In 2005, Nintendo released its new handheld, the Nintendo DS. The machine was a clean break from the Game Boy. But the difference wasn’t just how players interacted with the portable, but how it opened up the flood gates for the inevitable boob touching.
Nintendo systems are typically family friendly. Since the 1980s, Nintendo, with its roots in gambling and love hotels, has increasingly been a family friendly company. But the DS broke new ground regarding what could be done on a Nintendo system.
The DS’s tactile design brought a new sensual element to portable gaming that didn’t exist before. The Japanese launch commercials were a precursor of things to come, featuring a singer in a cleavage-revealing dress, with lyrics from her controversial song (in Japan, at least), “Easy Breezy”.
The concept of touch is sensual, something that launch title Feel the Magic: XY/XX demonstrated right off the bat. The game was one of 2004’s most memorable titles: players could grab the female character’s female parts, causing her to scream and cover herself.
Nudity is not new to gaming (and the PSP did that better than the DS thanks to UMD), but the idea of touching a character with your finger, and then having the character react was revolutionary. Moreover, it’s quite different from hovering a mouse over a character and then clicking the mouse to have the character react.
But it was SNK’s 2007 title Doki Doki Majo Shinpan, which followed a junior high school that was infiltrated by a witch, that took things further. Players must locate the witch, but the only way to do that is to touch them and locate their “witch mark”. Players could also flick the junior high schooler’s enormous breasts. The game’s sequel even offered better butt touching.
“I was inspired by the touch panel, and it was a good fit,” Doki Doki Shinpan producer Yoshiyasu Matsushita told Kotaku in 2007.
Doki Doki Shinpan’s niche success paved the way for more DS-based girl-touching games like To LOVEru and Hachi Koi. In Japan at least, “Touch Generations” was starting to take on a whole new meaning entirely.
As with the DS, game developers are quick to note the erotic opportunities on Nintendo’s newest portable, the Nintendo 3DS. When 3D televisions first went on sale in Japan, pundits were quick to point out that the new tech would probably catch on thanks to pornography – much like VHS did during the 1980s.
That isn’t to say the 3DS will become a hive of pornography. The DS wasn’t, and Nintendo would never allow it for the 3DS. Just don’t be surprised if there are more and more 3DS games featuring characters that have enormous norgs that can be viewed in glasses-free 3D. So far, there’s one on the horizon, ninja action game Senran Kagura. It took the game’s designer a mere thirty seconds to come up with what he really wanted to see on the 3DS: boobs. How long will it take others?
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