Controversial Classics: "Postal 2"

Gary Coleman died last week, giving me a very thin excuse to talk about "Postal 2," in which you are able to kill Gary Coleman (who does contribute his own voice for the game). It's just one feature on an incredibly long laundry list of controversial elements you can find in-game. The game wasn't very widely released or critically acclaimed, but the controversy surrounding it has kept its name in the history books and even earned it a crappy Uwe Boll film adaptation. While it could possibly be defended for being a satire of game violence, the game is, on its face, likely the most immature entertainment you will ever endure.

"Postal 2" is the 2003 sequel to 1997's "Postal," which wasn't especially noteworthy. The game is a first-person shooter set in a suburban neighborhood. Your character must complete a list of mundane and not necessarily violent tasks each day, which will eventually be frustrated to the point that the player has to expend enormous effort not to "go postal." In order not to use violence, the player will have to sustain verbal abuse, wait in ludicrously long lines, and generally not have any fun at all playing.

The sheer amount of controversial material packed into the game is really too long to even recount. This gameplay video gives you a fair idea of what you're in store for, including the use of cats as gun silencers. Oh, and if you want to see a gamer suicide bomb Gary Coleman in-game, here it is. Pretty rough.

Controversial Classics: "Custer's Revenge"

Today's entry into my Controversial Classics series is heavy on the "Controversial" and light on the "Classic." I'll go ahead and say it's not a game worth defending by any means, but that above must be the best box art ever.

It's not a belated April Fools' Joke, no, "Custer's Revenge" is an actual 1982 game for the Atari 2600. There are a surprising number of pornographic games from that period, when you consider just how terrible the games look, sound, and play. There are very few now, (unless you count Japan, like the still-controversial "RapeLay"), which probably has more to do with the high cost of making a serious game now, rather than the presence of a market for this sort of thing. A gameplay video is embedded below, which I must warn you is crude in every sense of the word (well, it's not oil, but--).




If you don't want to see the video, or if you're not very good at charades, "Custer's Revenge" lets you play as a pantsless, erection-sporting General Custer as he evades arrows to rape/maybe-have-consensual-sex-with an Indian woman. That last distinction is important, for this vague depiction of... whatever was most controversial for depicting rape, even though maybe it's not, who can tell with so few pixels?

Wikipedia is a very entertaining source for this story. One cited source from Wikipedia claims that this game "generated many gang rapes of Native American women," following that quote up with a story about a Native American woman who was attacked by two white men, who apparently suggested that she play "Custer's Last Stand" [sic, I guess?] with them while assaulting and I assume raping her. I find many parts of that story bewildering, but let's move right along...

The game went through a number of other versions, including name changes to "Westward Ho," (heh, real funny) "The White Man Came," (dear lord) and a version called "General Retreat" in which the Indian woman apparently chases down Custer to have sex with him (empowering?). Trying to find the right gameplay video on YouTube, I found so many different versions of the same game, I can't even begin to count. The Indian woman was even made to beckon for Custer in later editions of the game, to guard against rape allegations.

As is usual with these controversial classics, the hoopla over the game's content actually served as a boon for those who made it. This was the best-selling game by far made by the porn game developer Mystique (they wouldn't last through the mid-80's game crash, though). I'm kind of sad for everyone involved in this game, including those who protested it so vehemently.

Controversial Classics: Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3

Well, the big release season is basically over this year. Sure, there's still Prince of Persia, but that's about it until 2009, and I don't think it's going to garner a whole lot of controversy just because it says "fer-tile" a lot. That's why I'm going to look at some older games that may have been overlooked by the media watchdogs in the past. These are some sleeper controversies, starting with Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3.

So, it's a JRPG. There are also some little Japanese dating game elements, but nothing nearly as naughty as some awful ones that are out there. That's not the problem. The problem is, the protagonists are, at first blush, teens who gain powers when they shoot themselves in the head. Yeah. Let that sink in before I explain why that's, of course, not at all reasonable for me to say. Go ahead. I'll wait. Write a letter to your congressman demanding that it be banned. Say that it gives you points for committing suicide, and they'll jump on it. Do it.

The thing is, the "gun" they shoot themselves with is an "evoker". There are other, real guns inside the game as well, so the characters aren't actually shooting themselves, it just really looks like it. This GameTrailers video should show you what's going on at about 0:22. So yeah, it's kind of a bust. Of course, these "facts" here don't stop our politicians from saying that Grand Theft Auto gives you points for killing hookers and raping people, so I think this could really make it into the spotlight. That is, if it weren't more than a year old and not at all mainstream.

EDIT: Oh, and Persona 4 is out now. I can't believe I didn't realize that before I wrote this.