Ladies and Gentlemen, step up and present your, ahem, DualShocks with pride. Three years ago, the PlayStation Controller Bra & Bro elevated co-op multiplayer to an intimate level Sony probably never anticipated. If they had been so visionary, then someone would have probably convinced Tecmo that the PlayStation brand held the keys to frontiers of “Dead Or Alive” jiggle-physics beyond their wildest imaginations.
Artists Kyle Duffield and Daniele Hopkins not only reimagined the gates to Boobtown by functionally laying out PlayStation controller buttons on the outside of two bra cups – directional pad on the left, buttons on the right – but turned a few tables by creating an identical PlayStation controller “bro” identically tailored for the boys to wear.
It’s a fun, touchy-feely experiment that literally boobs into alternate controllers that partners poke and press during gameplay. Oh, the fun we’re imagining two people could have with a haptic Sixaxis mechanic such as the way refreshing a dying flashlight battery in “The Last Of Us” required jiggling the entire gamepad.
The PlayStation Bra & Bro combo debuted in 2013 at Toronto’s Vector Game Art Festival with a live practical demo of, naturally, “Dead Or Alive”. Hey, if you’re going to make the human body an instrument to satirize hyper-sexualized male and particularly female bodies, why not do it with style?
The PlayStation Bra & Bro were never intended for sale, but watching willing and amused participants poke, prod and toy with the artists’ bodies definitely added a whole new entertaining element of challenge to a somewhat infamous tournament fighter. The notoriously ridiculous breast physics in particular made for a silly but thought-provoking interactive commentary on the way we represent and interact with bodies in video games.
On the other hand, it also had to be nice seeing the dudes get felt up and tweaked while taking in the beautifully bouncy, wonderfully wobbly pleasure zeppelins of the ludicrously sexed-up 3D models.
