WARNING: This feature contains suggestive sexual references and at least ONE picture of a lady's gorilla salad.

Have you seen the film Brainstorm ? Christopher Walken is in it. It's about a group of scientists who discover a way of recording people's experiences onto tapes. Wire people up, and get them to do stuff. These tapes can then be played back though some weird headpiece so that other "users" can also experience these “feelings”.

Apart from the inevitable collapse of the whole experiment after some stupid bird tapes herself dying, someone at some point films themselves having sex with a nubile teenager. And of course, said tape does the rounds, and some old boy basically ODs on the tape after putting it on loop. (Christ, imagine that? What a way to go).

“You got me in a vagina kind of mood…”

Also, have a look at Sylvester Stallone's movie, Demolition Man . Set in the future, it pictures a scene where couples no longer actually physically interact, they just don wired-up kitchen colanders and look at each other and have “mental” sex.

But what a great idea, eh? Truly interactive porn/sex? I'm sure there's some smutty American DVD somewhere where you can decide what your favourite porn star does next, in a crappy, Night Trap sort of way – but it hardly constitutes controlling the actual action, does it? For me, the most interactive entertainment we have is games, so why hasn't the games industry embraced porn yet?

Of course, there are many examples of the industry dabbling with adult material in games we've played over the years…

For starters there's the ZX Spectrum. Oh yes, dear Rodents, the 8-bit filth was there if only you knew where to look. In fact even now, what do you think the number one game download is from www.worldofspectrum.org ? Manic Miner ? Hungry Horace ? Kokotoni Wilf ? Nope. It's Samantha Fox Strip Poker . 100% True.

Stealth filth.

Fast-forward a few years, and take Capcom's Street Fighter 2 as an example. Is that Chun Li's minge you get a flash of when she does that spinning kick? You try the move again and again, you're not entirely sure… “Whoa. Hey Butthead, I just saw Cammy's nipple!”. We were all looking for it, weren't we? I'd even suggest that this secret sexiness formed part of the game's success.

DOA Extreme Beach Volleyball is of course, awash with filth. It oozes from the screen. Volleyball Sim or Soft-Porn Teenage (or is that thirtysomething) Fantasy-Fest? You decide. It is undoubtedly a beautiful game, but if it was full of the male characters from DOA in jockey y-fronts and tight lycra, or old hags with saggy jugs, false teeth and stubbly legs, you wouldn't be half as interested would you? Well, WOULD YOU?

More recent examples of shameless exploit-o-smut peddling include Duke Nukem 3D – specifically, the pole dancers. You can throw money at them and say, “Shake it Baby!”. Fantastic. A chance to be sexist in a world where no-one knows about it apart from me – the player . (And us, now you've confessed. – Ed).

“Hold on a minute. I'm… I'm being exploited , here”.

And of course, there is GTA Vice City . Steal a flash car, pull up alongside a slutty-looking Doris . She gets in, drive to a quiet grassy knoll, park up, and watch in amazement as the suspension creaks rhythmically as you (presumably) shag her brains out. Just like in real life – your money goes down but your health goes up. Great!

Disturbingly, in both examples ( GTA and Duke Nukem 3D ) you can also kill these women. And oddly, I would suggest that every one of you reading this did precisely that – without batting an eyelid. There is probably some deeply intellectual moral point to be made here. But I'll leave that to that man in Edge Magazine.

There are others. I could ramble on about Leisure Suit Larry , Lara Croft, Alicia Dragoon, Pocket Gal, the kissy women on the podium of Hyper Sports ...

But the best example of shameless, toe-curling abuse of the female form in videogames has to be the seminal arcade hit Miss World Nude '96 . You can check it out for yourself on MAME. Hiding behind an innocent pseudo Amidar -type affair, is a wank-fest of gargantuan proportions. After selecting your favourite contestant from a choice of the Latin, Asian, European or American variety, you are taken to the game itself which involves unveiling bits of the screen to reveal the portrait underneath, avoiding the nasties as you go. Uncovering over 75% of the screen successfully reveals the high-res picture of said lady in various positions.

”Oh! I've fallen…”

But here's the clever bit: she's got her gash out. It defies belief, really, when you see it for the first time*, but it's not hard to see the (albeit horribly sexist) thinking behind the game. At a very basic level, it appeals to the basest male desire to see and interact with naked flesh. The developers used sex in its rawest state to sell an otherwise rather ordinary game.

And then there's the recent addition of vibrating joypads to the home gaming scene. Do I even need to elaborate here? You've thought it. I've thought it. Some of us might have even gone through with it. ‘Nuff said.

My point is – when? When will the industry have a top-shelf category? Sitting alongside shoot-‘em-ups, platformers, racers, RPGs, first-person-shooters, sports sims… Wank-‘em-ups? Strokers?

With graphics growing more and more life-like, and peripherals getting more and more ridiculous (Tony Hawk's skateboard controller thingies, fishing rods, dance mats…), surely it's only a matter of time. Software-wise, the technology could easily cope. Look at Riddick , Doom 3 and Half Life 2 – photo-realistic, fleshy textures with shadows and light and detail and everything. And within 5 years, we'll all be driving through an exact replica of London blasting away actual motion captured perfect representations of the Met's finest in The Getaway 5.

Phwooooooooooar, eh? London Sex Shops. So appealing. Soon, you'll be
able to pretend go-in on the PS3 and that. And, er, order a Tandoori.

I wouldn't mind betting that there are already some very interesting pervy graphic routines doing the rounds on the dev kits.

Picture it. You have your special controller in your hands, another special controller ‘down there' (oh come on, you'd love it) complete with vibro function. You are looking at a perfect graphical representation of Jenna Jameson gyrating in front of you, begging you to bone her to within an inch of her life. And there it is – your weapon. Looking like the rocket launcher from Quake , sticking out from the bottom of the screen – and it's your duty to satisfy the moaning Jenna. You dirty old stud.

There must be a market for pornography to be more interactive than it is, and surely games consoles and PCs could, one day soon, provide that interface needed to marry the two – in a way that isn't derogatory or abusive or whatever. And all in the comfort of your own home. I can't imagine these products being called ‘games' in the way we know them, but hell, it might even bring the industry a bigger audience than it has already – look what pornography did for the VCR and the Internet.

It's coming my friends, it's coming.**

AEROFLOTT, October 2004.

**Name that film!

*Incidentally, once you've got over the shock of seeing it for the first time, I defy you not to have the urge to go on to ‘do' all the other women to see what their respective bums and beavers are like.

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