So a while ago I picked up Daikatana because…. I was curious? Because I crave punishment for my sins? Because the JMan tells me it’s actually tolerable once you make it past the the awful, robo-frog infested early maps? And I was going to comment on the infamous “make you his bitch” poster, because apparently grown adults thought that was a good idea. But then I figured Daikatana gets enough of a kicking. And I was reminded of another terrible PC gaming ad from yesteryear.

It was for Battlecruiser 3000AD and was seen in PC gaming mags around the late 90s. I’ve put it behind a cut as it’s slightly naughty:

You know what, I bet she doesn’t.

Now Battlecruiser is hardly the only game to ever draw our attention with sex appeal. Maybe we’ll comment more one day on how Lara Croft and scantily clad elf chicks have been used (by developers who are probably all young males themselves) to lure guys in. It’s something that deserves a more in depth discussion than a brief blog post rattled out at 1 in the morning. But what makes this picture particularly ridiculous is, it has nothing to do with the game itself.

In case you’ve never heard of Battlecruiser it’s a highly detailed, and very complex space sim. One that gives you complete control of an entire star-destroyer style space warship. So it’s the sort of game where you spend hours on activities like monitoring radar displays, giving orders to damage control teams, deploying fighters and, er, monitoring the coolant flows in the secondary reactor cores. Or something. I don’t remember exactly how it worked, only that I tried to play it once for about an hour, got confused, moved the ship slightly forward then I think tried to shoot a cannon and ejected the party snack supplies instead?

(battlecruiser fans: I’m sorry. Honestly. It looks like one of those games that was rewarding if you made a proper effort)

So here’s what’s not in the game: sexy ladies. Anywhere. It’s not the sort to dabble in such frivolities. There are no chicks, no hot alien babes, no misogynist heroes chasing them around. There’s no time, dammit, raise power to the starboard shields and bring us to a heading of 225 degrees!

They’ve not even tried to dress her up in a scifi theme which, well, would still leave us with a pointless bit of sexual objectification but we could give them like a D for effort instead of an F. So what we have is: a page three girl covering her bits with the game box. That’s it. Tacky *and* lazy.

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