Game Custer — Revenge

Even by the standards of 1982, it was indefensible. While adult arcade games like Bachelorette Party or Bachelor Party were silly and lewd, Custer’s Revenge was the first to weaponize historical genocide for a cheap laugh. Even ignoring its content, Custer’s Revenge was a technical disaster. The Atari 2600 was capable of charming abstraction—think Pitfall! or Adventure . But Mystique had no interest in charm. Custer is a blocky, beige sprite with an inexplicable cowboy hat and an equally blocky, phallic protrusion. The "woman" is a brown rectangle with long hair. The "arrows" are jagged lines.

To understand how such a product ended up on store shelves, one must look at the unregulated "Wild West" of the early 1980s gaming market, a time when anyone with a soldering iron and a distribution deal could make a cartridge. The concept, as explained by designer Joel Martin, was crude in its simplicity. The player controls a naked, pixelated General George Armstrong Custer. His goal is to race across the bottom of the screen, dodging arrows falling diagonally from the top. If he reaches the right side, he finds a naked, bound Native American woman tied to a post. The "reward" for dodging the arrows is a pixelated "grappling" sequence, awarding the player points for an implied sexual assault. game custer revenge

The controls are sluggish. The collision detection is broken; arrows that appear to miss will still kill Custer. The sound is a repetitive, grating beep that loops ad nauseam. It is not fun. It is not difficult in a challenging way. It is simply a chore to navigate, with a disgusting reward at the end. Upon its limited release (primarily through mail-order and adult bookstores), the reaction was swift and furious. Even by the standards of 1982, it was indefensible

In the end, Custer’s Revenge is not a game worth playing. It is a historical artifact worth remembering only as a lesson: that technology without ethics is just a machine for making bad ideas into interactive reality. The Atari 2600 was capable of charming abstraction—think