#themed fridays

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THEMED FRIDAYS: MMOS!

LevelUp.ogg

Every gaming generation has a breakthrough trend that becomes a cashcow. The genre that spills over into the mainstream culture and causes the latest industry rat race. In my time of Vault energy sodas and Grand Theft Auto clones, that genre was arguably the MMORPG.

Yes, with online connections having become commonplace in the home during the early years of the new millennium, there was a boom of mostly fantasy games that boasted large player bases with real-time interactions in vast hub worlds. Games like EverQuest, Ultima Online, RuneScape, City of Heroes, and the behemoth itself: World of Warcraft.

However, this genre was infamously sink or swim. Many would come to challenge the throne of World of Warcraft, but even with their deep pockets of capital going into development and advertising they would only to go offline a short time after. (Same as it ever was.)

This month will be all about these kinds of games. The ones that managed to scrape up enough capital to finance the server farms needed to bring these digital worlds to life. Nostalgic classics, obscure failures, whatever I have run into that boasted vast virtual timesinks for you, your friends, that enthusiast with the rare armor, and the poor gold farmers he used to buy it.

So get comfy, log in, and don't forget to mind your basic needs and posture, because...

APRIL IS.... MMO MONTH!

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THEMED FRIDAYS: SHMUPS!

DANGER ZOOONE!

Behold the humble shoot 'em up. A genre almost as old as the medium itself, with Computer Space in 1971.

Since then it has become a staple of video gaming, from Space Invaders, to Gradius, to 3/4 of every shareware disc ever. Easy to make, simple to play: just dodge and shoot.

Over time they branched off, bringing us stuff like the rail shooter, bullet hells, and trance shooters. Yessir, whether you're playing as mercenary furries in space, flying maidens over Tokyo, or just an abstract little arrow engulfed in neon lights, the genre is here to stay.

But enough of my yappin', let's get to it! Hop into the cockpit and get ready to blast a few bad apples, because...

March is.... SHMUP MONTH!

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THEMED FRIDAYS: VINESAUCE!

Hello, chat. Welcome to the stream.

So I'll admit that I wasn't really on board with game streaming and commentary when it started gaining traction. (Back when we still called them Let's Plays and game footage was still for walkthroughs and reviews.) Can't remember why, but it may have been a result of finding the usual post-YouTube Internet personalities a tad too obnoxious for my liking: people like Markiplier, PewDiePie, JonTron-era Game Grumps. The loud ones howling in your face for your attention and getting buckets of money for it.

Then I discovered Staten Island's Vinny Vinesauce, who was much more reserved and willing to go off the beaten path with his Sunday Streams and game corruptions. Over time he and other members of his crew (Rev, Mike, Limes, and of course Joel) became my go-to streamers thanks to how different they were from the usual algo-chasers.

As I mentioned back when I announced the blog's revival, Vinesauce's previous dabbling in magazine ads was partially the reason why I chose to come back. It gave me some pride to see stuff I had shared, even scanned, getting noticed. I got to meet him at TooManyGames back in June and while he admitted that the original magazine stream didn't bring in a lot of views, he wasn't opposed to the idea of being sent more magazine ads.

So I did just that. Will he share them? Not for me to decide, but here's hoping!

This month, I will be sharing a sampling of stuff I sent over to Vinesauce. It is a combination of callbacks to stuff he has streamed over his 15 year career along with curious things that may provoke a reaction. A little something for everyone, and maybe even no one.

So join me will you? Hop on in and lets take a spin through a special curation of ads meant to amuse and celebrate the funny calzone man.

August is... SAUCEMONTH!

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THEMED FRIDAYS: SEXY! (Vol. 6)

"STOP! TAKESHI! YOUR BODY CAN'T HANDLE MUCH MORE OF THIS!"

Well here are, coming back into autumn. Pumpkin spice, cooler temperatures, and here on VGPA... tits.

Yes, with the return of the blog, so has the tradition of exploring sexy video game ads. I love doing this: much so that any time I go out looking for stuff to toss in the draft folder I keep a special eye out for examples of how the industry has used neuron activation to its advantage, with with mixed results. (Oh hai, Western video game advertisers in the 1990s and 2000s.)

Not only that, but we'll be looking at few examples of pornographic video games, back when you had to either fill out backpage orders in a computer magazine, know a shop that would sell it under the table, or just live somewhere where it can be freely sold without local backlash... like in a major city and/or Japan.

But before we get to the festivities I must put on a serious face and offer...

A disclaimer. Sorry.

Many of the posts this month will, obviously, be hidden if you have certain filters and content warning tags applied. NSFW warnings all around.

For some users, there will be examples lean more towards the sexist than sexy: this is after all an industry that has--and continues to have--a complicated history regarding anything that doesn't promote heterosexual male fantasies.

Now with the easy part of this disclaimer out of way, I now need to acknowledge the moe-eyed elephant in the room: eroge.

I cannot guarantee that the depicted characters in some of the shown games are 18 years or old or express any sort of consent in-game, especially if we're talking about older titles. With there being an endless supply of eroge magazines I can pull from, I try to avoid posting ads for such games unless they are of cultural / historical significance or has something that I think is interesting enough to be shown.

Additionally, while in the past I have been reckless in showing topless, sexualized anime girls without doing research into how old they're supposed to be, going forward I will be more proactive about keeping such ads off the blog. This is due to personal feelings I have about the grey area they reside in, compounded by the collective shouting of Internet prudes that have been getting stronger recently. I hope you understand this decision and even I have mixed feelings about it. (Before this change of heart, I even had a La Blue Girl ad queued up!)

Regardless, I welcome you all to keep an open mind about what you're about to see while still advising viewer discretion if choose to view such ads or seek further information about these games on your own time.

Okay, disclaimer over.

So here we go, once again, into the saucy world of sex sells and games you make alternated Steam accounts for. Do you consent? Good. Because...

It's.... SEXTEMBER!

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THEMED FRIDAYS: WOMEN!

It's no secret: women have a very complicated relationship with the hobby.

Industry success stories comingle with Activision Blizzard-level horror stories. Attempts at inclusivity bring in mixed reactions from all parties. Shoot, back in the day Stephanie Sterling claimed that the only example of a non-traditional, female-minded player character was an Eldritch lizard creature from Primal Fury.

I'm not going to pretend to be an expert. While my time with this blog does give me a unique perspective on the uneven way women are depicted and marketed to, do I need to say more here? Can I say more? Not really, so here's a robot to do the work for me.

This month I wanted to dig into our history to find just how far we've come. I wanted dig up some obscure (and not so obscure) examples of games with female protagonists in various roles. It's not my goal to gloss over the sexism with some cherry picked norm exceptions. (If you want the sexism, come back in September.) I'll try to not solely focus on the usual post-Lara Croft fair, as easy as it would be to dig that up.

Sprinkled in will be some examples of games that were designed and marketed towards women. You know, the stuff that tends to be (often deservingly) labeled as shovelware, but with the video below I have a clue on what else to look for.

Right, enough of the awkward mansplaining, let's get some women's voices up in here!

June's theme is... WOMEN'S MONTH!

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THEMED FRIDAYS: PUZZLES! (Vol. 6)

I'm bringing game themes baaaack.

For those who have stuck around you know the drill.

For the rest, here's the thing. Every month I like to give a theme to a Friday's content and over time January just became dedicated to the puzzle game. Next month it will be fighting games and up until September it will be whatever I would like to dedicate time to scraping up.

So once again, put on your thinking caps and join me as we resume the usual monthly nonsense.

January is.... PUZZLE MONTH!

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Themed Fridays: SEXY! (Vol. 5)

Uh-oh.

Soon it would be a full year since adult content creators were given their eviction notice and malfunctioning prude bots were put in charge of moderating things for our former Verizon overlords. Many people chose to leave as a result, but I stayed due to preferring this site’s content queuing system and because Twitter is as appealing to me as Gamer Girl Herpes Bathwater. There was a brief glimmer of hope that our new foster owners would lift the ban, but that was immediately dashed; the ban on nipplays is here to stay.

So that said, you’re probably wondering why I’m tempting fate and starting a whole new volume of raunchy, questionable game ads. Well, two reasons:

The ban was never a direct threat to this blog’s existence. I’ve stated this before, before the ban went into effect. As of now, there are three ads that have been flagged for good and are never coming back. But they were for straight-up eroge games and were full-frontal in the advertising, so they never stood a chance. Fair enough, but when it comes to content I earmarked for these special months, they are comparatively tame.  

I do not care. We all know the ban is ridiculous and has crippled an already beaten-down horse, making you wonder if its on on its way to the glue factory. The spam bots are still around, we’re still not 100% informed of flagged posts, and you can still find exposed robertsons if you know where to look.

So that’s where I stand right now. The special festivities will go on hopefully uninterrupted. As always, there will be two kinds of ads: ones for sexy games, and ones for non-sexy games but decided to throw it in anyway. Would the Tumblr execs care in the end? Probably not. Maybe I’m making too big a deal out of this, but the point is that my annual September festivities were never going away. It’s just too much fun.

Right, so with all that out of the way, lets test some puritan’s patience and see if I stay online by the end of the month! So get ready, folks...

It’s..... SEXTEMBER!