For years, glimpses up skirts were used to titillate Japanese gamers. A new game's done away with that entirely. It is moving beyond, to new realms of I-don't-know-what.

Many of the earliest computer games were adult titles, once again proving that pornography is often the killer app for early adaptors. In Japan particularly, upskirts, or "panchira" in Japanese, have appeared in gaming as they had in manga and anime, for years.

What makes animated or in-game glimpses of such ilk so obligatory is that these were either drawn or modeled by someone who at some point decided that these were underpants and not a bikini bottom. Like I said, obligatory.

Yet, it's that glimpse that causes some degree of titillation, the feeling that one is seeing something that one should not, which is why the fact that often innocuous characters in family friendly games like Super Smash Bros. or Hot Shots Golf have such detailed underwear designs. Upskirts were a reason why game designer Fumito Ueda made the protagonist of the upcoming PS3 exclusive The Last Guardian a male and not a female. Since the game features a lot of climbing, he was worried about possible panchira.

The idea of the upskirt is not new to Japan, but it is in ways a very Western one. Before the Meiji Era in the 19th century, one just did not see Western clothing in Japan — well, outside of the Nagasaki international port. The push to modernize (and Westernize) brought fashions from America and Europe, as well as new concepts of what was alluring and sexual. Even in the years before World War II, many women followed European fashions, and skirts and stockings became desirable.

New clothing offered new glimpses at the female form. Traditionally, the back of a woman's neck was viewed as sensual in Japan, due to the way kimonos drape on their figure. Another attractive area was the way a kimono hangs around a woman's hip. Kimonos are tied at the waist, making it hard to discern Western concepts of feminine beauty such as an "hourglass" figure. What's more, large breasts were traditionally viewed as undesirable in Japan, with voluptuous women compared to cows. In the past several decades, however, this has of course changed, as evident by countless video games characters and pin-up models.

Back in 2005, Rumble Roses designer Akira Uchida, who went on to design dating sim Love Plus, explained his concept of Japanese eroticism. "You Westerners, listen," he stated. "Eroticism is not only about nudity. That is part of it." Continuing, he explained that Rumble Roses had a character named "Anesthesia", who he described as a "Latina nurse character". He adds, "Imagine that she's forced to wear a schoolgirl uniform and has to do the limbo dance. And she's so embarrassed that she's blushing. That is Japanese eroticism."

It's that element of embarrassment that Xbox 360 game Dream Club taps. The previous Dream Club game allowed players to dress up bar hostesses and have them sing on stage, flashing their knickers. Stuff like this is hardly rare in Japanese games — in fact, it's almost standard. When players cannot see female characters' underoos it is a bigger deal than when they can, as evident by the fuss made over the panchira-free Anthena in The King of Fighters XII. Players were actually flummoxed as to why her skirt got in the way of her high kicks.

Thanks to a bug, the newest Dream Club, Dream Club Zero, goes further and simply does away with the skirts altogether. Bar girls dance on stage in their drawers, without those pesky skirts to get in the way. Remember, this is a bug and not a game feature (apparently!), but with this much on display, is it really worth players getting their underwear in a bind over?

Culture Smash is a daily dose of things topical, interesting and sometimes even awesome - game related and beyond.

There will, inevitably, be a LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean game. Here is its debut trailer.

Interstellar Marines is a video game unlike your standard sci-fi shooter. Instead of being backed by a publisher, its developers are instead taking money from fans now, who will get the game when it's done.

Zero Point Software, the indie developers behind the game, believe it's the best way to go about getting a quality, polished, seemingly "AAA" (as opposed to a clearly "indie" title like, say, Minecraft) game into player's hands without having to worry about a big publisher giving them orders (and taking a big cut of the profits).

The project has been around for years - and I've sadly just noticed we've written nothing on it previously, hence the brief above - with those brave enough to contribute money now rewarded with access to the gradual release of playable sections of the game, in the form of tutorials, multiplayer levels, new weapons, etc.

You can catch a new trailer for the game below, which while doubling as a dreaded developer diary, actually does a good job of fleshing out the studio's radical funding method.

If this all looks neat, some sections of the game are playable and free to all-comers, and you can access them at the link below.

[Interstellar Marines]

Josh Olin, Community Manager at Call of Duty: Black Ops developers Treyarch, thinks that "pundits" and "angry entitled fans" are ruining creativity in video games. They're not.

In an interview with NowGamer, Olin - who admittedly must wade knee-deep through stupid questions from assholes as part of his job - says the following:

Personally, as a community manager who lives in the media or social media world every day, I think the social culture of video games is moving in a more negative direction as technology and social media continues to grow. Rather than growing with it, the trend seems to be devolving. More and more gamers seem to forget what this industry is all about.

It's a creative industry – the most creative form of entertainment in existence. Too many developers who try new things are getting burned by "pundits" and angry entitled fans who look to be contrarian, sometimes simply for the sake of being contrarian. The only thing this attitude aims to achieve is stunt that creativity and innovation even further, which is something that no rational gamer looking to be entertained would want to do.

He's right about the sentiment that's out there. The kind of people who actively comment as part of a video game community are, sadly, often prone to focus on the negatives, and can often be quite rude when doing so. It's enough to get a man down and make him think the world is out to get him.

But to say that's the reason creativity is being stunted? Come on. Haters Gonna Hate, Josh! If a video game developer designs its games according to the whims of the squeaky wheels, then it deserves to have its creativity stunted, because true innovation takes guts.

The audience doesn't know what it wants before it has it. It never asked for Ico, or Katamari Damacy, or Deus Ex, or BioShock ahead of time. Those games were dropped on them, from creative developers who weren't afraid to roll the dice and take a few risks, and became much-loved classics because of that.

If developers listened to only the whiniest, most vocal fans barraging them with ideas, our video games would look like the car Homer Simpson designed:

So Josh, let the complainers complain! They're not the ones designing video games for a living.

Black Ops: First Strike DLC - Treyarch Interview [NowGamer] [image credit]

Normally, the sequel to a popular video game remains largely the same as the preceding title (or titles). If the first one was a shooter, the second one is a shooter. In 1993, however, one series did things a little differently.

That series was Zork, a pioneering succession of text adventure games for the PC dating back to the 1970s that (with one exception) had no graphics. There were just sentences on a screen, and to get around the world, you in turn had to type sentences.

Primitive by today's standards, yes, but for the time these were important, popular games, renowned fro their immersion and story-telling. So popular that eight Zork titles were released by publisher Infocom between 1980 and 1988 (or ten if you count two "interactive comics"), an astonishing number of games by anyone's standards.

By the late 1980's, however, the series - and its publisher, Infocom - were both running out of steam. Having been picked up by (of all companies) Activision in 1986, a drop in profits saw the House of Zork closed in 1989, with the mega-publisher retaining little but the Infocom and Zork brand names.

It was under this appropriated label, and five years after the release of the last "true" Zork game, that Activision decided to hit the reboot button on the franchise. It was 1993, the CD-ROM was revolutionising PC gaming, and it was felt that the best way to return this once-mighty series to the top of the charts was to...bring in a bunch of C-list actors and turn the game into a graphic adventure title, one with more in common with Myst than with its text-based forebears.

The end result - Return to Zork - was...well, not a disaster, since for the time it was visually impressive. It was also not a bad adventure game in its own right. But it didn't really feel like Zork, not when there were icons and a corny soundtrack and a mouse cursor and you had the pleasure of meeting women in stupid hats and Kevin Arnold's big brother from The Wonder Years.

For all its amateur missteps, Return to Zork did brisk enough business for Activision that three further games were released between 1996-97. The series lives on today with casual MMO Legends of Zork, as well as playable versions of the classic original Zork available for the Amazon Kindle e-book reader and within Activision's Call of Duty: Black Ops.

There are lots of interesting stories centring around this game. How it's an early example of Activision's ruthlessness, how it's an example of a game series that makes fairly radical departures from its roots. But the main reason I wanted to write about it today (aside from the fact I saw it pop up on Good Old Games) was so I could share this sequence, which for years was my friend's stock response whenever someone had had a little too much to drink.

Want some rye? Course 'ya do.

Total Recall is a look back at the history of video games through their characters, franchises, developers and trends.

BioWare will apparently release a demo version of Dragon Age II—at the very least for PC players—only February 23, according to an e-mail sent to GameStop employees. Those lucky retail warriors will get access to said demo even earlier.

One of the perks of working at GameStop is early access to the Dragon Age II demo, which employees of the retailer will get on February 11 to help them "become a key source of knowledge for GameStop customers and BioWare fans." Buddy up with a GameStop employee, if you're looking for early, early access.

The full version of Dragon Age II will be available on the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC on March 8.

Thanks to all the folks who sent this in!

You know what Kotaku's semi-nightly open thread needs? Or could possibly benefit from? Themed Tuesdays. Yeah, let's guide this off-topic conversation toward the new world of music. Yes, that can include video game music!

How about, let's say, once a month we share our current playlists so that we can turn each other on to music new, classic and overlooked. We'll roll other themes through Tuesday nights, focusing on other subjects, so we can keep this conversation fresh. Sound good? Good! I'll start.

I'm in the process of dumping my entire CD collection, burning it to hard drives and passing on those discs to people who still enjoy physical media. That means I've been listening to less-new stuff—Interpol's Antics, Man... or Astro-man?'s Project Infinity, Beck's Sea Change and Billy Bragg and Wilco's Mermaid Avenue. This past week, I've also been listening to iTunes purchases like ceo's White Magic, LCD Soundsystem's This Is Happening and Gui Boratto's Chromophobia.

How about you? What's on your playlist? If you hate music, here are some other things to talk about.

• Google says Microsoft's Bing is swiping its search results - Or is it just smartly building on Google's work?
• Speaking of Google... - They have teamed up with Twitter for an interesting solution to the internet outage in Egypt.
• Speaking of Egypt... - President Mubarak won't seek another term. Protesters say "GTFO now" in response.
• Lifehacker has some tips on surviving the latest Snowpocalypse - Charge early, charge often!

The folks behind Resistance and Ratchet & Clank may be best known for their inventive, sometimes kooky weapons, but Insomniac Games are also developing new ways of turning bodies into lifeless piles of meat.

The latest Resistance 3 trailer not only features the glorious return of the weapon wheel—missed you, weapon wheel!—but introduces the Chimeran Brawler, a big ugly alien with the power to crush humans with his fist. Brawler mad. Brawler smash!

You'll also see hapless resistance fighters crushed and decapitated by Chimerans and enjoy the thrill of watching those alien bastards explode into Chimeran salsa, all while savoring 90 seconds of Resistance 3 gameplay.

Resistance 3 comes to the PlayStation 3 on September 6, 2011.

Since its launch in November, Treyarch's Call of Duty: Black Ops has racked up more than 5 billion headshots, downed more than a billion aircraft and killed virtual soldiers to the tune of nine times the world's population.

That's about 62 billion and change, based on the U.S. Census Bureau's world population clock.

Activision hit us with the latest mind-numbing stats from the world's most popular online first-person shooter today, courtesy of an infographic that puts Black Ops worldwide violence into perspective. 161 World War II's are fought everyday, they say. More than 1.1 trillion shots have been fired. One of the game's deadliest weapons is an RC car. And you wouldn't believe how many tomahawks have banked off walls, probably resulting in yet another ridiculous kill.

To see how popular Black Ops is (and continues to be) in raw numbers, take a look at all this carnage, now in extra-large infographic form.

We expect the body count to grow with the release of Call of Duty: Black Ops' first map pack, the First Strike DLC, which you can see in action here.

It's heartwarming, isn't it? Millions of people getting to amass virtual killings well into the billions? Feels good.

The 3rd Birthday, the PSP action-RPG entry in Square Enix's Parasite Eve series, comes to North America on March 29, 2011. Yvonne Strahovski (Mass Effect 2's Miranda) will voice series heroine Aya Brea.