I was recently reading an article on the Game Informer website regarding first-party Xbox games getting the $70 bump next year, presumably because there are actually noteworthy first-party games in the pipe now that Microsoft owns Bethesda and is in the process of trying to buy Activision Blizzard King as well.
This got me thinking… of all the $70 non-first-party titles on PS5, are those games currently still only $60 on the Microsoft Series consoles? (If you’re curious about the answer to this question, of course there are $70 third-party games on Xbox consoles right now.)
To satisfy my initial curiosity, I did what any self-respecting “games journalist” would do (I’m in no way comfortable calling myself a games journalist, to be clear) and I Googled “70 ps5 games” to get a list of third-party PS5 games are $70 that I could then cross-reference with the Xbox consoles. I inadvertently omitted the dollar sign, and the results led me down yet another rabbit hole. (I’ve had a tendency of falling into those as of late.)
You can try to Google this same phrase if you’d like to verify my findings, but upon my first attempt to search this phrase, I was met a glimpse of Jill Valentine’s voluminous assets.
Well, allow me to stop burying the lede and show you what I’m talking about:
If you look close at the Resident Evil 3: Deluxe Edition art, you might see more of Jill than you’re expecting to. Needless to say, I thought there was no way this Triple-A game got an actual release with this cover art. After a quick trip to reddit, I discovered I wasn’t the only one who tumbled into this eBay universe, so I knew must not be delusional or dreaming (though reddit might not be the best place to check your delusions).
After clicking the link provided in that reddit thread, I was brought to an eBay seller page with a whole host of NFSW box art variants for a plethora of games, a collection collectively titled the “2 Piece Snack Box” series. To be fair, some of these box art variants are merely holographic or, in some form or another, not pornographic. But a number of these sleeves feature physically enhanced and scantily clad versions of female characters.
The Resident Evil 3: Deluxe Edition cover, which initially piqued my intrigue, features a version of Jill in a rather revealing two-piece (oh… now I get it…) bikini, looking especially curvy and buxomly, although also admittedly rather bored.
For Bayonetta 3‘s holographic box art variant, you get, well… the full spread, more or less. But perhaps the weirdest and possibly most salacious one of all is for Resident Evil 4 on Nintendo Switch, which for some reason depicts Jill Valentine with what appears to be her shirt pulled up and her breasts on full display. I mean, I assume it’s full-frontal nudity because there are pixelated explosions covering the goods, but I guess one would only find out for certain if they buy it for themselves.
Of course, these are far from the most scintillating depictions of female video-game characters. I mean, there are volumes of Hentai dedicated to this stuff, to say nothing of the games that feature outright nudity and explicit sexual content. I’m told that some of these games also have good stories, and heck, some of them even feature digital versions of real-life celebrities.
But it is weird to see this displayed on a box cover from an errant, random google search. I personally couldn’t see myself replacing the default box cover art with one of these images and then having it on full display, but to each their own.
But I guess when the thirst calls, one must abide.