These symbols are oh so familiar to us gamers, being a part of the video game culture for the last 19 years. But there was a time where we didn’t have the ESRB to protect us from ourselves and controversial video games flew around unchecked. Tonight’s episode we talked about some of those controversial video games and what led up to the establishment of the Entertainment Software Ratings Board.
WARNING! Although we try to keep a family friendly show going on the Retro Arcade, tonight’s topic does contain some themes and language that some might find offensive. Listen at your own discretion and view this particular blog article at your own risk. It does show images and video of these controversial games.
The ‘first’ controversial video game?
As you can see in the sales flyer above, ‘Gotcha’ featured pink rubber controls that were supposed to be ‘tongue-in-cheek’ humor as breasts that were squeezed to control the action. Unfortunately, ‘tongue-in-cheek’ humor to video game developer nerds was blatantly offensive to the outside public. The machines were changed to have joysticks on them later.
Here is a video of someone playing ‘Death Race’. Thanks to MadPlanet1 for the video!
And apparently there was a NES version of the game too. Thanks to nesguide for this video, and another shoutout to MadPlanet1 for pointing me in this direction. I would have never known about this game.
I wasn’t going to put up Custer’s Revenge here. But click the link to watch video of it. It was offensive on several different levels.
I thought this was a good documentary about ‘Night Trap’ and it’s involvement with the ESRB establishment. It interviews several people involved with the project including the late Dana Plato, as well as shows the idiotic senators blather about something they obviously don’t know anything about. I had a pre-ESRB rated copy of this game on the Sega C.D. and I didn’t see any of the things they complained about in this game. I even watched the infamous ‘bathroom scene’ about a dozen times to witness the appalling ‘see-thru’ nighty the actress supposedly wore. In this video I could tell it wasn’t see through, but with the Sega C.D.s crappy graphics, maybe someone, somewhere thought they were seeing more than what was there.
GameSpot (not to be confused with GameStop) has an excellent article surrounding the controversy of video games. Check it out!
Thanks for listening!
~B
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