Many games out there, when you have to select a race/job/portrait for your character, have very limited options when you select male or female. The men are usually somewhat ugly hulking beasts and the women are dainty little half naked flowers. In the case of JRPGs, the men might look better, however some options might only have the “less attractive” option for the men, and the alternate for the women is the busty scantily clad version.

When looking for new dungeon crawler RPGs I came across Elminage II by Starfish for the PSP. I quickly looked at the jobs and the races. While there is a “Maid” job that might be female only (I haven’t played the game, they might have a Butler option for men), I decided to look at the races.
Normally in JRPGs and even WRPGs, the men tend to be more beastly or robotic and the women will always look human. Case and point is Phantasy Star Online when the robot men NEVER had a human head, while there was more than one human looking head for the women.
Elminage II keeps it equal, even so much that the Dragonnewt women have a drab brown color while the men are a brighter red color (as it happens in nature amongst birds and other things.) Even the Dwarf woman looks scary and the Gnomes look earthy. Another note is that the women also appear to be wearing clothes, and not be dressed any less than the men. You can only really see the top of the shoulders, however you can tell that those are covered (Even the demon race Devilish).
Comparing the Ogre race to the Orcs of Wow, you can see that the Ogre women might even be more burly than the men. While in WoW the Orc women definitely look more “sexy”.

If this game ever comes stateside, I will definitely be picking it up. Not only is it a 1PDC (1st Person Dungeon Crawler), it balances out the portraits of the characters so I feel good about picking certain characters.

Of note for this game is that if you don’t like ANY portraits, and want a picture of lolcats for your party, you can “Face Load” 48×48 BMPs into it that you have put on your memory stick.

Link: Elminage II

I came across a nice tool for creating First Person dungeon crawlers. However the thing is in Japanese, as it seems all good game makers are. You can compare it to Dungeon Craft, however Dungeon Craft seems to be only there to emulate a certain style of game, while Desigeon can be scripted to emulate any of them out there.

I do hold out hope that maybe someone out there that is good with translating “Tools” (RPG Tool, Action Game Tool, etc. in that line of products.)

This however is independent from all that, so might be more open to share the code, considering the program is free.

Here is a convenient link for all interested.
Desigeon

I am on the look out for a First Person Dungeon Crawler forum that is about those kinds of game only. I have found various RPG forums or ones dedicated to a certain type of those games, but none that actually take in that broad of a spectrum.

That being said, I continue to enjoy the Let’s Plays of various people doing Wizardry and other 1PDCs :D

Another game I wanted to play but never had a chance. So I take a look at it now…and can’t find any buckets.

To satisfy my urge to play 1st person dungeon crawlers I found this little SourceForge gem:
Dungeon Craft

It’s a AD&D Forgotten Realms Unlimited Adventures update and clone and more.
While it’s not exactly what I was looking for (I was looking for an Eye of the Beholder style clone) it is worthy of note for those looking for a construction set of that kind that want to do the old Gold Box adventures.

Who knows, this person might even update the engine to make even EotB games easy to make :D