Original Release: Mystique, 1982, Atari 2600
Other Releases: Atari 2600 (Westward Ho), 1983 / Atari 2600 (General Retreat), 1983 / PC, 2008
This fine example of Swedish Erotica recounts the tale of Custer at Little Big Horn, with perhaps some slight creative liberties.
Custer’s Revenge (Atari 2600, Mystique, 1982)
Where to Buy: eBay
How to Emulate: coming soon!
Review by: Master-B
Custer’s Revenge is a pioneering piece of pixel erotica mostly known for offending just about everyone who ever played it. I’m not sure if it’s meant to be canon but I guess this is what caused the Battle of Little Big Horn … Naked Custer (complete with giant tent pole) has to hurriedly make his way over to the naked Indian woman tied up to the pole and ravish her frantically before an arrow puts him down for the big dirt nap! That’s pretty much it … later levels swap the background palette and add random disappearing cacti as a further obstacle, but that’s pretty much the entire game right there.
A few points of historical note … nearly every media source cites the ravishing of the woman as a “rape”, but she appears to have a huge grin during the procedures, and original designer Joel Miller claims that she is being “seduced.” They could just have a kinky fetish for bondage and getting it on in the middle of flying arrows, I guess. Fair and balanced coverage! We report, you decide!
Also, the game was supposedly screened pre-release for “women’s rights and Native American groups”, at least according to Wikipedia. If anyone has any footage of this please, please, PLEASE send a link to it.
The story behind the multiple names is apparently that Playaround bought the rights to the game from original developer Mystique when they went out of business, then got some sort of Remorse and released versions of it where the woman waves invitingly at Custer to demonstrate that it’s Not Rape (that’s Westward Ho!) and a graphical reconfiguring that has the woman dodging arrows to get it on with Custer (that’s General Retreat.)
The graphics really couldn’t get much more basic/primitive. Custer’s erection is about as long as his arm and the woman’s body looks like a duck (fertile!). I guess it conveys the basic themes though? I like the mountainous background … Custer: Live At Red Rocks! The sound is actually surprising for both an Atari 2600 game and an Atari 2600 porn game probably cranked out in a week or less. You get some sort of bugle charge followed by stereotypical Indian music from old movies and Bugs Bunny cartoons, then a menacing drumbeat plays as Custer dodges the arrows to get to the object of his affections. It’s actually a better effort than quite a bit of the mainstream 2600 game library, to be honest.
Dodging the arrows really presents no challenge until they start going fast, and even then you can usually truck right over to the lady and get your Manifest Destiny on. The only difficulty is really that while you’re Engorged in the action, an arrow tends to come out of nowhere right from the edge of the screen and into your noggin. I guess you can get one hand off the joystick to manipulate the other joystick while you’re banging away at the Bang button, but there’s going to be a lot of Arrows Interruptus!
Links
Fan remake
Videos
Gameplay Video