Topic: Have you ever played one of those games...

Often I notice really trashy or salacious games appear during eshop sales. You probably know the kind; the sort of games which usually have the word "hentai" in the title. I wondered if anyone's actually played these and if they could confirm whether they're all just shovelware?

Let's be respectful of the forum rules and not be too graphic; no nsfw work discussion obviously.

@SpringLand no I do think 99% of them are shovelware. I have around 2000 of them game's that go on sale form €8 yo €1, I mean contra rogue corps is a really good game , it went from €40 to €2 , but there was not many people playing it online. What does probably happen with a sale game is that maybe after it been around for 2 years, people are finished playing it online, so they put it on sale, contra rogue corps was still a bargain for €2

You won’t last 30 seconds playing those games.

@Magician It is funny how Nintendo is typically perceived as the inoffensive outlet, despite having a lot of smut games. It's a bit of a double-edged sword, but I do appreciate how they opened the flood gates; it makes for some variation in the eshop's catalogue.

Out of interest, is the gameplay usually any good in nsfw games or is the emphasis on the smutty aspects?

Haven't played any on Switch, but I was (unfortunately) gifted one of these games on Steam a few years back.
It was one of those games where it was clearly made with premade assets or code, I wouldn't have been shocked if one person made it with things downloaded off the unity/unreal stores.
Would I recommend it? No, but it was a laugh for the 20 minutes it lasted.

I've seen some more elaborate games on digital stores, I'm sure they have some redeeming qualities...but they aren't targeted at people like me. And they usually seem quite expensive.
-it's very niche, but if you are part of that group I'm sure it's great.

Every game sold on the Switch has to be rated, usually by the ESRB, PEGI and CERO although some other countries have their own agencies, and there's a limit to how much smut they'll allow even on their Mature rating.

Anything that's actual pr0n will get an Adults Only rating and will not be publishable on the Switch or any other mainstream console. You're going to have to play those on a PC, I'm afraid. 😉

...I don't even know how games with "hentai" in the title gets on a Nintendo system to begin with. Anyways yeah I never played any of those games, only fanservice games I care about on consoles are the Senran Kagura games...and of course Switch only got the pinball game and that...girl petting simulator. So much for having Burst HD on Switch. (makes no sense, the original Burst was on 3DS. >_>)

Out of curiosity I was just browsing and there is a T for teen game called 'Furry Hentai Tangram'.. which from the preview looks like a bare bone Tangram puzzle game with random clothed animal-girl pictures in the background.

@SpringLand
In answer to the original question, I once accidentally bought a quite decent adventure platformer without realizing it was rated M for mature and tagged with nudity. The game defaults to a sfw setting, although the extremely pixelated outfit of the main character is very skimpy. Still, if you ignore that mild weirdness it was a good game.

After I bought that, I did some research and out of the 10,000 Switch eShop games, only an extremely small number are tagged with nudity (at least in the US eShop). There were a few of the ones named hentai (the ones that are M rather than T) and most of those look very low quality. And of course a few real games like Witcher 3. And apparently a couple weird in-between games like the one I accidentally bought where they just randomly inserted optional adult settings into an otherwise normal-ish eshop game. Almost all of the eshop-only games tagged with nudity seem to come from just a couple publishers.

I also seem to recall a shoot-em-up with nudity which NintendoLife reviewed and scored surprisingly well. Waifu uncovered? I suspect the nudity in that one is also optional via settings.

As to why some of the actual junky pervy games seems to appear high on the eShop sales lists, blame Nintendo for having a badly organized eShop. I would guess they are sometimes at the top of the list because of a combination of good sale (90% off!) plus low current price ($2!) plus relative popularity (I doubt those games are especially popular, but more people likely buy them than the average never-heard-of random low quality eShop game.)

@Matt_Barber

Then you haven't seen PLT's artbook. Every boundary is crossed.

I'd list all the naughty details, but I don't want another one of my posts merc'd for no good reason.

@Magician That's basically what I said. Nintendo are leaving it to the ratings agencies, who are prepared to let a certain amount of smut through on a Mature rating. Nobody has, as of yet, managed to get a game with an Adults Only rating published on a mainstream console though so, even with Nintendo, there are still limits.

PLT might cross the line for you personally, but different regions have different standards and it has a PEGI 18 rating. So, it can be released on Switch.

On the whole, I much prefer Nintendo's policy to Sony's because the latter isn't just keeping obscure pervy games off its platform but applying censorship to far more mainstream games, which is a lot harder to ignore.

Edit: Just to be clear, it's only the contents of the cartridge and digital download that Nintendo has any control over. If someone wants to throw in an uncensored artbook with a physical release, that's totally out of their hands.

Steam comes to mind. As much as I love the platform, they do let people sell a lot of trash.

Some collects those games instead of playing them as they are guess different aka VN, Hentai, Adult versions. So if they exists some buy to just collect them. If you want to you can always look at YT but for Adult content you will most likely have to have account and age verification.

I got a couple of them back when the phenomenon was new (A shmup called Waifu Uncovered & a arcade puzzler called Crawlco Block Knockers).

They were unique as a novelty but really have nothing on more proper games (the former sucked as a game, and the latter was better but I actually found it way too hard).

@FishyS What category does this Earthbound-like game I was playing yesterday come under in your book?

Yep they are all bad, I'm dumb enough to still fall for games like that with the mentality of 'but it's £0.99 and I have gold coins' If you see it frequently being posted on Eshop (like they abuse the coming soon page with the same game) it's trash. However there are cheap good games that frequently go on sale as well so don't confuse them.

@gcunit In all fairness, I don't think South Park revolved around sex appeal haha.
What's unique to the more risqué games on the eshop is that their subject matter or gameplay appears to primarily focus on suggestive or explicit content; at least, that's how they market themselves.

I’m actually hoping for a NPC simulator game. You know, the current trends that you see on Simp Tok.

Yeah, Nintendo went back on their policy of not censoring games. There's a game called something like "Hot Tentacle Shooter", and the devs were annoyed when Nintendo changed their policy part way through development, causing them to have to spend extra time to make sure the Switch version was properly censored.

It's not easy to tell if a game like that is censored on Switch but not censored on Steam, there should be better clarity. I feel like they could easily implement a system that only allows the right account to view and purchase that kind of content.

As well as an option in the games themselves to censor if you so desire, or a hidden dlc option that only the right accounts can view and download, perhaps?

Yes but I was only there to ask directions on how to get away from there.