Imagine, if you will, that you are playing Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec. It’s a game for petrol-heads and, if may excuse my blatant sexism, many alpha-males. It’s not a game for the casual audience of family members, smiling with false satisfaction as you see them waggling their controllers excitedly in an advert, or a young girl content with prodding a pink DS with her stylus on her bed. If you don’t want to be one of the boys, which I admit that some aspiring ladies want to be, then GT3 is not the game for you.

Now imagine that you have completed a few races, collecting money to get better cars and winning them after dominating a series. You are looking forward to getting out of having to drive little Nissans or Hondas or whatever the hell you spent the paltry salary on. You get a few decent vehicles, and finish your next series. A black silhouette appears of the car you sweated blood, bust a gut and burnt rubber for. The super machine that is going to make you bomb down the road with the tune of Primal Scream’s Kowalski hanging in your ears.

The dark fog lifts. The music rises to a crescendo. You have won….

A metallic peach-pink Toyota Yaris.

W…T…F. A peach-pink Yaris.

I won about three or four races to get a vehicle that is only just more powerful than a Daihatsu, a motor that would only give an erection to a seventy-year-old used to riding a bicycle. And not only that, I have been given a car with a colour-scheme that would make me blush with shame. I’ve got to do something. I have to sell it.

Now, you’re thinking that this situation isn’t so fearful. You can sell the Yaris and be happy in the knowledge that no-one will ever know that you owned a car in a video game that you wouldn’t be seen in a passenger seat of. I disagree. What the hell would the general demographic who own the game would think if they were asked to keep that horrible motor? No bloody way. Would you honestly feel no shame, no fear if your best mate was to check your garage and find a bloody peach-pink Yaris sitting alongside your Ford GT and Nissan Skyline? Could you really keep that vehicle if you swore you would collect every single car in the game like others brag about?

I’ll tell you when I really started feeling scared about an item in a game that would shame me. It was in Dark Chronicle (AKA Dark Cloud 2) on the PS2, and I had just earned Monica, the main female character, a lovely yellow and blue circus outfit. It was beautiful. Those long yellow gloves and short skirt really seemed to suit her. Yet at the same time I was concerned this was saying something dark and creepy about myself. That I wanted to dress up young 13-year-old so she would look alluring to me. I began to feel dirty and worried. I changed Monica back to her usual, less uncomfortable attire.



Have you ever had that feeling where you had an item that you wouldn’t be seen dead with? Or did you do something with an item that told you or gave you the impression that there is something you didn’t like about yourself? Talk to me about it. And in spite of the harmlessness of the little cosplay antic I listed above, I would like to dress up an older lady, thank you. Preferably over the age of seventeen.