While mainstream comics fans were busy talking about gay superheroes, ratings and the appropriateness of depicting (homo)sexuality, the programmers at Rockstar Games went and did something sly: They made it possible in their controversial-even-before-its-release video game Bully for protagonist Jimmy Hopkins to romance, and kiss, boys as well as girls.
Gamebrink is credited with first mentioning this last week in a review — they post a video of a hallway kiss, too — but GayGamer has been following up on the story.
“It is clearly NOT a bug since there was obviously dialogue recorded for these sequences, and you have your choice of four or five different boys on which to lay the mack down,” GayGamer’s “Fruit Brute” writes. “I applaud Rockstar’s ballsy-ness in actually including the free will to decide who you want to kiss to get your health back. And true to life, not every boy will want to lock lips with you.
“I do think though, that this raises some important questions, not the least of which is: Was this content an homage to the real choices we get to make in life, or merely another ‘Hot Coffee’ type stunt to stir the pot and boost sales?”
Donning his investigative reporter hat, Fruit Brute then played the game himself, and discovered that Trent is one of at least four male Bully characters who responds to flowers and a little sweet talk: “I was shocked later, when I went into the town near the school, to find my blonde hunk holding hands with a red haired jock while waiting in line for the movies. Needless to say, my heart was broken …”
However, he held himself together long enough to make a video of the sequence.

October 24th, 2006 at 10:23 am
Interesting. I actually have the game myself. I’ve only played it a couple of hours but maybe I’d get further if I went around kissing people instead of punching them in the face.
October 24th, 2006 at 10:28 am
Does that video contain nothing heavier than kissing?
Because YouTube has it behind an adults-only barrier (so I’d need to register to see it, no thanks). One step forward, two steps…
October 24th, 2006 at 11:06 am
If anything’s to be learned here, Tim, it’s that flowers and kisses will get you further than punches.
Niels: Yeah, the “adults-only” barrier is a little troubling. The video doesn’t go beyond kissing and goofy chatter (a la, “I’m a totally awesome kisser, right?”). But you can view the video at GayGamer through the first link in the next-to-last paragraph.
October 24th, 2006 at 1:05 pm
That’s probably what I did wrong on Valentine’s Day.
June 28th, 2007 at 4:49 pm
I own this game andyou can kiss other boys to.