September 7th, 2009

While females have certainly evened out the key demographics over the the last decade, video games have always been tailored for one purpose -- to appeal to the average, everyday guy (or Joe The Plumber if you're Sarah Palin, don'tcha kno'). Ask anybody in marketing for any kind of entertainment venture and they'll tell you how vital the male demographic is to the survival/profitability of most mediums. Why? Because we're predictable dumbasses with loads of disposable income, that's why (hey, the truth hurts).

In the 80s and early 90s, games used to rely on grabbing our attention by having flashy cover art featuring explosions or some kind of action scene. Again, guys are notoriously simple creatures. Show us anything with guns and fire and we're there. However, one genius in marketing finally realized that these same males they're trying to reach out to could also be horny fiends. Gee, really?

So instead of crazy cover art featuring sweaty war heroes saving the world, we are now being treated with something much easier on the eyes -- BIG OL' TIT-TAYS!

Girls in gaming proved to be the X-factor (or triple x-factor) in penetrating (hehe) video games into the mainstream, especially in the mid-90s with the advent of the Sony Playstation and 3D graphics. They have truly hit a stride with the next generation consoles (Playstation 3 & the Xbox 360) being able to push enough polygon power through to render dangerous curves that rival their real life counterparts. The best example of this I can give you would be Resident Evil 5's antagonist Excella Gionne.

The actress they modeled her after, Nina Fehren, was still cute as a button, but she wasn't nearly as hot as the final character Capcom came up with due to the fairly large breastesesss Excella had that Nina, unfortunately, didn't. Talk about a major blow to the ego, "Hmm, your chesticles are too small for this video game. We're going to have to give you double D's! Try not to get too depressed, m'kay? Razor blades to your left"

Sex symbols or not, it's as if the women we get to know in these adventures kind of become like a girlfriend in a strange, strange way. We know everything about the characters due to spending hours of attention on them (how many guys cried in Final Fantasy VII when Aeris died?), we loyally buy games, magazines, and posters featuring their tasty cakes, and now we even purchase DLC (downloadable content) to change their outfits sometimes -- as if it's an anniversary gift for them or something. Shit, some dorks guys literally worship these broads.

As much admiration we have for these digital females, one burning question that is always a spark of intense debate is "who's hotter?". That's why I have created my own personal Top 5 list of the hottest babes in gaming. Will you agree with me? Maybe, maybe not. This is a hot button topic; I can't stress that this is a "personal" countdown on MY OWN site (lol!), so if you don't like it, well, tell me what you think in the Facebook comments at the end of the article. I am usually pretty on point with my opinions though, so nyah lol.

5. Lara Croft (Tomb Raider series)

Many point to the lead character of the Tomb Raider series as the tipping point in modern gaming. With good reason, too, because before Ms. Croft came along wearing her trademark skin tight gear in 1996, gaming had a reputation as being a form of entertainment made solely for children. With the original design of Lara Croft (which I will talk about in a second), it was hard for older folks not to notice her while browsing store shelves or seeing her in almost every Playstation commercial or print advertisement of the era.

The result was Sony pulling ahead of Nintendo, who was still dead set on having clean and family friendly image, in the late 90s console battle. Hell, I remember being in middle school and everyone spreading the rumor of a "nude code" being available! This was before the internet was really a source for information, so us teens had to spend hours trying every crazy button combination under the sun to get Lara to run around butt-ass naked, with negative results, lol.. Man, we were stupid!

Croft's popularity has spanned across comic books, two feature films starring fellow hottie Angelina Jolie (and potentially Megan Fox in the future), toy lines, novels, and being hilariously honored in adult entertainment by various busty, brunette women playing with the spelling of her name. She is without a doubt one of the most instantly recognizable and lusted after female characters in history, for better or for worse.

Yet, if she's so significant, then why is she at the bottom of this countdown instead higher up? Well, her character design has greatly changed in the last thirteen years and it's partly because women were bitchin' and moanin' about how she doesn't accurately portray a woman's body or some mess like that. This was a legit complaint, because even Lara's creator, Toby Gard, admits to accidentally making her boobies 100% larger than originally intended when designing her on the computer and the marketing team simply ran with focusing on her tatas.

In the later parts of the 90s, tasteless violence and sex were amped up in pop culture (look at how popular Jerry Springer got or how crude pro wrestling became) so her fantasy body wasn't really put under the microscope because it was actually celebrated. Fast forward to the early to mid 2000s with the nation becoming much more conservative (Bush's fault?), and you slowly see her breasts looking a lot smaller. What the hell? A digital breast reduction?! Boooo!! Her knockers are still what would translate into "huge" in the real world, but she lost that Jessica Rabbit-like appeal in the process. Lara's a video game character, so there's no reason why she should have to explain having funbags the size of dwarf planet. Sheesh!

In my opinion, they jumped the shark with her. With a drastic redesign that didn't even make Lara seem like herself anymore, a film sequel that bombed in the box office, and several horrible video games in the Dreamcast and Playstation 2 era, she lost all the positive steam she had going in her favor. She's still hot though (love the accent!), and her contributions to gaming can not be ignored.

4. Chun-Li (Street Fighter series)

The original head bitch in charge (Chun-Li was the first selectable female character in a fighting game, ever), whose name literally translates into "spring beauty," comes in at number four on the countdown. Debuting in 1991 in Capcom's record setting Street Fighter II as the only female to be found in the game, Chun-Li has blazed a trail for all other femme fatales to attempt to follow.

True, there are tons of other chicks in the Street Fighter lore -- a lot of which I wanted to include on the countdown (Cammy and Crimson Viper couldn't make the cut, sorry), but there's something about Chun-Li that make her deceptively attractive and very interesting. While her initial design was pretty bleh, by the time she had reached the Alpha series in the later half of the 90s and wore a tighter outfit, one noticable trait had become a standard for her for years to come: thunder thighs! Praise the lawd and witness the fitness!

Homegirl is thick, to put it bluntly (is Chun short for "chunky"?) -- and down here in the south, that's a wonderful sight to behold LOL. While her massive thighs have been poked at in Street Fighter IV by Crimson Viper (check her win quote against her), the male population has spoken, and while we'll never officially see for ourselves, we can all agree Chun-Li probably has the phattest booty to ever come out of China. Back that thang up, baby!

While Chun-Li is a legendary and iconic character, I can not look over how horribly her movie was handled earlier in 2009. It's like the Street Fighter series can't catch a damn break in cinema or something. I agree, the storyline in the game is a bit hokey, but how hard is it to mess up really? And am I supposed to buy Kristen Kreuk's flat pancake booty as Chun-Li? She barely looks Asian! SMH... These things knock her down a few pegs on the countdown.