So, I’m still putting it together in my head of what to write about next… Also about how little that last sentence made sense. Anyways, I just purchased the Elder Scrolls anthology, and there goes ALL my attention to ANYTHING, however that does mean some more footage possibly, or more Skyrim related Gayness, so a resounding hurrah on all fronts.

Today I’ve decided I’ll talk about one little gem of gaming that somehow survived during its time, though I hope would never be okay in modern day games, as well as a game idea of my own that I’ve dredged up from the depths of my ninth grade notebooks.

So, Matt Pat discussed this one as well, however if any of you are familiar with fighting games, there are plenty of examples of non-straight characters in all of them, however one stands about the rest as being largely disturbing.

World Heroes. A fighting game from 1992 where you fight personalities from around the world. There’s one in particular, the Russian Rasputin, who is just too pointed for safety. As well as being Russian (read enemy) he also plays on the standard flamingo style of gay man.

Rasputin wears a long tunic style outfit, which blows up in the wind Marilyn Monroe style when he wins a match. That’s not bad, that’s kinda funny, admittedly. Seeing a large Burly man play the Marilyn Monroe style pose is honestly pretty laughable, however, his super move is anything but.

Rasputin’s super combo is called “The Secret Garden”. It only works on Male fighters. Rasputin grabs them, and throws them into the Bushes, then proceeds to follow them behind and presumably have his way with them, as cartoony hearts burst out, and the male fighter is seen struggling to get away. With proper button pressing you can take them for two rounds at once… In the bushes… yeah…

So Rasputin, the overly burly, yet effeminate Russian, who has a super move which only works on the male fighters, where he takes them behind the bushes and forcibly RAPES them… made it into video games. Admittedly this was 1992, but still, What the heck!? How on earth did this EVER get published, and how wasn’t there a huge outcry. It’s a case of “what’s done is done” nowadays, but here’s a look at one of the darker gems of the video games industry’s portrayal of non-heterosexual characters in earlier years.

In brighter news, here’s a sketch from the game idea I had:

The game would follow a girl (a fair bit in the future) whose mother works at a power plant. During a nuclear meltdown, she’s asked to take an experimental time machine back to before the detonation, only to be caught in it and thrown back to medieval times. Here she must disguise herself as a man to gain admittance into the King’s knights so see can find Gems to power her time travel machine back to the present.

Our hero manages to disguise herself… though most of the women around her can tell, the guys she fools pretty effectively.

I hope to have a strong influence on empowering women, but as well stress gender issues that both men and women face, and have a good balance of diversity and break from hetero-normativity that is very prevalent in the industry today.