School idol festival transforms into topless dance-off due to game glitch.
December 6 was already going to be an exciting day for Love Live! fans. After all, it was launch day for the idol singer schoolgirl franchise’s newest video game installment, an arcade-exclusive featuring charters from both the original Love Live! anime and the Love Live! Sunshine!! sequel series.
But when the game actually hit arcades, it turned out to be far more stimulating that even the most die-hard Love Livers had expected.
Like just about all games in the modern era, the game uses polygonal graphics for its characters, with their clothing modeled separately. This allows their costumes to realistically sway and spin as the idols dance, and also allows for them to change into different costumes without completely redoing the visuals. Unfortunately, due to a glitch that many players experienced, the models for the characters themselves loaded properly, but their clothing didn’t.
So while Love Live! School Idol Festival ～after school ACTIVITY～ Next Stage has the extravagantly long name, perky idol anthems, and coordinated dance numbers fans expect, it also has something none of them saw coming: an unintentional nude mode.
Believe it or not, things could have been even more awkward. The current trend for arcade rhythm games in Japan is to have players utilize a touch screen to keep time with the music. However, the Love Live! arcade game appears to have physical buttons surrounding a secondary screen for the player to press, so they didn’t have to poke and swipe over the idols’ naked bodies to achieve high scores.
That said, Japanese social media is currently full of Love Live! School Idol Festival ～after school ACTIVITY～ Next Stage videos in which the players don’t hit a single note, either because they’re using both hands to film or they’re just too distracted by the exuberant and excessive nudity.
▼ In at least one instance, an idol forgot not just her clothes, but her head too.
Some might be asking why the characters have “nude” models at all. As mentioned above, the logic is that having separate models for a character’s body and clothing results in more realistic movement, and also allows the developer to easily institute costume changes. Seeing as how Love Live! is an idol series, the characters could conceivably be wearing anything from dresses with frilly hoop skirts to skimpy bikinis, depending on the song and dance combination. For different outfits, different parts of the body will be covered or exposed, and so the character models need to more or less conform with human anatomy and skin coloring.
▼ Although in a parallel to broadcast anime standards, the characters have no nipples, and they’re also Barbie doll-like below the waist.
With the bug causing such a commotion, it wasn’t long before developer Square Enix heard about it, and the company has since suspended operation of the machines until it can patch the problem, a process it hasn’t released an estimated timetable for. However, it looks like the age of naked Love Live! will be ending as abruptly as it started.
However, as shown above, the game also allows players to print out commemorative screenshots from their play session on paper cards, and ones showing this glitch will most likely become instant collectors’ items.
Sources: Otakomu, IT Media
Featured image: Twitter/@hajime98840098 (edited by SoraNews24)