Hello, people.  My name is C. Lamb and I've become enough of a person that people can rely on me for a few things.  They can rely on me for getting something done right, getting something done on my own time, intriguing conversation, all of that, but what they can really rely on me for, even more than unreliability, is outspoken opinions on music and games.  With these two things being my tangible passions, only under writing, I tend to establish shrines to them (i.e. - this blog) to voice my opinions. 

It's about noon right now, Sunday afternoon, me dreading tomorrow because of a lack of a path back home, sitting in my office with no pants, listening to John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman's rendition of the eternal classic "Lush Life", still glowing from my waffles this morning and the roast beef sandwich I made last night... and I'm going through the world wide internets and looking at stuff.  I'm a fan of Japanese games, sometimes going so far as to tweak and twerk and hack and translate them to English so I can play them.  Out of the dozens I've done this for the majority of them haven't been worth the effort I put into them. 

This whole series of actions has had about three rationals behind it, however.  The first has been research: the EXCERPT in the title is because I've been doing research on the Japanese gaming industry for years, literally, YEARS.  Sadly I lost all my data because I was cleaning off the computer and accidentally got rid of all that prior data.  So here I am, starting from square one again, though at this point I'm probably at square... seven or eight.  The second reason is for culture: games are arguably more influential and important in Japan than the United States, but that's something my research will afford me knowledge to.  Lastly we have the fun: yes, the fun.  Some games are never released outside of Japan and me, being a child of video games, can't enjoy it.  Unfortunately the stereotype is that these games never released outside of the Land of the Rising Sun are all dirty, controversial porno games.

That leads us to the infamous Rapelay.  For those of you that don't know about this game, it's a rape simulator.  The story is that a young chikan (loosely, train groper) is busted by a girl and sent to jail.  Out the next day because of political connects, he decides to get revenge by raping the girl, as well as her younger sister and mother, until they're broken to the point of sexual slavery.  That's the point of the game.  Truth be told, it's not MUCH of a game, and if you know what you're doing, you'll "finish" in a matter of hours.  The creators of this game weren't really going for a revolution in gameplay here; they were trying to give the gamer something to slap-box the one-eyed champ to.  To that respect: good job, Illusion.  The controversy for the game didn't come right away, however; it came when it was being sold on Amazon.com.

And then Bugs Bunny and Scrappy Doo and all our favorite liberal figureheads and conservative lawyers came out of their foxholes and started to condemn this genre of games, and by genre I mean "eroge", sex simulators and whatnot.  The "Fred Phelps" of Game Condemnation, Jack Thompson, was probably the most vocal (no surprise) about this, and in a rare admittance of defeat I can't really knock him.  Let's be honest: this is a rape simulator.  You can commit virtually every sexual atrocity to three women, one of whom may not even be 16 or 17 yet, and if they get pregnant then you have to abort the kid or else you get one of the "endings".  Spoiler alert: you die in both endings.  I suppose that that's good from a moral standpoint but for a game... you tend to want to live.

I admit though that this controversy had me playing both sides of the fence at first.  On one hand I think every rapist should be locked in jail for (a)life, (b)until he gets the death penalty, or (c)until he can't use his dick anymore (this is of course assuming the rapist is male).  On the other hand, the argument I can't support is that this kind of game encourages sexual violence and rape worthy behavior.  Yeah, I had to play through it once to get my opinions.  Finished it.  Tossed it and started writing my opinions on it, and what's my mind state now?  My exact words were: "Kinda got a thing for that schoolgirl outfit and MILFs, but rape is still a no-no".  Okay, those weren't my EXACT words, but I always liked the schoolgirl outfit and when we got MILFs like Halle Berry and Salma Hayek you damn right I love 'em.

It calls to attention the eternal debate of how powerful the pull of video games is; my last posted piece "Dear Caressa Cameron..." brought that up too.  We have to consider personal responsibility especially, and how some people aren't as strong minded as others and how some people take things to levels unnecessary.  Whereas someone like me can play a game about a rapist and not want to rape, someone else might not be stable enough to distinguish the virtual crime from an actual one. 

I think I mentioned this before but this game has the cold distinction of being the international benchmark for eroge games.  In my research I've had to breeze through a number of them, be they 2D or 3D, text based or visual based, and Rapelay is hardly the worst.  Hell, some of them are even entertaining, have some wonderful stories behind them, are even (Jesus forgive me) worthy of the five knuckle shuffle. 

But that's just one aspect of the world of Japan's sexual games.  I find the whole concept incredible; at one point that was the point of the entire research project but I expanded it when I saw how much crossover there was.  There's a man that "married" his computer girlfriend in Japan, a game that "tracks" your... lonely nights.  Something I saw today actually makes me a bit nervous.  According to a study done in Japan, more than half of the women in Japan think virtual girlfriends are superior to them in terms of attracting a guy.  Talk about self esteem issues.  I thought China had the worst perception of self after that Summer Olympics shit with the little girl that wasn't allowed to sing at the Opening Ceremonies because she didn't fit the "look" they wanted to portray. 

You may be asking what this has to do with sex games.  Directly we need look no further than another game from Illusion's camp, Real Kanojo, translation: Real Girlfriend.  At this point I don't need to say another word.  So I won't.  I'll let this trailer do the talking.  I'm the DiZ: I look at it so YOU don't have to.