavate and document those lucky digital few who managed to get their swerve on." Games profiled include the original Leisure Suit Larry ("the father of modern 'mature' videogames... despite being a screwball comedy at heart... one of the most realistic portrayals of sex in any videogame"), and the ever-notorious Fear Effect 2: Retro Helix ("the two female protagonists [may have been] straddling each other in their underwear for the print ads, but the actual game wasn't the promiscuous orgy that ads teased.")

Comments

Regarding Leisure Suit Larry

[antizeus]

LSL was just a graphical version of an earlier game named SoftPorn Adventure, which was a text adventure with what appeared to be an identical plot. Well, I'm not sure if the plot was really identical, as I only played the beginning of each game, but I was rather disappointed when I first saw LSL.

Now that I've done some googling, I find that Sierra bought the rights to the original game. Here's something I just found regarding this: [article]. Also, this appears to be a web-based version, though I haven't tried it: [version].

Enjoy.

Odd that the story doesn't mention ...

[Peteroo]

... the recent Singles: Flirt Up Your Life!--a Sims-with-sex game from Germany's Rotobee (recently released in English, though not yet in the US). I mean, that's the whole hook for writing about sex in games at this particular time.

Along with typical Sim-ian activities, Singles permits full nudity and builds the relationship between the just-met flatmates to one that includes sexual relations. ("Chose from twelve 3D fully functional characters," reads the back of the DVD case, "and we mean FULLY.")

Peter