10 Video Games We'll Be Ashamed To Tell Our Kids About

Some day we'll question why a violent car theft game has sold over 34 million copies.

Dead or alive 5
Team Ninja

As we rattle through 2016 in continual search for things to play on our shiny Netflix-machines, in retrospect have you ever taken the time to think how well the titles of yesteryear are going to stand the test of time?

Aside from The Last of Us - which remains one of the only games with enough weight behind it to contend with anything in the filmic or literary world - the most popularly discussed works our medium has produced are the likes of Grand Theft Auto, Call of Duty and Assassin's Creed. Games which respectively, are about murdering thousands of people, shooting an entire armoury full of guns, or just stabbing people in the face.

They certainly don't bode well when held up against the Shawshank Redemptions or Nineteen Eighty-Fours of this world.

Instead, although 2013 became the year that gaming made the cultural leap into mainstream recognition as an artform, it remains that the best examples of these larger ideas are barely prevalent in the titles that sell the most.

If you were to look at Grand Theft Auto as a serious comment on American society you're more likely to be terrified at their portrayal of torture, just as much as if you were looking for strong females you'd have to wade through a sea of large breasted warrior-women to find any who demand some respect. Many gamers know how ludicrous our beloved medium is and exactly where it came from, but for those on the outside looking in, it can be a troublesome and muddied view of what's on offer.

In something similar to when people recanting a story say "You really had to be there", these are the games that will always require a little bit of breaking down to understand their appeal.

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10. Dead Or Alive

dead or alive tina
Tecmowh

Give it say another 10 years, what will the DOA series be remembered for? Will it be the incredibly easy to get used to, hard-to-master fighting system? The exquisitely well-animated characters?

The showcase of one Ryu Hayabusa who would also star in the stupidly-hard Ninja Gaiden games?

No, of course not, it'll be because each female character had busoms so out of control they threatened to put someone's eye out. Many gamers got their first look at the series on the original playstation, and as the series made the leap to Dreamcast and PS2 the increased graphical wallop also meant the 'boob physics' (as they've become to be known as) increased tenfold in the rendering department.

In short, what was once a completely ridiculous physics-based inclusion in the first game, was now controllable by how high you set the 'Age' slider in the options. Therefore if you told the game you were older you'd get bigger, bouncier boobs. So what did an entire generation of borderline-teenage boy gamers say their age was? 99.

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Gaming Editor
Gaming Editor

WhatCulture's Head of Gaming.