The city in the above image was created in the beta for the new SimCity and demonstrated that, as always, if gamers can draw some male genitalia into a game, they will. Really, they will.

Previous SimCity games only let players draw straight rodes into their cities. The new game lets you draw curved roads, meaning this kind of city couldn't even be erected in the older games.

The image above (sans Kotaku censor fish) was posted to the r/gaming section on Reddit yesterday by a user named EunByuL, but I can't tell if he or she is the creator. If anyone knows, say the word and I'll give proper credit.

Given that strangers can build cities that connect to yours in this new SimCity, I imagine that a penis-town like this could suddenly become a sister-city to whatever fine metropolis you're making. Will SimCity moderators flag it or ban it? I guess we'll see (or will we?). The game is rated E10+, though there's a massive loophole: "Includes online features that may expose players to unrated user-generated content (Windows PC)." Given that the game is always-online, make of that rating what you will.

So what drives people to do this kind of thing in the first place? Believe it or not, I'm looking into that. More of that later.

For now...

Here's another one, also from the beta:

The bread is pink. That's the color of cherry blossoms, and thus, spring in Japan. And the wrapper says the snack is "shaped like cherry blossoms." Seems innocuous enough, right?

But take off the wrapper. Because, as pointed out online in Japan, this doesn't look like cherry blossoms. It does look like vaginas.

This post contains content some readers might find objectionable.

The bread is a collaboration between virtual idol Hatsune Miku and one of Japan's biggest convenience store chains, Family Mart.

On the wrapper, you can see the words "Sakura no Ame" (桜ノ雨), or "Cherry Blossom Rain", which is a Hatsune Miku song. But online in Japan, this cherry blossom-shaped strawberry cream bread is being dubbed "obscene".

"Holy crap," wrote one commenter on 2ch, Japan's largest bulletin board. "This is way too graphic," added another, while yet another added, "This will probably be banned." One commenter even wondered if this snack was a prank.

Surely, someone had to know before this was released. How could they not?

ちょｗｗｗコンビニにマンコが売っててワロタｗｗｗｗｗｗｗｗｗｗｗ [2ch]

On November 6, 2012 a profoundly simple game called Curiosity was officially launched on iPhones, inviting people to chisel away at a massive cube composed of millions of blocks.

Players from around the world started poking at the cube. There was a stupendous prize inside that would take players, working in unison, ages to unlock. Presumably to alleviate boredom, Curiosity gamers tried to make their mark, by chipping out the shape of some letters or a simple picture.

According to an official time stamp on Twitter, in the wee hours of November 5, some players had actually already downloaded into the game. They were cracking blocks. And on day -1, what did they etch into that massive blank block?

A penis.

Why are people doing this? Oh, this called for investigative report, of course! This article, which is all about the results of that investigation, is, obviously, NSFW...

Who isn't familiar with this irrepressible urge to draw a penis in a game? Or, hell, to draw one anywhere?

Not that I've done it. Maybe you haven't either.

But, in gaming, as in so many other areas of life that provide a canvas for expression, drawing penises is nearly an automatic thing. Why do people do this? Are they acting out? Are they testing the limits—as gamers in particular are wont to do—of what they can technically get away with? Of what they can pull off in a system that may not be designed for them to do such a thing?

We don't talk about it much, other than to giggle or smirk or just shake our head. If you look around, though, you'll see this stuff everywhere.

Look, if you think a game will allow it, you can assume someone's drawn a penis in it.

The new SimCity, for example.

Minecraft (45 blocks long, 27 high, and 13 blocks wide)

Call of Duty

LittleBigPlanet

Trials Evolution

ModNation Racers

Halo Reach

Skyrim (From gamer Papidamelo's "XXL Penis Flaccid Cut and Uncut Nude Male" mod, downloaded about 6,000 times since its creation in February 2012 and the rare example in these mods of a male modder suggesting they're adding a penis to a game because they find them attractive "Not everyone playing skyrim is str8," he's written on mod message board.)

Garry's Mod

Scribblenauts (Well, ok, not really… but they tried.)

Even if you think it's not possible to draw a penis in a game, people have done it.

Grand Theft Auto IV? Penis-bike.

Battlefield 3? Gamer Oli Gill drew this one with virtual C4.

Why is this?

For the last six months I've not come up with a good answer. I've been asking. I've asked game designers. I've asked gamers. I've asked scientists. I haven't been investigating this constantly. There are, truth be told, better things a reporter can do with their time than to keep asking why people seem to love drawing dicks.

Nevertheless, I did inquire. A bunch.

"There are many different possible explanatory frameworks for considering this question: Freudian, Marxist, Feminist, Deconstructionist, Evolutionary-Psychologist, Existentialist, etc," game designer and head of New York University's game studies program, Frank Lantz, told me last fall when I began to interrogate the matter.

"You might as well use the question ‘Why do people draw dongs?' as a proxy for ‘Why are we here?' 'What is the good life?' ‘Why is there something instead of nothing?' or any other Big Philosophical Question."

We probably all have good guesses, right? People draw penises because they think it'll shock people or because it's one of society's few visual taboos and because they're not that hard to draw.

I live in New York City, and if you keep your eyes open for them, as I have, you'll spot penis graffiti all over the place.

Around the corner from the office.

On the C-train.

It's part of our culture.

In the 2007 movie Superbad Jonah Hill's character confesses that he spent his childhood drawing pictures of penises.

But you can go back way further than 2007 to chart this societal obsession. You can go back to a massive chalk drawing on a hill in England, circa the early 1600s. (Image via Google Earth)

Or go all the way back to the oldest petroglyph ever discovered on Earth. We're talking about the oldest rock carving by a person anywhere. Carved, scientists say, supposedly about 10,000 years ago.

Here's a sketch that illustrates the carving's elements, via our friends at io9.

As prepared as you may be to see someone draw a penis in any and every game, it can still be jarring to see, say, Sonic the Hedgehog replaced with one.

But of course you can:

The creator of this bit of outsider art is a YouTube user named Daku Neko, who makes a lot of mods that replace characters with, well, not always penises. You've seen Sonic replaced with a penis. Daku Neko also replaced Sonic with the Wind Waker version of Zelda hero Link… and with the Pokemon Lucario. Each of those videos is about a 50th as popular as the Sonic-as-penis one.

I recently reached out to Daku Neko to find out why he does this stuff. No response yet, though my message to him may simply not have reached his residence. According to Skype contact info, he resides in "fuckville." He'd announced the mod on YouTube with the line: "FUCKING PENISES EVERYWHERE." So much for making that the headline of this piece.

UPDATE: I heard from Daku Neko, who writes: "Why did i make a penis mod for Sonic Generations? BECAUSE I'M BAT-SHIT INSANE!"

That question of "why would you do this" is often met with a "why not"? But it also seems to act almost as a universal challenge, as if we as a society have agreed that there's one thing that is potentially creatable in any game and that everyone has a shot at making it. And that something is, it seems, a penis.

That's the message I feel I'm getting from gamer "illegalmonkey", who posted a helpful video on YouTube showing how to make a penis in the character editor of fighting game Soul Calibur V.

"Why make this video you ask?" Illegalmonkey asked of illegalmonkey in the description below the video. "Why, to showcase the character creation tool in Soul Calibur 5 of course!! And c'mon, let's face it. If Namco didn't want us to make shit like this they wouldn't have given us the tools to do so, so exactly!"

That Minecraft penis higher up in this article was built by a YouTube user called MinecraftManifestTV, who also built the self-professed largest wheatfield and largest diamond in the game.

He's by no means the only creator of penises in Minecraft. Still, it seems, that he got some flak for making them and felt the need to offer the following defense below his video: "Just because I made a penis in minecraft it doesn't mean I'm gay. I have been dating the same girl for almost 3 years now. As for me not 'having a life', Minecraft is a hobby of mine. I want to make minecraft videos for a living, so I need to put my time and effort into it. I already have a fulltime job, and go to college. I would call that a life. I built this for the sake of having the title of "first functional minecraft penis" built. I obviously don't need this, and there is no purpose for it. I just seen it as a fun challenge. Subscribe if you want to see more."

Minecraft may be today's premiere video game for drawing penises, but before that game there was Spore. The ambitious evolution simulator included a malleable creature creator that enabled people to make adorable or horrifying creatures in virtually any shape that you'd normally be able to mush clay into.

The creature creator was released before the game, which means that before there was Spore there were already Spore penises.

"I do know that I was very pleasantly surprised by the awesome creatures the Something Awful forums produced when we released the creature editor ahead of the game," game designer Chris Hecker, who helped make Spore told me last year. Here's a batch of those creations. "They were incredibly creative, and sure, there were a few dongs, but for the most part the creatures were amazing and intricate and thoughtful, even the Sporn ones!"

An example of a Spore "dong."

Something Awful users didn't have the monopoly on Spore penises.

There are plenty:

.

.

Here's a how-to.

And there's this one which more than 400,000 people have looked at on YouTube:

"I do think the "push the boundaries" instinct is important to how games work for people, too," Hecker said, but he doubts that gamers are any more drawn to drawing penises than, say, kids who scribble on school binders or people who are sitting in bathroom stalls with a writing instrument at hand.

The late game designer Jeff Freeman noticed all this dick-drawing and coined a wonderful phrase: "Time to cock," or, "The amount of time it takes a player to use player-created-content tools to create a penis. Measured in microseconds."

Freeman's phrase is funny. It's also perfect, because it encapsulates the sense of gamers racing to draw these penises within contraints seemingly not made to permit this action. That they do draw them isn't just a marvel of misbehavior but often a milestone of ingenuity.

The online "urban dictionary" traces the "time to cock" notion back to the late-90's massively multiplayer online game Ultima Online. Supposedly someone realized that you could take fish in the game and lay them on the ground in a pattern for others to see. The pattern they chose was a penis.

"Every time we've given people the ability to arrange things of their own-bread, ships-inevitably people want to leave a mark that people recognize," Ultima's lead creator Richard Garriott recently told me when he recently visited our offices in New York. That mark they leave, he said, is "not just something like ‘Killroy was here,' but something that was purposefully shocking or affronting. And if you're going to draw a purposefully affronting and shocking thing, a stick and balls is a pretty good easy basis to create a reaction."

Like Hecker and others in gaming, Garriott doesn't think this tendency to draw penises is unique to gamers. He also doesn't think it always has to be shocking. In come cultures, it's not.

"People's proclivity when brought into a new world to want to mark their new territory most commonly with things with a phallic nature, I actually do think this is something that transcends games," he said. He cited primitive art and its three common variations: beautifully symmetric objects made with skill, such as spear tips; images of big-breasted women or phalluses.

The globe-trotting game developer told me that he and his wife recently made a trip to the nation of Bhutan, country that had been isolated from Western culture for a long time. He recalled them attending a fertility ritual. "It is interesting to note that in all of the country of Bhutan, this is the decoration," he added, handing me a color print-out of the following:

"This is what we found all over the doors of people's houses…

"Painted on the sides of buildings…"

"All through downtown areas is the cult of the ejaculating phallus. No one was shy about it. It wasn't considered obscene in any shape or form. It is clearly something that is universal that transcends games."

I sought scientific expertise to find out why people do this stuff. The response I got from psychiatrists and psychologists amounted to "good question" and "I've never seen a study about it."

Author Tom Hickman's book "God's Doodle: The Life and Times of the Penis" ("a blow-by-blow account") is full of fascinating and uproarious details that even explain where words like "dick" and "cock" come from, but it too fails to fully explain this obsession.

"I am not sure I know the answer to your question but have some suggestions," the bio-psychologist Nigel Barber recently told me over e-mail.

He rattled off some ideas, which I do think help. "Male genitals are covered in most societies even if people wear no other clothes," he offered, "Implication is that genital display is potentially rude or offensive."

And in the animal kingdom? "In squirrel monkeys and other species, the erect penis is part of an aggressive threat display. Mandrills also said to have automimicry of genitals in facial display according to early German ethologist Wolfgang Wickler. Possibly applies to humans?"

Jesse Bering, author of "Why is the Penis Shaped like That?" gamely tossed around some ideas: "First, I'd be willing to bet that nearly all such phallic graffiti were by male hands. I can't imagine girls/women scribbling naughty images of penises to the extent that boys/men seem preoccupied with doing so. If one wants to get a bit Freudian, perhaps it's a way of making public what one isn't allowed to show in public otherwise, a sort of symbolic "unzipping" which may bring some catharsis. It's exhibitionism but not quite exhibitionism, if you catch my drift."

"My first instinct is say that the dick joke never goes out of style — especially for adolescent males," Nando Pelusi told me. He is a contributing editor at Psychology Today and a clinical psychologist specializing in cognitive behavior therapy was willing to take a swing at this too.

Why not?

"Pubertal male primates show their genitalia only after status has been achieved through either brute strength or brains," he said. "In fact genitalia get attacked directly by male primates defending their territory from intruders, because the penis is the locus of competition. Status, for humans and other primates, means access to mates, a very competitive thing."

"In an anonymous context, like most graffiti in the modern world, a drawing of a dick is a proximate way of signaling in a manner that is not easily ignored something that most males wouldn't do publicly (at least from an evolutionarily relevant point of view) because it would get called out or punished."

"Usually, penises get covered or sheathed, otherwise males tend to feel very self-conscious; I think that shame evolved as adaptation to social forces that had real consequences for most of human history where punishment and group cohesion could mean life or death, especially for males establishing their status, so graffiti is usually done secretly and anonymously. Few people are indifferent to an erect penis, because it is either a challenge, or come-on, or declaration of status. Males do most graffiti, and pubertal males are most interested in their newfound obsessions; anything relating to status, making your mark — sometimes literally."

"Males compete for females, and the erect penis is a flag that gets unfurled only when you're very confident — unless it's done with a crayon late at night (what we might call the "pussy's" way out)."

Sound right?

As much as gamers draw penises in games; game developers, officially, don't. We may see breasts a fair amount in games. But penises? It's shocking and rare when a developer puts one in there on purpose.

Nevertheless, everyone's got a good anecdote about penis-drawing in games. Since I started telling some colleagues I was looking into this, they'd regularly send me screenshots and videos of the new penises in new games. Developers would always have a laugh about this, too, even though, yes, companies responsibly try to make sure that penis content isn't shown to innocent eyes.

Here's a final anecdote for you, from Jeremiah Slaczka, creative director at 5TH Cell, where, among other games, they created a kid-friendly DS adventure called Drawn to Life. The game let players draw their own lead character and parts of the game world.

"We did a promotion for Drawn to Life, a flash contest where you use the same drawing tool that's in the DS game to make a hero character," he told me a few months ago. "We'd then include that character in the final game as a template you could choose if you wanted. This is a contest, you have to draw something, then fill out an entry form then submit it to us."

"One third of the submissions were penis characters of varying artistic quality."

"Not only did they draw it—have a laugh and then close the window—they had to fill out a form and then know they'd have to submit the work and their info (probably fake) to win a contest which they knew they'd never win. "

"It's THAT compelling."

His theory?

"It's pushing boundries in its simplest form, like ‘I know I'm not supposed to, but since nothing is stopping me I will. In grade school we did it on paper. [As adults] we don't, because there's no rule stopping us. But inside a game, there is. They know. They want to break the rule."

The original headline for this story was: "The Irrepressible Ingenuity Of People Who Draw Dicks In Video Games"

Well, this is unfortunate: a glitch discovered by a Canadian player makes it look like Lara Croft's tank top has gone all see-through.

The glitch was sent in by a person who goes by Recostar from S3DGamerZone. Here's his account of how the bug came to light while he was playing the game in 3D on his PC:

It was right after we died from an explosion; we kept getting strange glitches. We had been to close to a gas exhaust and shot a flame arrow beside it causing Lara to die. When we came back into the game, water, shadows and lighting looked very odd. So we kept selecting re-load last check point hoping to solve this issue. For the most part everything looked ok after several re-loads, until we went to break a valve and I noticed her tank top looked funny in the light.

When I looked closer, I could see what appeared to be 2 nipples. We zoomed in to make sure that's what they are (purely scientific lol). My only possible conclusion is that when they made Lara's damaged explosion mesh, behind her tank top they jokingly put these 2 t marks were her nipples would be on purpose. They probably never thought that a glitch would remove the tank top overlay exposing this. Also, I noticed in the video right where Lara's nipples are you can clearly see 2 huge and out of placed square pixels.

It should be noted that Kotaku hasn't been able to reproduce this glitch.

Older players amongst you will remember the nigh-indestructible rumor of a "nude code" for the original Tomb Raider. This isn't quite that. It's a long-odds software hiccup that makes the newly-redesigned look a lot less modest than her predecessor. After years of more attention being paid to Lara's breasts than to gameplay or character development, the new Tomb Raider succeeds because the game isn't all about Ms. Croft's endowment. This instance of unplanned exposures isn't quite as bad as the fully naked Heavy Rain glitch from three years ago. But still: Shame on you, explosion glitch, for trying to mess up Lara's evolution away from being a sex symbol.

Good — An Ambitious Idea

When it comes down to it, the vast majority of Japanese erotic games are visual novels. The best of these—like Fate/Stay Night, for example—go on to mainstream success (though with the pornographic parts cut out). This is because, in some cases, the "adult" elements of the game are just a marketing tactic. Once experienced, the plot is strong enough to support the game all on its own; the porn is just a trick to get more people playing it.

So mixing the story aspects of an adult visual novel with a racing game is an intriguing idea if done right. Several fighting games—e.g., Project Justice and Persona 4 Ultimate Arena—have mixed visual novel-type storytelling with well-built fighting engines to great success. And as a person who loves story in games, regardless of genre, I was excited to see how this combination would work out. Sadly, the plot of Moero Downhill Night Blaze is that of…

Mixed — A Cliché 80's Sports Movie

Moero Downhill Night Blaze has perhaps the most cliché 80s sports movie plot of all time. The hero, who doesn't even own a car, dreams of being the best street racer in Japan by beating the current champ. Through skill and determination, he gets into the racing tournament, faces off against his honorable rival, overcomes the dirty tricks of an evil racer, and, in the end, wins the championship and, of course, the girl.

In fact, it's so terribly cliché—so mind numbingly predictable—that it almost becomes enjoyable again. You can see every plot twist coming from a mile away and the characters are so one note it is stunning. It eventually feels more like a parody of those types of films than anything else. And let's face it, when the final race involves strapping a jet engine to the bottom of the car from Initial D, you know at least some of it has to be tongue in cheek.

Mixed — A Scatter-shot Presentation

Moero Downhill Night Blaze is all over the place as far as the presentation goes. In the visual novel sections, the voice actors are pretty solid and the art/sprites are passable. However, there are a myriad of typos and formatting errors that plague the game from start to finish.

The racing presentation, on the other hand, is less of a mixed bag: everything just looks and sounds terrible. Even when the game came out originally in Japan back in 2007, it must have looked pretty bad. Repeated backgrounds with jagged textures and horrendous car models are just the start. In fact, Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit on my PS1 looked better than this and it came out nearly a decade before. And don't get me started about the sound. The car engines are a grating half-second sound clip that is looped forever when you hit max speed.

Bad — Same Game No Matter Your Choices

The key interactive elements in any visual novel are the choose-your-own-adventure choices you make to guide the plot. In Moero Downhill Night Blaze there is really only one choice in the game: which female manager you choose. Or, rather, which girl you will be seeing in explicit sex scenes for the next few hours. In most visual novels like this, once you choose a girl you would be treated to a story more or less unique when compared with the others. Not in Moero Downhill Night Blaze though. No matter which girl you choose, the game is 90% the same (with the remaining 10% being sex scenes). It really is scene for scene, line for line identical. The only lines that are even slightly changed are the manager's—not that it really matters, as everyone else responds identically regardless of the manager you choose. Thus the story has little replay value aside from what your hormones can con you into. As for the racing gameplay...

Bad — Well, at least it's not Big Rigs

Whenever I play a racing game, I ultimately don't compare it to the Forzas or Gran Turismos of the day. Rather, I compare it to the worst (and most infamous) commercially-sold racing game of all time: Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing. Moero Downhill Night Blaze is, of course, not as bad as Big Rigs—I mean, it is a playable racing game after all—but it is certainly close.

You play each of the five courses three times, with the first two being you racing the clock and the final race being against AI-controlled cars. Of course, it really doesn't matter if there are any other racers or not as the other cars not only lack hit detection (meaning you can drive right through them) but also are so slow you'll never see them again after the first twenty seconds of the race (unless you lap them).

Your car, on the other hand, is "amazing" as rising elevations do not slow it down (nor does turning), and it seems to be the only car capable of drifting—though it's usually safer and faster to just let your foot off the gas.

The track designs themselves aren't so bad however, but they are often boring, especially considering how many times you play each track before you move on to the next.

Final Thoughts

Moero Downhill Night Blaze is neither a good racing game nor a good visual novel. Even keeping in mind that this game was released in 2007 doesn't really excuse the game's lack of quality. This is all the more a shame as the idea of mixing two completely different types of game was—and still is—an interesting idea; but the finished product reaches nowhere near this idea's potential. In the end, I'd only recommend this to those interested in seeing this train wreck in action—and maybe those few of you who just need another 80's sports movie plot in your lives.

Moero Downhill Night Blaze was released in English on December 11, 2012. It can be purchased at the JAST USA homepage (NSFW).

I've been enjoying DmC: Devil May Cry, Ninja Theory's reboot of Capcom's violent, venerable dude-juggling series. Evan likes it, too.

I even like protagonist Dante's total makeover as a brown-haired, sexy as eff guy, all swagger and sword-swinging. But could it be… (HARD-HITTING INDUSTRY NEWS ALERT)... that the dude has no penis?

This video, posted and strategically slowed down by The Average Gamer, at least gives some ammo to the argument. As they put it, "Dante has no dangley bits where dangley bits should be."

See—and judge—for yourself. Maybe his Nephilim-wang (Nephallus?) simply defies the laws of physics?

Upcoming erotic game Custom Maid 3D will be bundled with a very special controller. It looks like the PS Move, but with a few key differences—one of which is you put dicks in it.

Dubbed Ju-C Air, the peripheral is a wireless masturbation toy that will respond and react in real time to your stroke speed and depth, making this motion control of a very particular sort. Those motions will also cause the in-game characters to react accordingly, too, with different characters reacting, um, differently. Okay, then!

The Ju-C Air peripheral (see below) also has an analog stick and an action button as well as a right and a left click. This means that players don't even have to take their hands off their penis while playing. That's called knowing your audience.

Japanese erotic games, while incredibly niche, are a hotbed of smart ideas that range from upskirt head tracking and object detection to masturbation stat tracking and this thing. There's one word for this and that's INNOVATION. (Well, there are several words, but let's stick with that.)

This special Custom Maid 3D bundle goes on sale February 22 for ¥13,440 (US$144).

Custom Maid 3D [NSFW]

Just in time for the beginning of season three tonight, here's your highbrow Sunday evening content: a supercut of every nasty curse word whispered, spoken and screamed in the first two seasons of Game of Thrones.

There's a certain poetry to it, all seen together like this. Makes you really miss ol' Robert. And also say, "boy, they sure do drop the c-bomb a lot in this show".

Game of Fucks: All the swearing from Game of Thrones [YouTube]

Apparently, these photos were recently taken in Beijing. However, it isn't known who this couple is or what the hell is going on. Well, save for the part about running naked in public with an inflatable friend. We got that part.

Warning: This article has content some readers might find objectionable.

According to The South China Morning Post, the images are all over Chinese social networking sites and are going viral.

One Chinese blogger wrote (via SCMP), "Is this a real-life Temple Run?" This, of course, is a reference to the popular smart phone game Temple Run; in it, an explorer steals an idol from the temple and must outrun the foes in hot pursuit. Guess the treasure here is a blow-up doll?

Some were amused, but others were more cynical about what was going on. "It must be some kind of publicity stunt," one individual wrote online in China (also via SCMP). Or maybe this was a kind of performance art?

Whatever it is, look at that guy run.

And run!

In case you missed it, here is Kotaku's fully clothed Temple Run 2 review.

Who are Beijing's naked 'sex doll' couple? Bizarre photograph goes viral [South China Morning Post]

Kotaku East is your slice of Asian internet culture, bringing you the latest talking points from Japan, Korea, China and beyond. Tune in every morning from 4am to 8am.

Every spring, like clockwork, the Kanamara Matsuri is held in Kawasaki, Japan. People flock to the Shinto fertility festival, which honors enormous phalluses like the one above. And no, it's not actually pixelated.

Note: This article contains content that some readers might find offensive.

Not every Shinto shrine has fertility festivals or honors giant dongs. However, there are a few well-known ones, including the Honen Matsuri, outside of Nagoya, and the Hodare Festival, which is in Niigata.

During the Edo Period, prostitutes would visit the Kanamura Matsuri for protection against sexually transmitted diseases. These days, people visit the shrine for things like successful child-bearing. There are also many open-minded free spirits on hand, soaking up the sexually charged atmosphere. Besides the huge phalluses, there are also dick and vagina shaped candies to snack on. Some even spotted dildos on sale.

These kinds of festivals always seem popular with foreigners—either tourists or ex-pats. Many of the food signs stalls (especially the penis candy signs) are in English, too. Dick candy and English language signs are unusual for your typical Shinto festival.

There are also wood carvings. Of giant dicks. With faces.

But this is hardly typical! Online in Japan, people are usually somewhat surprised by these festivals, which are not the norm, and write things like, "Holy crap, that phallus is huge." It is! This year, several Japanese geek and tech sites, like NicoNico and IT Media, visited the festival. It shows how Kanamara Matsuri is unusual, even for Japanese.

At this year's festival, there was a man in a penis hat and another individual in a customized full body costume that turned NHK's kiddy character Gachapin into a penis monster.

And last year, in case you missed it, there was this:

He's Batman. I think.

nankotu360, タントラ, ショウヘイ, カタウ, KokiHatakeyama, いにゃだ [Twitter]

本日のきぐるみinかなまら祭り [変なブログです]

Kotaku East is your slice of Asian internet culture, bringing you the latest talking points from Japan, Korea, China and beyond. Tune in every morning from 4am to 8am.

This article was originally published on June 6, 2012. We're bumping it up for Mass Effect week.

Like almost every other game, Mass Effect 3 has official subtitles. But that's not what we're looking at today. No, what you're about to see is what happens when people record themselves playing Mass Effect 3, upload videos to YouTube then let Google's service try and guess what's being said on screen.

It, um, doesn't always get things right.

Sure, of the tens of thousands of lines of dialogue to be found in the game (note: there's a few from earlier Mass Effect games as well), this is just a handful of examples where it says "piss", "cat" and "ass cheeks". Still. They're some wonderful examples.

You can find more over at Mass Effect Transcribed, linked below.

Jeffrey Commander [Tumblr]

The way it should work is, if the Pokémon trainer defeats the gym leader, the trainer gets a badge. None of that touchy-feely "you get a badge because you proved your kindness" crap, like in this NSFW cartoon by egoraptor. Brock finds this out the hard way, though.

PokeAwesome 2 - Getting a Gym Badge [egoraptor]

This weekend, Buzzfeed published an article about Homme Mystere—a lingerie line for men. Homme Mystere offers all sorts of things, from thongs, to bras (bros?) and everything in between. And judging from the promotional photography, it was determined that video games would be a good way to sell this lingerie line.

Not that this couple needs video games to have fun, of course:

While the company has been around for a while, people are paying attention lately thanks to a recent video of their runway show.

Anyway, I'm curious—if you were hypothetically in the market for men's lingerie, does including video games in the marketing make the lingerie more appealing to you? Or heck, what do you think about their marketing strategy here, period?

Oh, and—if you visit the Homme Mystere website? Make sure to check out the C-Strings.

Finally, The Men's Lingerie Market Keeps Pace With The Women's [Buzzfeed]

E-mail I received last night, referencing this article:

Subject line: Dicks in Games

Hello,

I was in the process of finishing up an Android based game when you wrote the article about dicks in games and whatnot. My 'hero' is adick in a Hawaiian shirt. The enemies are pussies. You'll probably get a chuckle out of it, everybody does.

Google Play Link

http://bit.ly/Zei3ma

Leonard

In Taiwan, Iron Man 3 isn't the only super hero movie debuting this spring. There's another one.

HK: Hentai Kamen is opening soon in Taiwan. This is why, according to Wow! News, internet users in Taiwan have whipped up this unforgettable Iron Man 3 and HK collaboration by combining movie posters as a gesture of...support. I think.

And of course, people are making the inevitable "iron panty" jokes.

One thing this Photoshop doesn't change is how heroic the main character looks. Tony Stark doesn't look too bad himself.

HK: Hentai Kamen means "masked pervert" (変態仮面) and is originally a Japanese gag manga. RBB Today reports that the flick is proving to be a big hit in Japan, even among female moviegoers, and is playing to packed cinemas.

《瘋狂假面》激鬥《鋼鐵人3》 鈴木亮平在台感動催票 [Wow! News]

Kotaku East is your slice of Asian internet culture, bringing you the latest talking points from Japan, Korea, China and beyond. Tune in every morning from 4am to 8am.

It’s become the worst kind of video game cliché: Some horrible crime gets committed and a group of fools somewhere hacks out a playable turd designed to get people clutching their pearls or snickering at their juvenile lack of empathy. Most recently, there was a Doom-style knockoff after former LAPD officer Christopher Dorner went on a killing spree in February. And now the Boston Marathon bombing gets similar treatment.

The latest entry in the shock game sweepstakes is Boston Marathon 2013: Terror on the Streets. It’s a crude platformer where you control a runner who has to jump over the same kinds of improvised explosives that injured hundreds and killed three people eleven days ago. People writhe in pain in the background and there’s random masturbation behind the action, too.

Look, people can make what they want. Free country and all of that. And I’m all for games that set out to be provocative with the aim of making larger political statements, like Unmanned. But a person who makes games solely to laugh at the suffering of others—or, worse still, who invokes that suffering to pull eyeballs in the direction of the fart noises on a website—ultimately proves themselves to be tasteless and lacking in empathy. Nothing’s going to stop this kind of exploitation from happening. That’s just a truth of the world we live in now.

Here’s the disclaimer on the site where the game is hosted:

The material on this website is not recommended for children or those easily offended. This website is a humour site and is not to be taken seriously. The events and material on this website are not a reflection of the opinions or activity of the site's creators and we hold no responsibility for offence caused or the actions of anybody stupid enough to take it seriously.

Yeah? Well, what happens when your humor just isn’t funny? What, then, jerks?

[Via Boston Magazine]

Obliterate what you once thought of the Ninja Turtles by watching this gross, NSFW exploration of what 'scientifically accurate Ninja Turtles' would be like. Truly, Animation Domination High Def has a twisted mind. I had no idea real turtles were so...unpleasant.

Eww.

SCIENTIFICALLY ACCURATE NINJA TURTLES | ADHD [Animation Domination High Def]

I've been playing Animal Crossing: New Leaf lately, in preparation for a review next month. One of the staple features in the Animal Crossing franchise is a store run by a fox. The store sells rare items and art. Like, say, this fine statue here.

Let's take a closer and uncensored look, shall we? (NSFW warning, I guess):

...yeah, that's definitely a dick. While it's possible this item existed in previous Animal Crossing games, its inclusion now comes as a slight surprise given the recent news of censorship in Fire Emblem: Awakening. We can't look at a racy butt but a fully exposed penis is okay? Then again, many censorship decisions don't quite make sense.

Certainly not the decision taken with Fire Emblem, either. I mean, this was left in:

Arguably, the reason the statue is okay is because it depicts "art," and so the exposed penis isn't offensive. Can that distinction be made? Some people would say Tharja's sexualized depiction is "art," therefore it shouldn't be censored.

What do you guys think? I think it's interesting to look at what we accept as art and what we don't and why that is.

In case you're wondering, I bought the statue. I just need to find a place in my house for it now.

In celebration of Surgeon Simulator 2013 and the indie sensation that it has become: the most disgusting cake you have ever wanted to eat. Mmmm disgustlicious. Uncensored image follows.

(Surgeon Simulator 2013 via Reddit)

To contact the author of this post, write to tina@kotaku.com or find her on Twitter at @tinaamini.

Well, now. This .gif series gets a big ole George Takei "Oh my ..." It's just someone doing suggestive things to a Nintendo 64 controller, is that NSFW? Well, yeah, because I'd probably get arrested for showing it to a minor.

Update: The .gifs were ripped from this video, "Hardcore Gamer," uploaded in February by YouTube's MyFuckinMess. Yes, it's still NSFW. (h/t VileVibe)

[via Destructoid]

To contact the author of this post, write to owen@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter @owengood.