Not to excuse it, but I would guess they're checking for the third nipple?

Damn, Broadsheet finally posts a good game and it's for a portable rather than a console.

Poking with pins to see if there's anywhere on the body that's not sensitive to pain, IIRC, was an established witch-finding technique.

(Note: I'm going on old memory and no research here, so may very well be wrong.)

A WITCH!!

There are things on the internet more horrible than you can fathom, I'm afraid, and the endless, yawning abyss of sexual video games from Japan is but one of those things.

A brief trip to J-List's Hentai games will show you an unholy gathering of Japanese video games featuring school girls (frequently underage) engaging in all manner of sexual acts, with a depressing frequency of non-consensual themes. If you find the notion of a Japanese video game involving groping to be disturbing, end your search now and go no further into the darkness.

I'm sorry to be jaded, but in the world of Japanese sexual video games, this is extremely tame.

The other hook to the story is not that it's a sex-oriented game, but it's a sex-oriented game for a popular video game system rather than just the PC. Again though, you'd probably be happier if you didn't do any research; sex-oriented games are almost universally creepy I'm afraid, and date back to the infamous "Custer's Revenge" for the Atari console.

It's nice when we see traditionally "children's" gaming systems like the DS used for intelligent, titles like Brain Age that can be appreciated by all kinds of adults. However, as you'd find with any medium for entertainment, along with appeals to the sophisticated, you'll often find appeals to the coarse.

Mostly, though, I'm disappointed in the lack of research that went into this post. Groping schoolgirls on a DS may be tasteless, but it's hardly an abberation either for Japanese culture or video game consoles.

This is not so surprising if you know anything about Japanese entertainment, Japanese comic books, etc.

As usual, the real issue is not the game/book/movie/etc. - it's the audience that enjoys it and asks for more of the same. These books, movies and games don't just materialize out of thin air - not in Japan and not in the U.S.

Cultures in which women are viewed as objects (and those would include most cultures) have the entertainment they deserve. And as usual, the real solution rarely involves banning such forms of entertainment - the real solution is to educate your children: teach your boys that women are people (period) and teach your daughters the same.

Cultures change slowly, there's no easy fix.

If you find that disturbing, wait until you see tentacle porn. This is relatively tame stuff compared to some anime / manga / "dating" sims. Sexually, Japan can be a very, very strange place.

The last game system in my house was Atari, and the most violent on-screen scene was Frogger getting smooshed by a truck. That's the last time video games were worth playing...OK, except for maybe Oregon Trail, an respectably educational piece of software. Free speech? STFU. What kind of sick parent would ever encourage his or her child to waste time, energy, money, and moral development on utter filth such as Grand Theft Auto-style games? There is no justification whatsoever for any of that crap. None.

Just because a parent thinks a game is a piece of trash (and just because a game may actually be a piece of trash) and has no games around the house, it doesn't mean his or her teenage son won't see this game, any many others, someplace else.

Nobody's endorsing the buying of these games, but let's be realistic - kids go to college, or high school, and are exposed to many products owned by others which would be considered trash by their parents.

The only thing you can try to do is teach your children to recognize trash when they see it - it can be done, trust me. I was there multiple times when my friends refused to play the kind of video games reported on in this article because they were "crap" and "sick". It happens, there's hope for us after all.

Thanks for taking time out of your busy schedule of yelling at kids to keep of your lawn! Can you share more stories about your own video-game experiences that involved walking uphill to the video arcade, in the snow, with no shoes on?

That's the last time video games were worth playing...OK, except for maybe Oregon Trail, an respectably educational piece of software.

Worth playing? How, exactly, does one judge that, except by the 'tired old crank' standard?

Try playing Brain Age for the Nintendo DS. Give Guitar Hero for the PS2 a try. Play SimCity, Civilization, or Spore.

It's great that you're willing to say what games are or aren't worth playing without ever actually, you know, playing them, but maybe in the future you'll back away from ignorant sweeping statements, eh?

Heck, let's back up to that question about 'worth'... isn't the point of playing games, well, recreation? If a game is entertaining and good recreation, doesn't that pretty much meet the minimum standard of "worth playing"?

Free speech? STFU.

I'm not sure what's funnier, that you're the first & only person to mention free speech in the article or letters, or that as an "ACLU member" your first response to a question of "free speech" is to tell someone to shut up. Congratulations, you've officially reached the "old crank" stage of adulthood. You're clearly enjoying it.

What kind of sick parent would ever encourage his or her child to waste time, energy, money, and moral development on utter filth such as Grand Theft Auto-style games? There is no justification whatsoever for any of that crap. None.

Yeah! You tell 'em! And stop playing that stereo so loud! And pull up your pants! And stop playing on my lawn!!!

I second the point that this is hardly new as far as Japanese games go. In a lot of Japanese game stores the 'dating sim' games are right out with everything else, bare breasts on the box and all. There's a whole gamut from cutesy to hardcore. They even make these for girls, with stables of rainbow haired 'pretty boys' to choose from. Japanese girls and women buy their fair share of sexually themed games and comics, and they make them as well.

The Japanese have a very different idea of the boundaries of depicitions of sex in pop culture for young people. While they have their own issues of course, the artistic freedom is a wonderful thing.

I also thing that it's worth noting that the Japanese didn't have Witch Trials and that Christianity is a very minority religion in Japan. The witch thing is probably not a whole lot more than a cute magical girl costume to the developers. Kind of like a french maid or naughty nurse. Also, there are lots of witch themed anime that, serious or humorous, have no more to do with witch trials than 'Bewitched' or 'Sabrina the Teenaged Witch' do.

For the people who are continually upset by the subject matter of games currently on the market, would you please enlist yourselves in the game industry and start designing and producing the sort of games that you would like to see? For everyone person who loves GTA or Silent Hill, there's somebody else who loves Katamari Damacy or the Sims, and it's good that there are all these choices.