I feel the time has come to return to a topic that has not been touched upon for some time, yet is still near and dear to my heart, and the hearts of many others: video games.

Video games and I go way back. I’m talking to the glory days of Nintendo, of course. We all grew up with the system, and the systems soon began to grow with us. I was cut off just as N64 was released, but I still had the occasional love for the game. Hell, I still remember the 30-free-lives code for Contra (Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, B, A, Select, Start).

Now, gaming and I have only gotten seriously reacquainted very recently. And I must admit, things seem to be going very well for the game industry today. The systems have gotten more sophisticated, as have the games. The gameplay is more intricate, the storylines are, for the most part, more mature and engaging, and with the advent of online gaming, everything appears to be on the up and up.

Or so it would seem.

This brings us to the subject of today’s discussion: Dead Or Alive: Beach Volleyball. The premise of the game? The girls from the popular Dead Or Alive fighting game series stop kicking the shit out of one another and strip down to very suggestive swimwear, and giggle and jiggle in the sun with a rousing volleyball tournament.

Rousing indeed, to the average, socially deprived 16-year-old male gamer. Or at least that’s what the ads would lead you to believe. You know the one I’m talking about. A group of about eight or nine teenage boys gathering around the X-Box and marveling at the extreme detail given to the CGI curves of each girl in the game, each of them wearing surgically irremovable grins. At the end of the commercial, each boy places a small pillow over his lap, still unable to lose that hapless grin. This is only a few steps up (or down, depending on how you look at it) from the commercial for the last DOA game (which actually featured fighting), in which one boy explained his love for the game by simply saying, “She kicks high.”

Y’know, the more you think about it, video games have gotten to the point where they’re like any other form of mass media in this great nation, or, for that matter, on this planet. I’m talking the usual suspects: television, film, music, literature, etc. When they’re really good, they’re not only entertaining, but also compelling, thought provoking, and in some rare cases, enlightening. These are the Seinfeld’s, the Schindler’s Lists, the Beatles, and the Catcher in the Ryes of our time. But then there’s the flipside of the coin, the ugly world where businesspeople and greed mongers use the title “artist” as a smokescreen to produce material so rank, so putrid, and so pointless, it’s an insult to the human intellect. These works rely on cheap tactics such as gross-out tactics, gratuitous sex and violence, or overblown tear-jerking moments to try and evoke a reaction. These are the Bachelorettes, the Kangaroo Jack’s, the Limp Bizkits, and the (insert random Danielle Steele novel name here)’s of the world. There’s a major fork in the road on this one, and people tend to drift either one way or another with occasional fence sitting. And video games are no different.

It never ceases to amaze me that some games can provide not only stimulating graphics and gameplay, but also manage to generate pretty intricate, engaging storylines, as well. Take, for example, the Metal Gear Solid series. Aside from great espionage-style tactics and tricks, there’s also a fairly deep storyline here (for a mere video game at least). Everything from genetic engineering, to the state of freedom, to fate, to loneliness is covered in this series. It’s well written, albeit a bit far-fetched at times. But still, there’s an underlying message to the games, and they’re packed with metaphor and allegory. This in sharp contrast to DOA, which apparently conveys the very powerful message of, “kick the shit out of your opponent, then go strip down and play some volleyball.”

What mystifies me the most is that this game has scored an “M” rating, meaning that it’s intended for mature audiences. Why, because it features a bunch of Barbie dolls bouncing around and spiking volleyballs? I could understand a “T” for teen rating, but “M” is just plain silly. There’s no nudity, foul language, or overabundance of gore, but God forbid any of the girls show some CGI tanline. That’s just too hot for TV!

Besides, it’s a volleyball game. Who really wants to play that? I think it goes without saying that if it weren’t for the suggestive nature of the selectable volleyballers in the game, no one would’ve given this one a second thought.

I call this the “Tomb Raider Effect.” You know what I’m talking about. The mega-popular game featuring the busty female answer to Indiana Jones. The same game that spawned three sequels (with one more on the way), toys, a horrible movie, and a series of websites depicting the heroine in the nude.

To be fair, I don’t think the folks at Eidos set out to accomplish this task. But they sure knew to strike while the iron was hot and milk the hell out of Lara Croft’s statuesque figure. Ultimately, style overcame substance (as is normally the case with art and media), as was evident by not only the flimsy movie, but by the last actual game in the series. Since Lara’s busted onto the scene (pun intended), we’ve been treated to such nonsense as DOA’s sad excuse for a spin-off, and BMX XXX, a game which apparently features tons of stark naked, impossibly endowed bike riding gals performing stunts in the extreme sports vein. Call it Acclaim’s last-ditch effort to stay in the game.

Not surprising, considering that Acclaim was also involved in another sordid affair which spawned a number of pretenders to the throne. We’re talking, of course, about Mortal Kombat. Yes, we all loved the game when it came out. We all clamored around the arcade machines, struggling to find that elusive Fatality, itching to uppercut our opponent into the Pit. We were young and naïve, but we knew that violence was cool. Boy, were we fucking stupid.

To be fair, the original Mortal Kombat was fun and had some neat tricks, but lacked the variety of a Street Fighter II. All the characters were essentially the same, just with a few different special moves per fighter. I was always partial to the Japanese Anime-inspired fighter games. I was a hopeless SF junkie, and had to have all the upgrades, no matter how little things changed from game to game. It wasn’t long before I was also hooked on the Fatal Fury series as well. And I’d be remiss if I didn’t admit that Capcom vs. SNK 2 for PS2 hasn’t caught my eye.

The only thing that MKI had on any of those games was lotsa blood and cool looking Fatalities. Honestly, I thought MKII was a big step up in terms of a sequel, but then MK3 was released, and the series was beginning to show signs of wear and tear. Some old faces, mostly newer, lackluster ones, and Fatalities so inconceivable in their concept (and considering this is Mortal Kombat we’re talking about here, that’s pretty fucking inconceivable), that they no longer inspired “oohs” and “aahs,” but rather peels of laughter.

After that, Tekken took over as the reigning king of fighters, and with MK4, Midway tried to jump on the 3-D fighting game with lukewarm results. To me, that was the death knell of Mortal Kombat (the second movie didn’t help much, either). But not before some serious damage was done.

After that, every damn fighting game had to have blood and guts. And creative deaths. There was Time Killers, the arcade stinker that featured warriors from the past, present, and distant future, and the ability to amputate your opponents arms, and decapitate them to boot. Let’s not forget Killer Instinct. Originally intended as Nintendo’s launch pad into the 64-bit realm, it featured stunning graphics, a revolutionary combo system, and a pretty decent storyline. However, the fact that the creators insisted on putting lame MK-inspired Fatalities into the mix kept this one from being an all-time classic. We won’t get into the sequel. And then there was Way Of The Warrior for 3DO. A bad game for a languishing system is what this was. I never owned a 3DO, nor have I ever played one. But this game’s reputation was so infamous, that it still carries a stigma to this day.

Having said that, even though Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance is available for PS2 now, and is supposedly far more advanced than any previous title in the series’ history, I refuse to give it the benefit of the doubt. That game has simply done too much damage. It certainly helped revise the arcade scene, but also caused it’s crash and burn.

Now you’re probably wondering how I can knock DOA for it’s reliance on T&A, and slam MK for it’s horrible influence (on games, not children), and yet still be a confessed Vice City addict. My response to this is simple. The GTA series has managed to create very cool, elaborate, and above all else, wonderfully non-linear worlds where anything is possible. I could play Mortal Kombat II for hours. But once I’d unlocked all the Fatalities, Friendships, hidden characters, and tricks (which, although were many in number, were not hard to unlock), I had little desire to pick it up again. GTA is different in that there’s always something new, always something fun. And even though it is violent fun at the core, it’s still great fun, far more so than any Fatality. It’s a whole new world with a variety of schlock to keep me occupied. You can already see GTA’s influence spreading with something like The Getaway, but these games will go down in history because they are truly revolutionary in terms of the gameplay, detail, and lasting appeal. Not because of bloody crime stories.

And in the meantime, this bloody volleyball game may be jiggling its assets to decent numbers now, but guaranteed it’ll be in the bargain bin someday right next to Mortal Kombat 4 and Tomb Raider II.

Goodnight, and have a pleasant tomorrow.