Original Release: Hot-B, 1992, Arcade
You get a decent Breakout/Arkanoid clone in terms of gameplay and aesthetic polish, but you get no nudie pics (unless you do a little messing around with the ROMs in an emulator)
Play Girls (Arcade, Hot-B, 1992)
Where to Buy: eBay
How to Emulate: Arcade Emulation Guide
Review by: Master-B
Play Girls is quite the little conundrum. As adult arcade games go it has better-than-usual gameplay (a decent Arkanoid clone with lots of power ups), nice overall polish, a two-player simultaneous option, hand-drawn cuties instead of the usual questionably sourced magazine scans … the big problem is it doesn’t have adult pics! You gotta play multiple rounds of Breakout for just lingerie and bikini shots. Bit of a rip as the title screen certainly seems to imply boobies are forthcoming (not to mention the one marquee I could find prominently placing nekkid ladies on it).
This might be explained by Hot-B actually being a legitimate developer/port house of the 80s and early 90s: . they did the Black Bass series, Spy vs Spy, Sega’s Crack Down and a couple of WWF licensed games just to name a few of the bigger examples. So they didn’t feel like a nudie game was gonna fit their resume. Funny thing is, they actually DID hide nudes in the game, though; there’s just no known way to actually access them during regular gameplay. But if you strip graphic layers off in MAME or dig around in the ROM, the girls are nekkid under their little outfits. My best guess is they planned to enable Naked Mode as an option but thought the better of it late in development and just dummied it out.
Whatever the case, the game actually manages to be at least a competent Arkanoid knockoff in its own right. There’s a pretty big variety of power-ups, and some are actually power-downs that you’ll want to avoid (like the smaller paddle or “mirror controls mode”). Good amount of levels as well.
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