Jus' a Quick Plug Of My Let's Play!

Hey folks, I'm doing a Let's Play of Codename: Iceman on my koobert youtube user, so feel free to watch it of you are a fan of watching other people play through early 90s Sierra On-Line games.

If you aren't, well, that's understandable.

Bears In Games - Which WRPG Makes The Best Bear?

Unlike the set characters found in Japanese RPGs, western RPGs almost exclusively deal with created characters, with modifiable skill sets, gender, background, and most of all, looks. The downside is that this can lead to lifeless tabla rasas on which you are supposed to project yourself, egotist that you are. The upside? Big hot bears in RPGs! Who doesn't want that? So, firstly, we look at Bethesda's shake at the hugely popular Fallout franchise. How hot can a man wandering the nuclear wastes get? (If Mad Max's leather bound bears are any help, plenty hot.)Then we head over to the fantastic futurespace that is BioWare's Mass Effect, and finally check out the creepy troll-things that you can create with Bethesda's Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion!

Bears In Games - Musclebear Smorgasbord Extraordinaire

Johnny takes a quick look at games that feature men of the muscular persuasion; first there's Pit-Fighter, Atari's arcade classic from 1990 which used the then-impressive digitized graphics of musclebears, beefcake models, biker bears, and men in tight gear aplenty in a bare-chested brawling. Could anything be more heterosexual? Then we move to Altered Beast, the Genesis launch title that devotes itself to getting your big muscleman as pumped as possible before donning his were-whatever fursuit. Then Johnny takes on reviewing a hard to find Japanese PC release, Ie, Tatemasu! by Underground Campaign. As you can tell from the screenshots, this is unlike anything he's looked at before: it's a hardcore construction simulator. Keeping in mind load bearing pillars, wood density, and Tokyo Building Code, you must create a house within a strict time limit, while maintaining very, very, very close relations to your coworkers. Very close. Things get sticky, and you're up against a wall against the mounting pressure of time limits and budget overflows, but still worth playing. Repeatedly. 30 seconds to five minutes at a time. To wrap it all up, there's Punch Out!!, a game Johnny's so incredibly bad at that words fail to describe it. Oh, yes, there's also big bears, musclemen, and a possible appearance of the hanky code on Bear Hugger.

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Johnny's Been A Guest Star

Yep, when Johnny hasn't been busy making DVDs and Blu-Rays, or working on the BearsInGames podcast, he's been engaging in some other podcasts!

You can hear him in two episodes of the fantastically vulgar That's What She Said Podcast, as hosted by the never-exacty-polite Christian, Frank, and Brian, and has been harassing and generally hassling the fine folks over at The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly Films, another great podcast for in-depth-yet-hilarious takes on the business we call show. Gack. He's even had a voice mail on Gamers With Jobs, which means that he's only one degree of separation away from the inimitable Jeff Green.

Also been beefing up the number of ways that you can get BearsInGames, including:

- Facebook, the fan page for BearsInGames (Plus it doubles as a great facebook list of nerdy gamer bears and cubs).

- Twitter, @johnnybarnstorm and @bearsingames, at least, until they shape up their servers enough so he can trust @bearsingames to work properly.

- XBL BearsInGames

- bearsingames@gmail.com is a good email address to use!

Bears In Games - The Gayest 16-Bit Games Of All Time (That Aren't Cho Aniki)

Just what is the gayest 16-bit game of all time? CHO ANIKI! But, that's a bit of a foregone conclusion. And at BearsInGames, we like betting on the underdogs. So we're counting down the top five gayest games during the wonderful era that brought us the Blast Processing of the Sega Genesis, the Mode 7 scaling and rotation of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, and the... Johnny Turboness... of the Turbografx-16! Watch in awe as we look at beefcake Boris Vallejo paintings, chubby bear giants in metal briefs, bear thugs with crotches the size of cantaloupes, rescuing Madonna during her Like a Virgin phase, the precursor to Soul Calibur, bad 90s press junket commercials with far too many crotch shots, secret passages into XXL London, the single gayest secret character of any game ever, and the best sprite-based animation you've ever seen! Plus even more Haggar!

Bears In Games Episode 5 - The State Of Gays in Games

How are gays portrayed in modern video games? Johnny takes a look at what gays look like to game designers, and the hows and whys of their use in the games we play. We check out the Just Us Guys store owners in Aruze's Shadow Hearts: From the New World, Makoto from FROM SOFTWARE's Enchanted Arms, Jann from SEGA's Valkyria Chronicles, and Bernie and Brucie from Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto IV. How do they stack up? Are gaymers going to enjoy their video game counterparts? Are any of them big burly bear men? Don't get your hopes up.



You can follow BearsInGames on twitter with the user @JohnnyBarnstorm. Sadly, I did make a @BearsInGames but have had problems consistently accessing this profile. Dang it.

Got any ideas? Feedback? Email me at bearsingames@gmail.com!

Next time: The Top Five Gayest 16-Bit Games That Aren't Cho Aniki!

New Digs, New Gamertag, New Show

Hey guys. Just wanted to let you know that I went dark for a while because I got a new job, new digs, and heck, even went to a new country. But I'm back and working on a new episode! In the mean time, feel free to add my new gamertag to your XBL list!

gamertag: BearsInGames