I swear this is a real title from the early 90s. Metal and Lace: The Battle of the Robo BabesPossibly the creepiest thing to be shown in any fighting video game.It's 2053. You're about to touch down on a remote island known for its beautiful women and its blood sport - RoboFighting.Totally not Chun Li with robot rabbit ears.  Honest.All however are eager to wager their lives for the chance to battle Robo Babes.  The odors of burnt flesh and charred metal fill the air with a thick toxic stench.I feel it's really confusing message to make your fighting robots able to transform into sexy babes.   Imagine how many people get confused and order them the wrong reasons.You have shelled out a lot of cash to get here. For what? Sleek bodies and bare skin? No, you've come here to test your skill against the best warriors the island has to offer:Graphics wise this is pretty much par for the genre and the era... though I'm kind of amazed they didn't try to fill the background with bikini babes.I really can't help but feel this was some act of not so subtle rebellion by the development team...

bikiniarmorbattledamage:

Throughout the 90s there were plenty of people trying to capitalize on the popularity of good 2D fighting games like Street Fighter 2 – Metal and Lace: Robofighters is one that tried to get an edge via the sex sells angle (A Californian actually invested a lot of work expanding the original production from Japan and giving it that charming back story).

Now, while it looks like this should be a porn game and the publishers did eventually import and localize some porn games – the default release of this was supposedly suitable for all ages (you had to pay for a patch/expansion disc if you wanted to see naughty bits).

Sadly, the fact that this game was all but forgotten and it seems not even the developers could take it seriously has not deterred modern day developers from thinking if they crank the sexy appeal up to 11 out of 10 they’ll rule the market.

– wincenworks

(Captions are added to the images to help with the scrolling text… and for extra snark)

Bringing this back for Throwback Thursday because it seems time to cover that using sex to sell your fighting game has never worked.

It didn’t work in the 90s when games came on floppy discs and it hasn’t gotten better results from using video capture either.

When people sit down to play a fighting game they want to fight, not fap.

– wincenworks