Custer's Revenge

Custer's Revenge is remembered less as a game than as one of the first genuine scandals in video game history. Released in 1982 by Mystique, a label that specialised in pornographic Atari 2600 cartridges, it depicts a crude, blocky General Custer crossing the screen to reach a Native American woman tied to a post. Its content, clearly implying sexual assault, drew protests from women's and Native American groups and made national news in the United States.

Mechanically there is almost nothing to it. You dodge a hail of arrows while walking a pixelated figure from one side of the screen to the other, a task that takes seconds and offers no depth whatsoever. It was primitive even by 1982 standards, and the notoriety vastly outstripped anything actually happening on screen.

Today the cartridge survives mainly as a case study: an example of how the unregulated early Atari market allowed genuinely offensive material to reach shelves, and a frequent citation in debates about taste and censorship in games. It has no real merit as entertainment, but as a grim artefact of the medium's messy adolescence it remains historically significant.