As we get into winter, here’s one more burst of summer courtesy of PSM’s first annual “Swimsuit Special” which, besides looking like a 90s website, has intro test that’s literally meant to be shaped like a woman’s body. That’s certainly a first for this blog. Anyway, there’s also Tifa in a boobs and butt pose looking confused about what the point of any of this is.
(Pages from Playstation Magazine vol. 35 (July 2000), submitted by anonymous)
Transcription of Swimsuit Special Introduction for Screen Readers:
Welcome to our first ever “Girls of Summer” pictorial! We hope to make this an annual event, if you guys like it enough to want more. In this feature we-take a look at PlayStation’s hottest game goddesses to see what they’re up to. Most everyone shown on these pages has a new game in the works, so be sure to check out the info box to find out what’s coming and when. We also list background info on each characters, so newbies can be brought up to speed on the hottest video game babes around. Plus, everyone’s in bikinis! It’s about time that a videogame magazine had its own cheeky swimsuit special, don’t you think? We’ve contracted the hottest comic book artists in the world - if you know anything about comics, then you know that these guys are the best! So read on and enjoy a healthy dose of cheesy summer fun. The warm weather only lasts so long, and then it’s back to turtkenecks! [NOTE: Check us out at psmonline.com for the full uncensored images!]
We used to get this magazine when I was in high school and after a while there was a fight in the letters to the editor section about the kind of sexism inherent in this sort of thing. There were people asking for more men at least or for this kind of thing to not be a part of the magazine entirely because it was a magazine for people who liked having a PlayStation. The editors were completely unsympathetic and laughed it off and said well most of our demographic is men so too bad and I think one year they included a male character but it was a joke.
I was about 14 when they started doing this and it made me so uncomfortable. I just wanted to play Final Fantasy and the 76 other Squaresoft games that were being released, man.
