Ogling Air Molecules

I concur with IGN’s reviewer on “Dead or Alive 5” who said that it’s “a fighter that’s far more interested in beating you down than getting you off.”  The pun on masturbation needs addressing.  Seemingly, the fighting games community mocks “Dead or Alive” for two reasons: Boobs.  The “Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball” spin-offs attest to that.

In a television ad for the first “Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball” for the Xbox, guys playing the game ogle bikini-clad video game women, sighing and licking their lips.  The commercial’s female voice says, “Play with a friend–or play with yourself.”  The guys then cover their laps with sofa cushions.

And then Tecmo released “Dead or Alive Xtreme 2” for the Xbox 360 that was developed with a “soft, independent breast physics” engine which critics spurned for its lewdness.  The women’s chests rumbled like gelatin earthquakes.

Although the fighting games are more serious than the “Xtreme” games, the portrayals of some female characters are still not flattering.  In “Dead or Alive 4,” Hitomi and Leifang fight over a head of cabbage in front of Muramasa’s produce stand.

Society would distance itself from guys like those in the commercial because video game women inflate their loins with lust.  They would be ostracized for being geeky, pathetic perverts who cannot earn the love of real women–human women.

The guys in the “DOAXBV” commercial exemplify the saying: “Once you go digital, you never go analog.”  But I’ll admit it: My empathies are with guys like them.  I enjoy “Dead or Alive,” both the fighting and beach volleyball games and have been ridiculed for my amorous affections for video game women. 

Should there be anything wrong with being attracted to digital depictions of fictional characters?

In Western mythology, Helen of Troy was considered the most beautiful woman in the world.  Paris, prince of Troy, took her away from Menelaus, king of Sparta and her husband.  This abduction ignited the Trojan War. 

Throughout history, the beauty of this mythological woman inspired artists like the poet/playwright Christopher Marlowe, who composed the most sensual love poem about her in English literature in his play “Doctor Faustus,” which began with the line: “Was this the face that launched a thousand ships…” 

For these artists, Helen of Troy was just words on paper, yet no one called them weird (well, Marlowe was accused of being a gay atheist, but for different reasons).  If it’s okay to be enamored by print, why not sprites or polygons?

Or rather, technically speaking, Helen of Troy was composed of air molecules since Homer’s “Iliad” has its roots in oral tradition.  Sound is the vibration of air molecules.  At least the women of “DOA” look like people.

Although the women of “DOA” are physically attractive, they don’t compare to my childhood sweetheart: Chun-Li from “Street Fighter II” on the Super Nintendo.

I sucked with Chun-Li when I was a kid, but when I saw a screenshot of her in a magazine wearing a yellow tank-top and denim short-shorts in her ending, I fell in love.  I asked my cousins who were good at “Street Fighter” to beat the game with Chun-Li for me. They proved she was “the strongest woman in the world.”  After defeating M. Bison and the dialogue with her dead father in from of his tombstone, the pretty screenshot showed, with the caption saying “And now I can get back to being a young single girl.”

My body tingled with warmth.  I turned my head.  My cousins grinned at me. 

Since then, video game women have always been the strongest women in my heart.