Johnny and Robbie tackle Final Fight 2 to ask: has the game got less gay? Alright, here's a Let's Play of sorts for the first couple of stages of Capcom's Final Fight. Johnny and Robbie tackle this brawler to answer the question: has Final Fight become less gay? (The answer? Yeah, kinda.) This episode has some interesting appearances, including Guy…

Rise of the Argonauts, Batman: Arkham Asylum, and Muscle March all get their chance to show off the biggest, burliest, and Greekiest of musclemen in this episode of Bears In Games! First: Rise of the Argonauts! You think a game set in the Greek era with huge and muscular bearish guys would be easy to do an episode on. Hm. Nope. Mostly I just gripe …

You take the good, you take the bad, you talk about bears for a while, and there you have... the Bears In Games Best Of 2009 Awards! Featuring Our Fantastic Returning Guest Hosts Robbie, from Japan, and Max from Gamesters.ca! The ground rules for this podcast was that we actually purchased and played the games which we bitch about. This narrows the…

Dragon Age is here! Dragon Age is Queer! Get over it! Yeah, it ain't just Zevran who can get man-on-man action in Dragon Age! And he's not the only gay character either! Bears In Games tackles the important subject of Dragon Age this week. It's true, there is gay banging in Dragon Age, involving elves, dwarves, humans, Qunari, you name it! But that…

Street Fighter IV! And more Street Fighter IV! We end the Bears In Games One Year Anniversary Street Fighter Mantacular by seeing what our favorite Street Fighters are up to now. Plus: a very special montage. Johnny and Robbie go head to head with some Street Fighter IV action! But, first, Johnny has to admit that he hasn't actually unlocked much i…

Part 3 just checks out one game - but when you realize that it's Marvel Versus Capcom 2, you can understand why it takes about twenty minutes to go through all the burly, sweaty manliness that is contained inside. If you are a fan of comic books, you might want to skip this one; Johnny and Robbie know next to nothing about them, and confuse "X-Men"…

We continue our unwanted assault on Street Fighter with Street Fighter III, which along with Gem Fighter is considered the pinnacle of 2D fighting. Also, we look at Gem Fighter. Played at all the events on the Hard Core Tournament Scene. Street Fighter III: Third Strike is one of Robbie's favorite games, and all kidding aside is thought of as possi…

Bears In Games is a year old! And we celebrate with the manliest game series of all time, Street Fighter! Join Johnny and guest-host Robbie as they plow through Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix, Street Fighter EX 3, and the Street Fighter II Anniversary Edition! Super Street Fighter II HD Remix is the first subject of our analysis, and we pic…

We bring this exhaustive Final Fantasy retrospective to a close! And how! From the childlike characters of Final Fantasy IX to the strangely serious Final Fantasy XII, with a little Tidus, Yuna, JPOP, and Charlie's Angels all thrown in! Final Fantasy IX brings a sad dose of agreement among Johnny and Max. Yeah, it's more fun when we disagree, but n…

Johnny and Max now dive deep into Final Fantasy VII, with all its gay dates, bears, musclemen, and group assault. Also: Final Fantasy VIII, where magic meets Sweet Valley High. (Or is Sweet Valley High already magical?) Final Fantasy VII. We all know it. Some of us love it. Some of us think that it's overrated and a step back for the series. But Ma…

Johnny and guest host from gamesters.ca Max take a good, hard look at the first four Final Fantasies. Provided that you think Final Fantasy starts with Final Fantasy III. Final Fantasy III starts us off with its slightly creepy child-warrior look, and confusingly androgynous protagonists. But all is not lost in this game: it does feature one of Fin…

Elite Bear Agents, Bears In Sims, and a slightly off topic look at Midnight Club: Los Angeles make up this week's too hot for TV episode of Bears In Games! Elite Beat Agents is a bizarre music action game from INiS that just so happens to feature a lot of big guys, bears, and chubby guys. A spin off of the Japan-only Ouendan series, you tap along w…

Firstly, Johnny checks out the Bears of Beijing 2008! Or should it be BEARjing? Huh? In this episode of BearsInGames, Johnny is inspired by the hot burliness of Olympic athletes Manolo Martinez and Matthias Steiner into renting and playing a few events in Sega's Olympic tie-in Beijing '08. Did it deserve the critical drubbing it received? Can you p…

Unlike the set characters found in Japanese RPGs, western RPGs almost exclusively deal with created characters, with modifiable skill sets, gender, background, and most of all, looks. The downside is that this can lead to lifeless tabla rasas on which you are supposed to project yourself, egotist that you are. The upside? Big hot bears in RPGs! Who…

Johnny takes a quick look at games that feature men of the muscular persuasion; first there's Pit-Fighter, Atari's arcade classic from 1990 which used the then-impressive digitized graphics of musclebears, beefcake models, biker bears, and men in tight gear aplenty in a bare-chested brawling. Could anything be more heterosexual? Then we move to Alt…

Just what is the gayest 16-bit game of all time? CHO ANIKI! But, that's a bit of a foregone conclusion. And at BearsInGames, we like betting on the underdogs. So we're counting down the top five gayest games during the wonderful era that brought us the Blast Processing of the Sega Genesis, the Mode 7 scaling and rotation of the Super Nintendo Enter…

How are gays portrayed in modern video games? Johnny takes a look at what gays look like to game designers, and the hows and whys of their use in the games we play. We check out the Just Us Guys store owners in Aruze's Shadow Hearts: From the New World, Makoto from FROM SOFTWARE's Enchanted Arms, Jann from SEGA's Valkyria Chronicles, and Bernie and…

Yes, even in the mystical land of Albion, gays can get gay married. And, as Johnny finds out after some loutish behavior, gay divorced. While the menfolk populating the land might not be very attractive, that doesn't mean that you can't have some passive-aggressive relationships with them. Watch as Johnny shows you just how awkward virtual relation…

Just how bearish can a 3D fighting game get? This week in Bears in Games, Johnny takes a look at the custom characters you can whip up in this pretty awesome fighting game. Pro tip: use female character fighting styles to give your bears a slightly creepy seductive edge. Also, some ruminating on Rock, and teaching an XBox Live jerk a lesson.…