November 03, 2008

Custer's Revenge

Custer's RevengeCuster's Revenge (also known as Westward Ho and The White Man Came) is a pornographic video game made for the Atari 2600 by Mystique, a company that produced a number of adult video game titles for the system. The main character was based on General George Custer.

The game was first released on October 13, 1982, and has received significant criticism because of its crude simulation of an apparent rape of a Native American woman. As a result, it has been credited as being one of the worst games ever made.

Gameplay

In the game, the player controls the character of General George Armstrong Custer, depicted as a man wearing nothing but a cavalry hat, boots, and a bandana, sporting a visible erection. Custer has to overcome arrow attacks to reach the other side of the screen. His goal is to have intercourse with a naked, large-breasted Native American woman, named "Revenge."

Controversy

Custer's Revenge gained notoriety for its peculiar plot. The game prompted criticism from women's rights groups who stated that the simulation was a simulation of rape. Other groups such as Women Against Pornography, Native American spokespersons, and critics of the video game industry in general protested the game.

Aside from complaints over the game's sexual content, many found the gameplay simplistic. People also found the pornography element of the game inadequate—the two characters' appearances have been compared to Lego bricks or cardboard boxes.

The focused media attention caused the game to sell approximately 80,000 copies, twice as many copies as Mystique's other X-rated games, Bachelor Party and Beat 'Em & Eat 'Em.
Comment:  For more on the subject, see Video Games Featuring Indians.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

That this type of sexual excitement exists (and this game is but one indicator) within U.S. society is no surprise to me as, according to the latest U.S. Department of Justice statistics on the subject of violence against women: American Indian women are the most victimized in terms of violence and are the most at risk for violence (to include rape, sexual assault and murder) than all of the other ethnic groups researched - and they are victimized by mainly non-Indians.

A Personal Anecdote -

Years ago, when I was in the army in Germany, I bought the paperback version of "Soldier Blue" (that was released shortly after the motion picture came out) that featured a color picture of a nude Indian woman (very shapely, with large breasts, her hair in braids and with a single feather adorning her hair) who was bound and gagged on her knees (apparently awaiting whatever fate was in store for her at the hands of the U.S. cavalry).

I kept the book in my personal area (we were housed in an old WWII German army compound) where there was very little privacy. One afternoon, I returned to my quarters and much to my surprise, another soldier (his first name was "Wally" and he was just an infantryman from South Philadelphia with an IQ of about 75) had my paperback and was masturbating while looking at the cover artwork. In those days, in the Vietnam-era U.S. Army, you could kick somebody's ass and not really get in trouble for it, so that's what I did (well, I just basically slapped him around the room).

Wally then had two black eyes and a cut lip and was later heard to tell people that, "Chief did it. He jap slapped the dog shit out of me for borrowing his injun book!"

dmarks said...

" "Chief did it. He jap slapped the dog shit out of me for borrowing his injun book!"

Only three racial slurs in his statement?

gaZelbe said...

It seems like you (Rob) have written about this video game before. What prompts you to bring it up again?

Anonymous said...

Looking Towards 2012 -

It's the kind of game that the typical male Palin supporter would thoroughly enjoy.

p.s. - palin did not know that africa is a continent (and not a country)!

Rob said...

I haven't talked about Custer's Revenge recently. But others have--in the comments section of Lack of Diversity = Discrimination.

Because people seemed interested in it, I thought I'd bring it to everyone's attention. So I made it a primary subject in the blog.