Another from the annals of video game weirdness.
The plot of Akiba’s Trip: Undead & Undressed, a new Japanese adventure game making its way to the PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, and PS Vita this year, is pretty straightforward: As a young man, you’re tasked with identifying and eliminating bloodthirsty demons that have invaded Tokyo. The concept seems harmless, if a bit tired, until you realize that the “demons” in question seem to primarily take the form of young girls, and your best method of combating them is to strip off their clothing and expose them to the sun.
So, instead of battling grotesque enemies like you can in so many games involving demons, you’re stripping what appears to be a teenage girl down to her panties. There’s even a new and exciting game mechanic being introduced in this sequel (yes, a sequel) that lets multiple players strip an enemy together. Yikes.
The word is underpants. But anyway, yes, yikes.
Also, what if you’re not a young man? Is the game just for (straight, cis) young men?
And just in case you were about to defend the game as a totally-not-inappropriate demon fighting adventure, the PlayStation 4 version of Akiba’s Trip even lets people watching the game control the panties of the random female characters that inhabit the world. When streaming the game using the PS4’s Twitch and UStream broadcasting features, viewers can type “panty” in chat to cause a random young girl on screen to drop her underwear. “Panty jump” causes ladies underthings to rain down from the sky, and “panty around” surrounds the player in—you guessed it—a ring of panties.
At a time when gaming is struggling to grow up and become a more inclusive hobby, a sexual assault simulator—sorry, “game”—like this is a great example of just how much work there is left to be done.
/blockquote>
Ok.Now – take your pants off.
[meta]
Ophelia, there’s an unclosed blockquote tag in the post.
Take your pants off first, John O_O
I can’t recall any of the women whom I got to know well enough for the subject to pertain calling ’em “underpants”.
Sounds like something you’d expect from Japan. There’s probably a manga with a similar theme out there someplace.
Sometimes my hobby makes me sad. What’s really bad is that at first I thought this was another sequel in a completely different series with this theme.
I wear panties, not underpants.
Possibly a westerncanadianism.
That’s pretty fucked up right there.
@ chigau Can you pass me a serviette? I spilled my Tims on my way to the social…
There is definitely a… fetish i suppose, for female undergarments in Japan, as confirmed by this Cracked Article
http://www.cracked.com/article_19098_6-wtf-japanese-trends-you-can-blame-white-guys_p2.html
There’s a whole genre of these sorts of games in Japan:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eroge
This seems very similar to a “Witch Touching” style of game, of which this is an infamous example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doki_Doki_Majo_Shinpan!
Nope, no rape culture there.
On “panties” and “underpants” — when I lived in Britain and would say “damn, I spilled coffee on my pants” or “yes, I am wearing new pants” everyone around me would crack up. Why? In the UK and other anglo-English countries, “pants” refers to “underpants/ underclothing”.
So if you say “that woman has a nice pair of pants, where can I buy them?” people will wonder if you have X-ray vision or know something they don’t.
The proper word? Trousers. Gad, it took me months to get that right.
In this case perhaps “underclothes” or “undergarments” or “underwear” would be better? Saying “underpants” makes me feel like I am 10 years old or something for some reason. Horrible trauma from nursery rhyme parodies I guess.
Other than that this game sounds just creepy and f-ed up.
I know, I learned that very early in my first spell of residence in the UK.
But “underclothes” or “undergarments” or “underwear” are all non-specific; also, the infantilizing word “panties” is the one already (semi-officially) in use for women’s underpants. I really think that habit needs to die a fiery death as soon as possible. Imagine if men’s underpants were called “panties.” It seems laughable, right? So why is it ok to refer to women’s clothes by childish diminutives? We’re not fucking six.
We use ‘undies’ in my house. Casual, non-gendered. This game sounds just terrible.
I agree with this so much. Every time I hear the phrase ‘panties in a bunch’ I want to smash something.
I tend to use the British “knickers in a twist” which I think I stole from Monty Python. How one differentiates between the knickers that are worn as smallclothes and the short trousers worn by manly mountaineers back in the Golden Age of Climbing I do not know.
Knickers in a twist is good; I say that sometimes. It’s uni-sex and free of dopy diminutives.
In my neck of the woods, we called boys undies ‘gaunch’.
When I got into the larger world, I discovered that my neck of the woods was unique in this.
Then came The Internets and I discovered that I can actually be made to blush.
We have a lot of words for underwear in Britain.
Undies, grots, grundies, kecks, smalls, trollies, boxers, y-fronts – these all tend to be male oriented.
Knickers, panties, Alans (short for ‘Alan Whickers’, which rhymes with ‘knickers’), nick-nacks, tend to be female.
However, the terms can be used interchangeably. There are no hard and fast rules.
BTW, that game sounds horrendous.
@17 also Western Canadian, ever use ginch? That seems to be the got to expression for those in their late 20’s. I’m about 10 years older than that. And yep undies is also in common use.