Playgirls 2
2 Players	Arcade
Hot-B 1993

Strangely enough, Hot-B's totally uncalled-for sequel to Playgirls follows classic shoot'em-up "Galaga" conventions in a much needed breath of fresh air for adult arcades.
Pick your character from 3 differently skilled warriors and blast row after row of assorted enemies while at the same time avoiding their unrelenting bullet barrage and special attacks.
Each character has its own attributes (speed, power, and different life gauge sizes) but share a common but limited time-stopping "bomb" that freezes all enemies on screen for quick dispatching. A handful of items are up for catch. But besides a simple shot power-up, nothing useful are all.
Enemy assortment varies depending on which girl the player is currently trying to uncover, each of them featuring themes like "ninjas", "mechas", or "demons". They either shoot small bullets, dive down while shape-shifting into other forms, or just have their bigger brothers (much tougher, boss-like creatures that wait on the top of the screen) take care of you.

Playgirls 2 - Arcade

Americanized ninja "Joe", token female character "Lady", and close-up phobic "Jack" are our budget heroes.

Despite it's attractive-sounding concept and novel (at least for erotic titles) idea, these playgirls fail again in implementation.
The large size of character sprites makes dodging enemy shots very hard, which ends up killing the fun. This wouldn't be as much of a problem if the baddies were of the passive "Space Invaders" kind, but "Playgirls 2" is as bullet-intensive as trying to dodge one of the hardest Galaga enemy assaults with a "double" ship.

The music is quite annoying, and presentation won't do much for Playgirls' sequel. Whoever drew the character portraits should go back to posting "fanart" online, and even though there's nothing wrong with enemy sprites, main characters look stupid running sideways while pointing up.
I'm also dazzled by the name choices. It's just impossible to come up with character names of a more generic nature than "Joe", "Jack", and "Lady". Yes, "Lady". This should qualify as "Engrish". I guess calling them "Joe", "Jack" and "Jane" sounded too stupid...

The ladies:
Not much to see here due to low quality art (unless you are really into brunettes covered in snot or blondes fondled by corpses), but then again that's nothing new to these types of games. No nudity either.

Give it a try if you are into Galaga or Space Invaders, but you'll soon discover that staying off of enemy bullet's paths is frustratingly hard.
It's a shame that Playgirls 2 doesn't execute well, a little bit more technical quality and smaller main character sprites would make a decent game.

Dancing Eyes
4 Players	Arcade
Namco 1996

I can't think of a better videogame company than Namco to have made such a great sprites-to-polygons hardware transition. Surely "Pac-Man", "Galaxian", and other 2D hallmarks put Namco at the top near the beginning of its career, but save scant exceptions like "Final Lap", the Japanese developer was out of classic-quality material stepping into the 90's.
Their 3D history can be traced back to average cabinets like 1989's "Four Trax" and even 1987's "Drivers Eyes" (rumored "First ever hardware polygon arcade game"), but it wasn't until the early 90's that more polished 3D efforts like "Ridge Racer", "Air Combat", and "Tekken" secured the Japanese developer's spot in the new polygon-oriented market and established themselves as household series.
Add the advent of 32-bit generation consoles finally allowing 3D titles to bridge the gap between arcades and the living room (similarities between their arcade board "System 11" and Sony's Playstation having a lot to do with it) and there you have it. Probably Namco's biggest career achievement.

Dancing Eyes - Arcade

Althought it's one of the company's most obscure titles, "Dancing Eyes" isn't part of Namco's late 80's batch of early and by-now-forgotten 3D arcades. It hit the streets in 1996 not only as their first polygon-based erotic title but most likely Namco's only one period.
Its premise is a variation on "Super Qix"'s image-exposing mechanics (where the player controls an on-screen pointer and progressively "draws" small rectangles to claim the biggest area possible and reveal a picture before the time runs out), but instead of a two-dimensional plane the surfaces to uncover are 3D models. The cursor/pointer is in this case represented by a small monkey-like creature the game's camera continuously follows around the three-dimensional models, rotating them in all directions and showing off what the engine can do.

Unlike Super Qix though, surfaces to uncover are for the most part women's garments (which reveal their underwear when cleared), but also random objects these girls can be trapped into (like fish, magic lamps and wooden crates), bizarre dancing cows, cars, aliens, and even bodybuilders. These surfaces are divided in many small rectangles forming a grid the player can move the cursor over, claiming rectangles individually or in groups by completely surrounding their perimeter. It may sound complicated, but 2 or 3 stages is all it takes to get it.

Dancing Eyes - Arcade

Enemies abound of course, otherwise Dancing Eyes would be pretty dull. Rats, rabbits, spiders, and other small creatures traverse the grid and will instantly kill our monkey if they come in contact with him. They can be eliminated by clearing the rectangle whose perimeter they are walking on, and dispatching a bunch of them (or special red-glowing rectangles) will award a wide variety of power-up items like "speed up", "time stop", "extend time", and others.
There are 15 levels to complete, each of them with 3 three-dimensional models to choose from. Every time a stage is cleared you'll get to see the model in action, and even control the camera and zoom using the joystick and buttons.

"Bizarre" is the word that describes Dancing Eyes the best, and also explains why it never made it out of Japan. Its weirdness is not as extreme as Masaya's "Cho Aniki" series, but definitely has some points in common that might turn non-hardcore gamers off.

Dancing Eyes' main appeal is the continuous manipulation of polygon shapes and objects, together with their graphic design quality. Even though the polygon count is not even close to other Namco titles of the same year (just compare it to Tekken 3), the quality its developer is known for is present apparent in its details and presentation.
The sound effects (lots of digitized female voices) and soundtrack is on par with the rest of the game, the latter one composed of a wide selection of tunes depending on the theme of the current stage. From slow, soothing jazz to upbeat carnival rhythms.

The ladies:

Because of Dancing Eyes' dated 3D standards, these girls do nothing more than bring a smile to the face of whoever remembers how cool these graphics used to look back in the days. You can even rotate the camera at will!! How cool is that?!?!

If you are a fan of Namco's exhaustive library of quality 3D titles you owe it to yourself to check Dancing Eyes out. You'll specially get a kick out of it if you are into image-exposing titles like "Gals Panic", but either way it's a fun, interesting and bizarre game.