Virtually queer.

Regarding "Coming Out of the Virtual Closet" [January 16], Cybil in Silent Hill is not ambiguously gay in the least. She's the love interest of the main character (who is male in the game, unlike the movie). If you play the game right, she takes the place of his wife in the opening-credits movie.

Now for the oversights: If you want gun-toting lesbians on the PlayStation, what about the New York cop with runaway mitochondria, Aya, in the Parasite Eve games? Sure, she's on a hetero date at the beginning of game 1, but she doesn't seem that comfortable. And after her date turns to flaming goop, she never looks back. Lesbian gamers must appreciate the famous shower scene. And then there's the delicious lesbo-a-go-go that is Final Fantasy X-2. Yuna is looking for her man, but what about her two scantily clad sidekicks? At least one of them, Paine, wears black leather and has attitude to spare!

Perhaps the biggest oversight: the omission of even a mention of Shadow Hearts. In Shadow Hearts: Covenant, Joachim Valentine, vampire and pro wrestler, spouts mountains of double entendre as he fights his way through the Man Festival, which culminates in, well--gay sex. And the game includes a subquest that consists of finding "stud cards" with pictures of naked men on them (candy carefully covered). You trade these with the gayest character in the video gaming world, one of the Magimel brothers, who creates puppet clothes for one of your characters. Magimel returns sporting a rainbow helmet in the new Shadow Hearts: From the New World with his butch biker boyfriend, and both hit on the male main character repeatedly.

The truth is, gay characters in games are decades ahead of where your article put them. Of course, as in every media, we have miles to go.

TIMOTHY CAPEHART via the Internet