I'm a bad man.
This isn't news to most of you--I've constantly been talking about how I'm a strange, perverse little being for years now.
What brought on this latest bout of self-loathing is the feeling that, for the first time, I'm pimping out my degeneracy to other people, who are fascinated by the lengths at which I talk about it.
Take Jes and Ian of Mac Hall. They're the catalysts of this anyway. I was hanging out with them one day, when Jes says "I wanna try a Japanese dating game. Just to say I've done it. To see what all the fuss is about."
"Alright," I started reluctantly, "I have a few you can probably borrow. Is your PS2 modded?"
"No," she returned, "it's not."
Uh oh. You see, given that 99.9% of Japanese PC "dating" games are, shall we say, not for children, I was understandably nervous about letting her borrow some of the, ah, less family-friendly members of my collection. Admittedly, that collection is smaller and less offensive than those of many people I know, especially since I play most of these games for actual gameplay instead of quality/quantity of porn (there, I said it, no more euphemisms for the rest of this rant), I play them because I like mech combat games and side-scrolling beat-'em-ups and SRPGs.
So anyway, I showed up to poker night with at least 8 games of variable virtue (some for PS2, some for PC) in tow. For some reason, some dramatically nerdy bone in my body decided that my left hand would carry all the porn games and the right hand would carry the clean ones, and my first words were "I appear before you as an avenging angel, with one hand bearing salvation and the other hand perdition."
Jes was having none of that, and she clapped her hands together delightedly before exclaiming "Yay! You brought me porn!"
That's about when discomfort set in.
It got worse over time. Ian decided that he wanted to play Baldr Force, since the mech combat system was more his speed than Jes', while other people have started harassing me for my games. It's like being some sort of lascivious leprechaun, but it's not a pot of gold at the end of my rainbow, just games that may or may not be suitable for playing in public places. And people are going after it with as much enthusiasm as they would go after a pot o' gold, if not more.
It didn't help when my old arcade buddy Opus Croakus tried out Duel Savior (HA! A work-safe link, that's a new one for this rant) for the PS2, which not only caught his fancy, but that of his wife. Honestly, it's nothing new for his wife to be interested in my porn--she wanted to play Baldr Force for its porn when we were interested in the gameplay back in college--but it's simply disturbing that the two of them play the game together and cheer for the "porn triggers" every time a scene has been obviously cut out of the all ages version. Opus is also drooling over Baldr Bullet Revellion, which is coming up (and is the image in today's rant). I'm not sure whether I'm glad for a comrade-in-arms or if I'm kind of disturbed by the fact that his wife will go behind his back and replay all the porn after he skips it to get to the fighting. I don't claim that I understand couples. Especially those two.
The real moment of truth came when I was talking to friends about how to approach this rant, when they told me "Really, Dom, it's not about how you're a bad person. We know that. We should figure out ways you're a good guy! Like, uh..."
Several minutes of awkward silence ensued.
