It's just not fair. Girls get to play with adorable animals in the Littlest Pet Shop, put together outfits in Nintendo's Style Savvy, and now they get to dance hip hop, jazz, ballet, and salsa with Dance Sensation!, while the boys are all busy playing Blood Death Kill Game number three-hundred and forty-five. Yes, gender specific games annoy me.

"Dance is an incredibly popular activity for young girls yet there is an absence of dance products available for this demographic," said Gui Karyo, Executive Vice President of Operations, Majesco Entertainment. "Dance Sensation! was specifically designed for this audience and its combination of dance styles lets female players perform and actually learn real dance moves as they play."

Male players, on the other hand, just couldn't handle it.

It's not that I really want to dance. My mother owned a dancing school for most of my life, and try as she might, she couldn't get more out of me than being the master of ceremonies for one of her recitals. I am mostly outraged on behalf of my brother Richard. His dance performed to the theme from "Fame" still brings a tear to my eye to this very day, and I'm sure he'll appreciate me bringing it up here.

Back to the game at hand, Dance Sensation! features more than 160 motion-captured dance moves and the ability to create your own dance routines and customize your dancer with various costumes and unlockable hairstyles. It's got licensed music, Wii Motion Plus support, and a special device that electrocutes the player if it detects a penis.

Okay, I might have made up that last one. Dance Sensation! is heading to the Wii in April of 2010.

The Hasbro / EA partnership is fully realized today with the launch of Littlest Pet Shop Online, an immersive online world filled with animals desperately struggling to keep from being crushed under the weight of their own massive skulls. The game is all about decorating, customization, and of course, mini-games, offering fun for "girls" whether they opt to play for free or buy a subscription for $6.95 a month.

I'd give you my impressions, but all I get when I try to log in is the hourglass seen above, with an adorable little cat that keeps waving at me until I return to the login prompt. I am hoping that's not the full game. Perhaps it's server queues. Perhaps it's because I am a filthy, stinking boy.

"EA is at an exciting milestone, diving into the realm of virtual worlds for girls with the launch of LITTLEST PET SHOP ONLINE," said Chip Lange, General Manager of EA's Hasbro Division. "LITTLEST PET SHOP ONLINE is an incredible game and community destination, as well as an environment that parents know they can trust. We're delighted to offer LITTLEST PET SHOP fans a new and exciting way to connect online with friends through their favorite pets."

Littlest Pet Shop fans of both genders can also purchase LPSO Pets at participating retailers. LPSO Pets are plushies with sewn-in codes for 30-day premium memberships to the game and special in-game rewards. Maybe one of the rewards includes getting past this hourglass.

So careful that, literally, the headline reads: "Interview with Metal Gear Solid Touch creators Hideo Kojima and its first-timer FEMALE producer".

The red font is not just our emphasis. Look at that photo. Those two kanji, in red, are "josei", meaning "female".

Let's back up and go over this again: the Cliff's Notes version of the title of the article is basically "New Game Made by a Man Named Hideo Kojima and a Woman Whose Name We Will Mention in the Story Itself, Though Not in this Title".

Is this the, uhh, nicest way to report this? Probably not. Maybe they could approach it a bit differently, say "Interview with Hideo Kojima and Some n00b Producer", and then in the article, it could just come out naturally that she's a woman. I mean, there's a photo of her in there, and everything.

Famitsu is typically read by schoolboys in convenient stores before school on Friday. Is this kind of nigh-subliminal sexism really the kind of thing we should be exposing them to? And thus open a thousand avenues to discussion of Japanese society.

[via Famitsu]

I'm presuming that very few of you reading this are young females between the ages of six and 12 who love to karaoke to Leona Lewis' Bleeding Love, or dance to the best of Fergie and Good Charlotte. The songlist is intimidatingly marquee, though, and one of the major takeaways from having the game demoed for me was just how far games have forged in getting the music biz to recognize their power in helping label artists stay relevant to a new audience.

And while Boogie SuperStar might not be a game specifically for you or for me, I think that's pretty important - equally cool was the motion recognition tech.

It'll come bundled with a microphone for pretty standard-looking pitch and note duration-based karaoke, but for the dancing portion, you hold the Wii remote and Nunchuk and do whatever moves you're prompted to do. Simple stuff, like twirling or arm-rolling, but the guy who was demonstrating for me (yeah, a guy) seemed to be able to move really naturally and have the game still clearly understand which moves he was doing.

The fun part was that the on-screen avatar (characters are fully customizable, by the way) did whatever moves the guy was doing even when they were wrong - in other words, rather than lead the player, the on-screen character follows him, always attuned to the player's movements. That was pretty neat.

It looked like the kind of thing my eight year-old girl cousin would love to have at her next birthday party. There are cartoony narrative cutscenes following your chosen glamor girl's rise to stardom, suitably imbued with 'tween girl signposts of coolness and drama, so the game knows its audience well, even when that audience isn't me.

Girl games have a tendency to make us cringe a bit, but I suppose I'd rather have my cousin rocking out with this game than something with Bratz in it. Shudder.

Shadowwalker Struts Her Stuff

Gentlemen, may I introduce you to Phoenix Shadowalker - the new videogame heroine ready to out-sauce Lara Croft as the number one pixellated female icon.

As the eponymous star of the new mobile phone title released this month, hack and slash your way through over 20 levels of classic platform gameplay, in a spooky shadowy world in need of rescuing from hordes of invading ghouls.

Developed and published by Glu, a leading publisher of mobile games, Shadowalker will be available across all games-enabled mobile phones. It boasts graphics and gameplay that matches the best handheld videogames, offering a rich game experience for experienced and casual gamers alike.

Petz and Babyz were software toys for adults, not for kids, at least not explicitly. They ran in a process on top of the Windows desktop, and the pets and babies literally moved around in the foreground, as you worked. They were little creatures and characters you could interact with ....

None of these observations change Ubisoft's strange assertion that girls want shopping and childcare, but the history of the titles make other observations possible. For example, Ubisoft is also just recycling old IP rather than reinventing these games from whole cloth.

Bogost says that the brand value has apparently evaporated, necessitating that miserable deliberate misspelling - but how much value did it have in the first place? And does currency with the inching-towards-menopause market in the 90s really have any impact on how well it does with tweens and teens in 2007 and beyond?

Imagine Game History [Water Cooler Games]

I'm not sure if this is the coolest thing I've ever seen or the saddest. On the one hand, it has two of the biggest video game badass characters ever, first fighting against each other and then teaming up against a common foe. It's got a lightsaber dual, short-circuiting crotches, Matrix references, suggestive girl on girl action, and even a dance number.

All those things are great, but all mashed together along with fighting moves out of a wire-fu martial arts film makes the whole thing feel like a fanfic threw up on camera. Great dance number though. Michael Fahey

GameTrailers User Movie: Haloid [Thanks to Everyone and their Brother]

I came across this little Princess Lea and R2-D2 figurine made by Gentle Giant and was like, "Why is Lara Croft with R2D2?" when I realized that this is the new look for cartoon Lea. So of course, a hunt down to find other babes in gameland ensued and I found QJ's Top 10 List of gaming vixens, which are as follows:

1. The Dead or Alive Girls (Dead or Alive series)
2. Lara Croft (Tomb Raider series)
3. Tifa (Final Fantasy VII)
4. Zelda
5. Chun Li (Street Fighter series)
6. Samus Aran (Metroid series)
7. Morrigan Aensland (Dark Stalkers)-
8. Aerith Gainsborough (Final Fantasy VII)
9. Mai Shiranui (King of Fighters)
10. Maria Renard (Castlevania: Symphony of the Night)

Now I'm not opposed to big breasts or blond hair, I'm just saying if there have been medical breakthroughs in the real world that some of the girls in the digital realm should, I don't know, LOOK DIFFERENT?! Every girl on this list falls under Chun-Li clone or Lara-Croft look-a-like. Kim Phu

Weekend Slowdown Our Top 10 hottest game babes to date [Wii QJ]

We are furthering our efforts to bring more awareness of the female gaming community," says Gamer Girls Radio host, Danger Doll, "This is one of many steps we will take to ensure that developers have the information they need from female gamers to help them market to us better."

The nominees seldom stray from the norm, with a few notable exceptions such as Harvest Moon DS in the Sims category. The categories could use some work as well, as evidenced by Raving Rabbids and Elebits being shoehorned in with the platformers.

They also list Age of Conan in the MMO category, despite the game not being released until at least October of this year, but I'm not so unwise as to question the mystical farseeing powers inherent in the female of the species.

Hit the jump for the full nominee list. Michael Fahey

Nominations for The Girl Gamer Awards Announced today!

Houston, Texas (March 28, 2007) Gamergirlsradio.com, Gameinatrix.com and the KRT Ladies have announced the 2006-2007 nominees for the Girl Gamer Awards. The ladies collected nominations from various female hosted sites and forums, such as Xbox's Gamer ChiX, last month. Today the polls open, and will allow female gamers to vote for their favorite game, genre, and console, via Gameinatrix.com. "We are furthering our efforts to bring more awareness of the female gaming community," says Gamer Girls Radio host, Danger Doll, "This is one of many steps we will take to ensure that developers have the information they need from female gamers to help them market to us better."

The polls will remain open for a month, at which time the winners will be presented with a seal stating the game is "Girl Gamer Approved". Gameinatrix.com also plans to make available the number of votes, the ages of the voters and locale. "This data is imperative to anyone trying to figure out how to market to women. Knowing which games women already love and what they are doing right, will hopefully also help them figure out what they are doing wrong."

To cast your vote please visit www.gameinatrix.com.

And the Nominees are:

Fighter
Fight Night Round 3
Tekken: Dark Resurrection

Platformer
New Super Mario Brothers
Loco Roco
Elebits
Yoshi's Island
Rayman Raving Rabbids

Racing
Burnout: Revenge
Need for Speed:Carbon
Mario Kart

RPG/Action/Adventure
Zelda:Twilight Princess
Dreamfall: The Longest Journey
Oblivion:Elder Scrolls

MMO
Worlds of Warcraft
Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures
Arch Lords
City of Villains
City of Heroes
Eve-Online
Dungeons and Dragons Online

FPS
Gears of War
Rainbow 6 Vegas
Ghost Recon Advanced Warfare
Call of Duty 3

Sims
The Sims 2
Harvest Moon DS
Viva Pinata
Animal Crossing Wild Wild World
Guitar Hero 2

Sports
Wii Sports
Madden 07
Blitz the League 360
Rockstar Table Tennis 2
Top Spin 2

RTS
Age of Empires III
Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle EarthII
Company of Heroes
Supreme commander

Game of the Year
Viva Pinata
The Sims 2
Gears of War
Rainbow 6:Vegas
Ghost Recon Advance Warfare

About Gamer Girls Radio
Gamer Girls Radio, calling itself the "voice" of the female gamer community, originally aired on Gameshout in 2006, gaining an underground following in the gaming community, and have since moved to www.gamergirlsradio.com. Gamer Girls Radio is the first ever of it's kind all female hosted gaming podcasts. New podcasts are aired every Monday. For more information on Gamer Girls Radio contact webmaster@gamergirlsradio.com or visit www.gamergirlsradio.com.

About Gameinatrix.com
Established in 2004, Gameinatrix.com is the internets leading female oriented, gaming reviews and news portal. Gameinatrix.com strives to bridge the gap between developers and gamers. Contact webmaster@gameinatrix.com or visit www.gameinatrix.com for more information.

About KRT Ladies
KRT Ladies is the female division of the KRT Professional gaming clan. KRT Ladies also provides a safe and friendly environment for female gamers. For more information regarding the KRT Ladies, please visit http://knightshome.org .

Of our sample of 200 women, those who played video games on average had sex 4.3 times a week while those who didn't play games only had sex just 3.2 times a week.

Perhaps even more promising for gamers is the fact that many of the women that we interviewed who have only recently started playing games said that they now have sex more often than before.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
13/02/07

Gamers Have Sex More Often!

It's official - women who play video games have sex more often! Gametart, the UK's largest online games rental company, carried out the survey throughout January to see how the recent influx of the likes of Pink PSPs and DS Lites would affect gamers' sex lives across the country.

The results were surprising.

Of our sample of 200 women, those who played video games on average had sex 4.3 times a week while those who didn't play games only had sex just 3.2 times a week.

Perhaps even more promising for gamers is the fact that many of the women that we interviewed who have only recently started playing games said that they now have sex more often than before.

Gamers have never had it so good!

And a tip for Valentines Day: a nice meal and a bottle of wine only last for one night but for only 11.96 you can have games for a month!

Head to www.gametart.com to make this Valentines Day the best ever!

###

This is all we know, but Japanese film studio Shochiku is making an animated Love and Berry. A blurb from the studio's website:

Two 14 year old girls named LOVE and BERRY are trying to enter Magic school. Their task is to make a lonely girl, Yumi happy. They teach Yumi how to dance and have fun dressing up using their magic. Introduced in 2004 as a card game for girls, the popularity has expanded spinning off to books, music CD, dance DVD and other merchandising. Now comes a feature film of this popular franchise.

Yes, Sega will not stop until they have squeezed the last yen out of every girl under 12. Brian Ashcraft

Love and Berry Anime [Anime News Network]

So today I thought I would give some of the readers a treat and post the Wii panty girl video, giving both the perverts and the curmudgeons something to comment on during a quiet Wednesday afternoon. Soon after I posted it, the video went private, the panties now replaced with a video of her playing the Wii in spandex. Why? I tracked her down via YouTube and Yahoo and asked.

Note that this is not her real Yahoo handle. Duh.

Mike Fahey: Mike from Kotaku here, and curious!

PantyGirl: hi

MF: Howdy, as they say down south. So what happened with the video?

PG: to be honest I'm worried that my friends or family might see

MF: I can understand that completely. You'd be an overnight internet sensation.

PG: aww
PG: do you like the spandex ones?

MF: As I am happily attached, I cannot comment as to whether I like them or not.
MF: Definitely.
MF: Oops. Stupid keyboard, answering for me.

PG: lol

MF: Well thank you for clearing the whole thing up. Many lonely gamers will cry themselves to sleep tonight, but I suppose pretending to be a good girl is an important part of being evil.

PG: I am a good girl

MF: Possibly, but the real question here is good at what?

PG: well getting attention for one

MF: You win this round, Wii panty girl.

PG: you want me

MF: Is that why you posted the video in the first place? To make men (and women) want you? (Note my artful dodging)

PG: maybe

MF: An exhibitionist, enjoying when people you don't know watch you...

PG: i like attention

MF: I do too. I just look horrible in a bra and panties, or so I've been told.

PG: hahaha

MF: Perhaps you could post another wearing a mask, so your family can't tell who you are.
MF: And possibly kitty ears.
MF: Ignore that last bit. Someone else typed that, probably.

PG: hmm
PG: I wish I could block by location
PG: then just my area couldn't see it

MF: And everyone else could see your area!

PG: good one

MF: I'm actually reading them from a "How to speak to a half naked gamer girl" handbook.
MF: So, should I just tell our readers to try for a friend request on YouTube?

PG: I have like 500 to go through
PG: I don't want to accept everyone

MF: No one wants to accept everyone. It's the concept this country is founded on.
MF: I suppose they'll have to be happy with the spandex. Just curious...what's under the leggings?

PG: guess

MF: I was thinking thong myself, being somewhat of a thong connoisseur.

PG: nope
PG: I wear them as underwear

MF: So just the sheer leggings and what you came packaged with then?

PG: what?

MF: Meaning nothing underneath but what you were born with.

PG: right
PG: its uncomfortable with anything under spandex

MF: Don't I know it. Well on that note I'm going to have to go find a quiet place to watch the spandex video another 10-15 times. Just to verify.

PG: haha
PG: what should I do next?

MF: That is the most dangerous question a girl has ever asked me.

PG: uh oh

MF: I think you were going in the right direction with the whole panties thing, but that direction only leads to one thing.

PG: ?

MF: Dressing up in a penguin costume.
MF: I mean, I can't just tell a random internet girl to get naked and play video games. Penguin is the next closest answer.

PG: as I'm talking to you I'm getting hundreds of messages and subscriptions

MF: Well of course you are. You've inflamed the gaming community with your sinful gyrations. You're like a modern day Elvis, only hotter.
MF: *looks at a picture of Elvis* Okay, way hotter.

PG: oh wow I just got a comment on my new years vid

MF: Oh yes. Once the internet latches on to one vid they'll hungrily devour anything they can find about you.
MF: Like long conversations on a gaming website.
MF: For instance.

PG: oh if you find that I would love to see it

MF: I'll let you know if I see anything. One last question...which probably should have been the first question. Over 18?
PG: by far

MF: *breathes a sigh of relief*
MF: You enjoy your attention now, young lady...and let me know if anything else comes up. Probably a bad choice of words, but nonetheless.

PG: ;)

Winking emote indeed! So there you have it, folks. She's an attention hungry woman with unfortunate limits. She wants to be bad, but doesn't want her family to know, and I am pretty sure that with the right answers I could have steered the conversation towards steamy cyber. Luckily I am a good and virtuous man, for all you know. Michael Fahey

Update - Apparently she's shy, having privatized her video on YouTube and removed the others, leaving this video of her playing in spandex. We'll get to the bottom of this, I promise!

Then she turned off embedding, but some jerk reupped the video! The nerve!

The history of video game breasts [DESTRUCTOID]

If you found yourself drooling over the Swarovski crystal covered pink DS Lite designed by Paris Hilton we posted a few weeks back, then not only is their something wrong with you, but there is also a spark of hope, as one is now up for auction on eBay UK. I am assuming the seller simply had too much taste to keep the item for himself.

He also mentions that only 20 of these were made, a fact that I cannot seem to back up from any source. Everyone knew it was limited edition, but only 20? For an item this spectacularly fabulous? Come on. There's gotta be a warehouse full of these somewhere, and that warehouse needs to be bombed.

I do like how it comes with spare crystals and a glue kit, as if they expect someone to actually play this monstrosity and not lock it in a vault deep underground somewhere so it never hurts anyone again. The auction starts at approximately $670, with a buyout of $1465, depending on which conversion rates you believe. A small price to pay to save humanity from shiny pink doom.

PINK NINTENDO DS LITE - PARIS HILTON SWAROVSKI EDITION [eBay.co.uk - Thanks EZ]

Forget Lara Croft, Kasumi, and Vanessa Z. Schneider (rawr). They've got nothing on the girls of the NES, and Syd Lexia knows it. He's compiled a list of the 23 hottest 8-bit hotties, and rated them in three categories - hotness, inner beauty, and a special arbitrary category. I'd have to say Ariel from The Little Mermaid is my favorite.

Ariel is a mermaid which means that while she may look human, her lady business has been replaced with a fish tail. That's not cool. And while I certainly wouldn't WANT to make love to a mermaid, I probably would out of morbid curiousity; I need to know if fish genitalia smells like a woman.

Girls of the NES [SydLexia.com via Dark Diamond]

Hey, girls! You like pink things, right? Sure, me and Flynn may have rose-colred DS Lites, but we are men and only men by default. The pink stuff, I mean come on, is for girls. And because men and young boys are busy playing with their manly black and navy DS Lites, Sony thought it would be a good idea to target young Japanese women with Pepto pink PSPs. It even roped in bag designer Samantha Thavasa to do, we assume, absolutely nothing. The handheld hit Japan on November 22, and tonight (I write from the future), Sony held a big bash for the pink portable in Roppongi, complete with women. The shindig commemorates new online shopping site WWCITY. Because women not only like pink things, but buying pink things, right? There was also a fashion show with models and Miss Universe hopefuls. That though wasn't for the women, but for Sony dudes who fancy eyeballing the ladies. Brian Ashcraft

PSP Pink Party [Famitsu]

Women. They're great for a lot of things, but they make it difficult when you want to play video games. You want to play Gears of War on the big TV? Tough. She wants to watch an episode of A Baby Story she's seen twice already.

Fortunately, since girls are so predictable and will like anything pink, with shiny crystals impossible for them to refuse, Nintendo is releasing a pair of Swarovski crystal encrusted DS Lites to help you trick your girlfriend or wife into gaming. Just slap any old game in there, she won't notice the difference after being blinded by the pink shine.

They're designed by (Ha! Sure.) Paris Hilton, hero to girls everywhere (they all want to be skinny like her and have lots of nice boyfriends/clothes like she does) and feature over 1200 shiny jewels. At 360, about $680 (USD), it's cheaper than buying a second TV.

Thanks for the tip, Lesley. And don't buy too many of these! Gotta save some cash for new shoes! LOL am I right, ma'am? Michael McWhertor

A Diamond DS Lite Is A Girl's Best Friend .... Not!

At first, she was a bit bashful, so I put it in her hand. "Don't be afraid, baby..." I cooed. "Just hold it in your palm. Get used to the feel, the contour, the shape, the slight ergonomic curve."

"It's heavy!" she remarked.

"I know! But you'll get used to it. Just wag it around a little bit. Yeah, like that."

"I don't really feel comfortable with this, Flor..." she complained.

"No, no, keep playing with it, dammit. You'll learn to love it. Bond with it. Give it a little kiss. Well? What are you waiting for?"

"But I don't like it! It makes me feel self-conscious."

"Listen, I don't care. If you want this relationship to last, you'll damn well get comfortable with the Wii. What? Wait, where are you going?" But with the sound of hysterical weeping and a resounding bang of the bathroom door, she'd run out of the room to cry. Women!

This may not be the advice that The Girl Next Door gives, however. "Calling [your girlfriend] over to watch you pistol whip a hooker in GTA or solve the riddle of the moon druids in Myst IV is not the way. Maybe you should buy that new Nintendo system with the stupid name, Wii. It was designed to suck video-dissing women into the virtual world. Personally, I'm addicted to Rockstar's Table Tennis and Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Chaos Theory."

So pistol whipping hookers doesn't appeal to women, but slitting guys throats from behind does? I'll say it again: women! Utterly inexplicable. Florian Eckhardt

Wii pumps iron with Men's Health [Infendo]