Features// SPOnG's Review of the Year '09: February

Medical science took proceedings to a whole new level in February, with the scare-mongering national newspaper, The Daily Mail, reporting on a condition called “PlayStation Palm” (“”PlayStation Palm” - the Latest Skin Disease”, 24th Feb 2009). We told you that Baby Pals was only the tip of the iceberg when it came to media scapegoating.

Doctors had apparently identified a new health risk in playing computer games, which apparently makes painful lesions appear on the palms of your hands. Unfortunately, claims fell flat when the only thing supporting this tenuous link was one case of a 12-year-old girl developing ‘idiopathic eccrine hidradenitis’ - “a skin disorder that generally causes red, sore lumps on the palms of the hands and soles of the feet.”

Obviously it was more fun to completely rebrand the condition as “PlayStation palmar hidradenitis” simply because “for the [recognised] disorder to affect the hands alone is very unusual.” Quite.

Speaking of bold claims, we had our first ‘Pach Attack’ of the year in February. Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter told the world that he had been hearing “continued speculation that Sony is working on a non-Blu-ray PS3 console,” (“Analyst: Sony Working on Blu-ray Free PlayStation 3”, 25th Feb 2009) which would apparently give the hardware a substantial price reduction.

It was particularly cute how Michael said it was speculation to make it look like he didn’t just pluck some random guff from thin air, because we don’t know anyone on Earth who would have suggested or even dared to speculate about a Blu-ray-less PS3. I mean, the Blu-ray is sort of the entire point of the console, isn’t it Michael?

Rumours begat rumours of a slightly different nature, as whispers about a new PlayStation Portable model once again resurfaced in February, following speculation of the kind in December 2008. Apparently the secret plan by Sony was to launch a ‘PSP-4000’ in late 2009 alongside a true successor - the PSP2 (“Newish PlayStation Portable in 2009”, 23rd Feb 2009).

VG247 got a hold of a “highly trusted source” who mentioned that the “revamp does have a sliding front-screen.” As we all now know, that new model became the digital distribution-heavy PSP Go, which is having something of a shaky lifespan around the world right now. Maybe things will pick up.

As much as the majority of February was dedicated to Sony and its future plans, other stuff did happen too, including a fresh batch of screenshots from then-highly anticipated console port of Tekken 6 (“Tekken 6 - New Screens”, 5th Feb 2009), a review of the “rollicking good fun” House of the Dead: Overkill on Wii and indie game Flower on PSN, and previews of DS Chinatown Wars, Halo Wars and Blue Dragon Wars - I mean, Blue Dragon Plus.

Oh, and cocks. As art, you understand. It was all part of Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto IV DLC, The Lost and Damned (“Cock Horror! Naked Man in GTA Xbox Download”, 17th Feb 2009). We even previewed the game, sans flaccid willy, here for you to retro-actively enjoy.

Finally...

Now how’s this for our roundup of February? Obviously, we’ve come to learn here at SPOnG that anything that gets posted involving porn, particularly of a Japanese nature, will shoot straight to the top of our ‘most read’ chart. This story, that crept in at #9, was not quite so light-hearted.

It told of Amazon removing eroge game “Rapelay” from its virtual shelves (“Japanese ‘Rape’ Game Pulled by Amazon”, 13th Feb 2009), because the name suggested an encouragement of rape.

Illusion Studio (the Japanese Adult Game one, not the 3D Animation Texas Studio one) stated that it believed, “There is no problem with the software, which has cleared the domestic ratings of an ethics watchdog body.” This incident would continue over the next couple of months, as Western activist groups would rally against Japanese adult game developers, leading many of them to block access to their websites from all non-Japanese computers.

The gulf between the East and West, at least in terms of game development, would continue to spread later in the year...