Continuing to play Robopon after along “hiatus” from it.

The reason I started this blog in the first place was based on this sexist harem game. It actually started due to a de-railing of a topic on the My Neo Romance boards asking for otome RPG games like Ar Tonelico, but with the reversed harem. Lest to say many fans on the board rabidly told me that the characters aren’t like this or that and the game is wonderful and women have all the power and the whole tripe of people who are not enlightened about sexism in general nor Feminism 101.

Then I found this article:
Sexism in Ar Tonelico
It sums up nicely what I was trying to say to those dense people in that forum. However I wish to expand on that summary.

Ar Tonelico as a game is a problem.
Continue–>

Yudhishthira’s Dice asks:

Ladies, what RPG covers (or interiors) have you seen that involve a woman in the art that make you say, “I want to play that” or, just as good “I want to play her.” Or that make you feel like it is a game you could like, or be included in by a group of guys you’d never met and whose maturity you didn’t necessarily know?

Rules of the meme, by tekanji:

1. Copy the text of the original challenge from Yudhishthira’s Dice and give a proper link attribution.
2. Copy these rules exactly (including any links).
3. Find images of game covers (interiors are okay, too) that make you want to play the game. Any kind of game — video game, card game, tabletop RPG, etc — is fine. Post them and include a short (or long) explanation on why the image makes/made you want to play the game.
4. The original challenge is about finding out what women think about how game art is marketed and therefore it is targeted at women. I’d like to keep it that way, please.
5. You can tag as many or as few people as you want. You do not need to be tagged to participate in the meme.
6. When you make your post, please post the link on this thread so we can all see what others have said.

Particpating Posts

• Check out the original home of the “Game Covers Women Want to See” meme!
• New posts go here! Continue–>

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