[The Aberrant Gamer is a weekly, somewhat NSFW column by Leigh Alexander, dedicated to the kinks and quirks we gamers tend to keep under our hats-- those predilections and peccadilloes less commonly discussed in conventional media. Hentai gaming, fantasy fanfics, twisted psychology and notes from the dark side-- we'll expose, discuss and enjoy the delicious underbelly of our beloved gaming universe.]

-The gaming audience is notable for being as much a cultural network as it is a simple community of consumers—as such, we tend to be highly interested in previews as much as we are in experiences currently available.

And we tend to be just as interested in reading and discussing games we may never even get to play—whether that’s because development houses have no plans to publish a title in our home country, or because the game itself is vaporware that might never actually materialize, no matter how interested we are in it.

As such, it’s not unusual for Japan-only titles to light up the discussion boards and blogs—as an extension, our community grapevine often goes miles toward selling imports. As an example, the Japan-only Ouendan games are enormously popular with the Western audience—rather than direct ports, however, we have Elite Beat Agents, where the music and cultural references are less specific to Japan. As I understand, those cultural references that might not have translated well were the reason for making a game very similar to Ouendan rather than simply translating it—nonetheless, my experience with other gamers suggests to me that a direct translation, say, of the recent Ouendan 2 would sell very well here, on the heels of the popularity of the original Ouendan and EBA both.

In other words, a game without English language, and as culturally foreign as you please, can still generate a lot of buzz on our shores. Certainly, some Japan-only titles never so much as create a blip on our radar; it takes a certain special something to generate high levels of interest and regular coverage around a game we’ll probably have limited-to-no actual exposure to.

A certain, special something—like the ability to feel up high school girls.

-So it is with Doki Doki Majo Shinpan, a new Japanese DS game whose title could translate to “Heartthrob Witch Trial.” The basic idea’s simple and cheap—you’re a young boy tasked by an archangel to discover which among your classmates are witches, an obligation you can only fulfill, of course, by touching them, thus raising their heart rate (“doki doki,” essentially, is onomatopoeia for the bump-bump of a heartbeat). How getting your nubile classmates into a pulse-pounding lather determines their witch-hood or lack thereof is unclear—and nobody cares.

Those watching the “witch-toucher” closely point hopefully to a new English website as evidence that SNK might release the game on other shores. As to gameplay, the site advises: “So thoroughgoing touching, stares in the face, just do everything and use all techniques you have to investigate. Well, sometimes you have to remember to smile to them or maybe use some goods you have.”

-The screenshots show pictures of stunned adolescents in short skirts, with a panel of icons including a hand, a finger, eyes and lips superimposed for the player’s use—it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why the audience is so interested in tearing away the fragile membrane of mystery and getting into this game. Using some goods they have, no doubt.

Other facets of gameplay include a fairly standard “search mode”—players will “hang around the school-yard, school-grounds, and downtown, searching for the information and evidence of witches.” The screenshots show titillating desk-searching gameplay, and of course, dialogue with each Technicolor-haired pixie.

And when a likely suspect has been located? Well, it’s time, of course, to do the witch-check palpation-for-palpitation. Unfortunately, it’s not that easy—hence the “Magic Battle Mode.” Apparently the potential witches won’t all be so easily touched (you think?)—“so sometimes necessary to resort to violence.”

Doki Doki Majo Shinpan has all of the structural hallmarks of a dyed-in-the-wool Hentai game—panoply of lovely potential victims, done-to-death high school exploration mechanic, and familiar mini-game of sorts, often used as a device to make the player work for the real action. It's even got the reluctant participant who must sometimes be coerced. The protagonist’s familiarly characterized as “a little perverse and proud to be a bad boy.” And regardless of the game’s story, he’s advised to “make witches submit in the name of justice.”

-Aside from the obvious, there may be other reasons why Doki Doki Majo Shinpan has raised so much interest in the community. One of them is the notable revelation that one of the “suspects” is a boy. A pretty, effeminate, hospitalized boy, but nonetheless male. This is an extreme rarity in the genre of H-gaming and “relationship sims” alike. The only H-game I’ve personally seen where your protagonist may have sexual contact with a man is the X-Change series, wherein as I discussed in a previous column, your body has become that of a female.

An overt Hentai game—specifically, one with sex scenes—probably wouldn’t enjoy this same cult curiosity in our audience. Logical inference suggests that this is because we’ve seen so many of them before, largely (perhaps unfairly) as a subject of ridicule or embarrassment. Another reason? Perhaps it’s a case where the suggestion of sexuality is more compelling than an openly exploitive H-game.

Comparisons are often made when discussing Japanese versus Western culture, and the general perception seems to be that social norms are much more rigid, numerous and specific in the East. On the other hand, perhaps it’s because of this perceived restrictiveness that the outlets for expression of aberrance are, in kind, more numerous and extreme. As an example, cartoons shown to children in Japan often have to be edited for supposed propriety before being aired here in the States.

The manifold “deviant” sexual niches of Japan are often sources of fascination, morbid curiosity and humor here—things like tentacle rape and breast bondage are often held up as examples, albeit extreme ones, of apparent sociological differences between Japan and the West. Upskirt shots of girls who appear to be underage would be broadly censored from any facet of the American consumer market—but Japanese geeks can get it in just about any entertainment medium they like.

-So Doki Doki Majo Shinpan becomes appealing to us on more than one level. First, it’s foreign kink that flouts our own norms, providing molestation-lite of underage girls—and yet avoids somewhat stereotypical extremes that would make the average gamer more uncomfortable with expressing curiosity. For example, it may feel more acceptable to some in the gaming audience to admit they’d like to try loli-groping in Doki Doki Majo Shinpan than it’d be to admit (to themselves and to others) they were interested in, say, RapeLay, a graphic and by most standards disturbing subway rape simulator.

Finally, it’s a game that we have months to wonder whether we’ll see on our shores. It’s a valid suspicion that many in the audience would be much more reticent about their interest in this game if it was actually available to purchase—after all, how would you feel ringing it up at GameStop?

My bet’s on no port, English website or not. Look at the bright-and-sunny box art—if parents can be dense enough to grab more forbidding-looking games for their inappropriately-aged kids, you can imagine how many weekend dads will try and bring home a pink-haired cartoon witch to their elementary-school daughters. It looks like a kids’ game, and that’s dangerous. Moreover, most of the depicted characters are jailbait-age—that’s to say, even somewhat progressively-minded people probably won’t refrain from taking issue with stroking the inner thighs of a 14-year-old cheerleader with a stylus—even if the translation takes the usual, transparent step of boldly identifying all the petite members of a junior high school class as 18 years of age.

Frequently, censorship or social umbrage deprives certain audiences of the opportunity to actually experience something revolutionary. Try as I might, I can’t identify any particular deep and abiding reason why we must insist on experiencing Doki Doki Majo Shinpan.

Then again, it’s high school girls, plus touch screen, plus short skirts. What better reason do you need?

[Leigh Alexander is a blogger at her Sexy Videogameland site and reviewer for outlets including Paste Magazine. She can be reached at leigh_alexander1 AT yahoo DOT com. Thanks to Dengeki Online for screenshots used in this column.]