The 7 scariest sex-game devices

Despite the porn star-like physiques of most game characters, sex and videogames don’t actually go together. Yes, we’re past the era of razor-sharp pixel nipples, but even the best visuals are just that: visual. Sex, simply put, requires touching. When holodecks finally happen, we have no doubt Cheerleader/Fireman Wrestling Orgy will captivate us so completely that society will grind to a halt and the human race will end. But until then, true sex and games just won’t completely mesh.

Thankfully, there are a few developers out there determined to prove us wrong by dreaming up one spectacularly flaccid electronic satisfaction contraption after another. Unless you’re the type to be aroused by jumper cables and a blender, most of these will seem tragically un-sexy – but we’re thinking that’s better for your health anyhow.

1. The USB Masturbation Machine

In an ideal world there would be one rule: "If the only socket available to you is USB and you're not a Borg, you don't get to have sex." The designers at the spectacularly suitably named game developer Overflow disagree, and developed an actual USB Jerking Machine.

If you're wondering how to play a game with that, you're doing irreversible damage to your synapses. Also: it's a PC "graphic visual novel game", which - to someone, somewhere - apparently sounds better than "cartoon porn image gallery." It's called Cross Days and features an ensemble cast of mostly underage-looking schoolgirls, anime art, chapter-style cut-scenes and a high school setting. It's like Trauma Team but even more childish, the absolute last adjective you want in a sex game.

Horrifyingly, of all the aspects of gaming - from fighting games pitting masterful male ninja against bra-allergic strippers, to RPGs where female motivation runs the full spectrum from "helpless damsel" to "helpless damsel who casts Magic when the male lead tells her to" - it's the electro-genital jerk-mo-tron makers who took a stand for equality of the sexes. Because there's a USB dildo for the same game.

2. Gaming Underwear

Never have "well-meaning" and "tragically doomed" collided so closely or hilariously as in JennyLC's "Intimate Controllers":  a bra and boxer shorts armed with touch-pads to allow erotic game control.  It is recommended you not think about how a suitably … floppy … male player could dual-wield both garments for advanced-self-control. Also try not to laugh at the phrase "erotic game control," or the insane idea of a couple reaching the half-naked stage and deciding the absolute best thing they could do next was clumsily murder Mario while pawing at each other.

Even in the best possible circumstances these things are erotic injuries waiting to happen.  2-player gaming gets intense, and mashing breasts like an emergency stop button is unlikely to set the right mood - never mind the fact that JennyLC seems to think "halfway down the outside of the thigh" is a male erogenous zone on par with the nipple. Add the fact that videogames can train real instinctual reactions: we don't think developing the quicktime crisis response of "Hit your partner in the crotch" is a good idea.

3. The Terrifying Japanese Boob Claw Machine

Here’s a twist on the classic “objectifying women” theme – a game that actually turns breasts into separate objects. It then puts those objects into a machine armed with robotic claws that demands money. If there's a Nobel Prize for Misogyny, the creator wins it and - for the sake of the species - we hope he enjoys it alone. Because any woman who enters his house is going to find herself halfway between a wet dream and a Saw movie.

You could unveil this at any Modern Art Gallery and get famous, incite outrage, and probably find yourself murdered by feminists all in one go, and that would still be the closest you got to a woman.  It's also a perfect analogy for the players - because, just as with any claw game, they're never going to successfully grab one.

Still, at least that little claw enjoys his job!

4. The Mouse Mat of Shame

The Record of Agarest War is a new and improved attempt at tracking pedophiles in the wild. At least, that's what we hope, because otherwise someone thought "What Isometric Combat Games really need is cartoon nudity" and released this trailer for real. This is the North American trailer, for those who still think the Pacific acts as a shield against sexual insanity.

The game features tactical combat, sex, and not one character who could legally buy alcohol in this country. A major gameplay gimmick is "Soul Breeding" (since mentioning real breeding with people this age is illegal in most states) where you romance a girl in one level to create characters for the next. It's like the makers decided their audience were so lazy they wouldn't even switch to their browser for Japanese porn. Having made that breakthrough they realized that "shame" was no longer a problem, leading to the "Really Naughty Limited Edition." Which included this.

Yes, that's a mouse-mat with breasts. No, you don't use a mouse with the Xbox, but the makers can predict perfectly not only how their target market has a PC, but exactly how many alphabetized folders of naked cartoons* are on the hard drive, and just how important their wrists are for their love lives.

As a mouse pad, though, it is comfy. Gotta admit.

*It really isn't any better when you call it "hentai"