Today I would like to write about my obsession with nude patches, and to a minor degree my obsession with the ultimate nude patch: Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball. “Nude patch” refers to the modification of a videogame (typically a PC game) to remove the clothing from any female characters in order to make them nude. Germans particularly seem to be obsessed with them: one of the largest nude patch sites is completely German, except the word they use is “Nacktpatch” which I sometimes use as a silly little catchphrase. In any case, I am just as obsessed as the Germans: the first thing I do when I start playing a PC game with any female characters in it is cruise the major nude patch sites to see if one has been developed for that particular game. For some reason I love polygonal nudity.
Nude patches basically began with the release of Tomb Raider, one of the first games to feature a ridiculously proportioned, aggressive female heroine. Rumors began of a “nude code” for the PlayStation version of the game, which of course were not true. But people became so obsessed with the idea that they actually cracked open the texture files and modified the PC version of the game so that Lara Croft was nude. It was completely horrible and unattractive, with the breasts basically being small pointy cones, but it started a trend. From that nude patches basically grew into an Internet phenomenon, and nearly every major PC game release has a nude patch of some sort, although many times when the modders can’t figure out how to alter the 3D meshes of the game some of them turn out fucked up: the latest Tomb Raider nude patch has stripes running down Lara’s arms where the modder couldn’t remove elements of the wetsuit, and the Street Fighter nude patch has some characters with obvious raised areas of skin where bras or other clothing pieces were located.
I’ve played many nude patches in my time. A couple of the first ones were Drakan, which was an absolutely great nude patch, and Giants: Citizen Kabuto. I particularly remember loving Drakan… I even found some editors to get at the textures myself so I could make some of the NPC’s nude as well. Now I rarely have the patience for that; I basically just go with whatever somebody else has already created.
Anyhow, in 2002 or 2003 a game came out for the original XBOX entitled Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball. The game basically consists of bikini clad babes with huge warbling bouncy breasts playing volleyball on a tropical island. This was during the XBOX’s brief flirtation with “adult” content… BMX XXX came out about the same time and featured a topless female biker. So there were rumors that there would be a topless or nude mode in the game. Alas, it was never included. For some reason adult videogames have never really had the sales numbers to support their development, at least in America.
I purchased the game anyway for its sexual content and tried it out. I quickly discovered that the game featured a “Venus” swimsuit which was basically a G-string that revealed almost everything. On top of that, only one of the girls could purchase it from the shop. In order to get the other girls a “Venus” G-string, you had to give it to them as a gift. The problem was every girl in the game had personality elements where they would “like” or “dislike” certain gifts – and if they absolutely hated a gift, they would throw it away. Every girl absolutely hated the “Venus” and would throw it away immediately. The “Venus” G-string was the most expensive suit in the game – a million credits – and it took an entire playthrough to win enough to buy it. So I became obsessed with convincing every girl in the game to wear this G-string.
And so, I set about the arduous task. I read FAQs on the matter, and basically the entire two weeks of game time you were playing volleyball to win credits, you had to ply your prospective target with gifts that they “loved” in order to make them agreeable to you. You also had to partner with them and win almost every game you played. Even then, the chances of them keeping the Venus were extremely low… meaning that most of the time you would waste several hours of play completely. I think I tried even harder to get them to wear the “Venus” because of this fact, not in spite of it.
Of course, after people figured out how to patch XBOX games, Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball was quickly modded to remove all the swimsuits, and to add realistic anatomy. I patched my copy in 2005 as soon as I modded my XBOX and loved every minute of it. But, the thrill wore off almost immediately, because there was no goal to strive for… the girls were all naked all the time. I guess there was no sense of “conquest,” as pathetic as that is. So I played it for a few days and then dropped it completely.
Well, that’s about all I have to say about Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball. A sequel for it came out for XBOX 360, but the gameplay is much harder due to dodgy controls and a bad camera, so it’s almost impossible to win games. There is also no nude patch for it since the designers of the original nude patch were taken to court by the game’s creators and forced to cease & desist. So I have next to no interest in it. They do still have the “Venus” swimsuit, and a new “stripper dance” scene to have them perform, and they even added extremely absurd super bouncy breast physics, but once I was exposed to all the girls naked in the original, I lost all desire to convince them to wear the “Venus.”