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Atari 2600

In 1980, a group of disgruntled Atari programmers left the company. They were upset about not being credited for their work, and formed a company you might have heard of called Activision. Activision produced some fairly popular games… like… oh… Pitfall. The company has made a comeback of sorts recently, and has published one of this year's biggest hits, Quake II, and developed the acclaimed remake of Battlezone.

But perhaps more importantly, Activision opened the door for other companies to develop games for the Atari 2600. Prior to Activision's formation, Atari developed all the games themselves. But after the foundation (and success) of Activision, other companies started to join the fray. Atari didn't plan for this kind of occurrence, had no way of preventing games from being released, and had no licensing system. Hundreds of companies churned out games of vastly varying quality.

Eventually, the flood of titles helped contribute to the crash of the entire videogame industry. But some of the games released during that period were… interesting to say the least.

With no limits placed on game content or production, pretty much anything went. This led to some very interesting results, and not surprisingly a few companies decided to market "adult" games. After all, sex sells (especially when your target audience is mostly comprised of teenage boys).

And so, the adult videogame market was born. Not surprisingly, a company called Mystique decided to release a game based on one of the most famous sexual figures of all time: General George Custer. Waitaminute… Custer?

Custer's Revenge remains one of the most controversial and bizarre games ever released. The object of the game is to guide a naked, horny, General Custer across the screen while avoiding incoming arrow fire. Waiting at the other side is a naked Indian maiden, and you earn points by… scoring. The slogan of the game was something like "When you score, you score!"

Needless to say, its release resulted in considerable backlash from Women's and Native American interest groups. It was banned from being sold in many places, and most stores refused to carry it. The stores that did carry the game had to carry it behind the counter, out of sight.

A game like this would never be released today (for many, many reasons), but one wonders why Mystique chose to have General Custer as the main character. Were they planning a whole series? What was next, George Washington's Cherry Popper? Hey replace the maiden with an intern and Bill Clinton… uhhh… I better stop before I get in trouble.

As for the game itself? Well, it's pretty bad. It's pretty easy to avoid arrows and rack (no pun intended) up a high score. It's poorly programmed, and you'll notice that cactuses and such disappear and reappear in the background for no particular reason. The graphics are ok (but obviously not very explicit... it's a 2600!), and the sound and music aren't too bad.

The game industry was pretty weird in the early 80's. Custer's Revenge is a great example of just how strange it was.