Banned 80s Arcade Game: Lover Boy
Title screen gives little away of what's to come!
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We've covered weird video games of the 80s, and even did a piece on the bizarre 8-bit porno games produced by Mystique for the Atari 2600. (See links for both below!) However, when you thought you'd pretty much covered the world of sex and perversion in retro 8-bit video gaming, something else raises its head. While searching for a YouTube video for the banned 1986 gore game Chiller, a video for another sex themed vintage game popped up on the side-bar. And thus, 8-bit porno video gaming of the 80s took a a whole new much darker twist. Just when you thought things couldn't get any worse, ladies and gentlemen may I present Lover Boy from 1983, a Pac-Man style game with featuring a sub-game "rape" mode! That's right a joystick waggling, button bashing, power-up segment, where "Lover Boy" has to bring his victim to orgasm. Seriously! What were they thinking? Of course this game emanated from Japan, who else would think of putting such a game into an arcade cabinet and unleashing it on unsuspecting video gamers? Now there were plenty of dodgy games around at the time for 8-bit home computers, for little perverts to bash their joysticks over in the privacy of their own bedrooms, but in public? In a video arcade, where any unsuspecting innocent could slip a coin in the slot!
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As the title screen states, Lover Boy was released by a company called G.T. Enterprise Inc., who as far as I can tell only produced this one game. Although there are claims they did make another arcade game, but there's no evidence of what that may have been. Unsurprisingly Lover Boy was banned around the world, and cabinets were recalled. It's likely that any versions of this game that did make it into the public arena, where installed in adult book stores, sex shops, strip joints and bars. Or at least we can hope that's where it was installed, rather than the local video game arcade down the street. As far as anyone can tell, there are no existing versions of the game, apart maybe in the private collections of a few arcade game enthusiasts. There are a few game boards in the the hands of collectors, but that's it. It would appear Lover Boy went where Lover Boy should have always remained, in the deviant minds of its developers.
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In the game, you are Lover Boy, running around town (a Pac-Man still maze), in an attempt to chase down women, while avoiding the police and their dogs. Who will likely try and bite off your little 8-bit bollocks, dangling between your legs. Now the young ladies that you must chase down are Lisa, Rosemarie, Linda and Maria. And having never played the game I can't confirm that this is true, but some retro gaming sites claim that they are all supposed to be under-age. I know, as if they couldn't make it worst than it already is, they throw that one in.
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Anyway, the player (as the eponymous Lover Boy) runs around the streets naked, except for his hat. When he catches up with one of the girls they scream "HELP!", but to no avail. As once he catches one, then the game switches into "rape" mode. The screen changes, and you're presented with Lover Boy and his victim in some kind of sexual position. It would appear he has a different position for each of the four girls. A bunch of frantic button bashing ensues, if you aren't quick enough the victim will "run away". If the player gets his energy bar to the top, then the girl's graphic orgasmically strobes through a rainbow of colours, and it's back to the Pac-Man maze for more.
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With it's ridiculously crude graphics, if Lover Boy had remained at the Pac-Man style maze game, without the creepy sub-game, it may have taken its place alongside the salaciously silly games of Mystique that appeared for the Atari 2600 in the 80s, as something with weirdly comic value. Even, just even the lack of the "HELP!", "HELP!" from the girls would have taken the creepy edge off the obvious rape angle. But no, the game makers went all out on this one. And hence why Lover Boy has gone down in the darkest corners of retro video gaming history, as one of the most deviant games of the 80s.
Weird Retro Fact: Lover Boy is not the only game that came out of Japan in the 1980s, to feature rape as a central theme of the game play. In 1986, the game 177 was released. (177 is the Japanese criminal legislation paragraph that forbids rape.) In the game the player must pursue a girl on here way home, causing her to take a wrong turn and get lost, so that you can grab her and rape her. Like Lover Boy, the game switches into a "rape mode", where the player must "satisfy" the girl. Going further down the spiral of strange, if you fail to satisfy her the player is arrested, if the player succeeds in satisfying her then she marries the player. The game 177 fortunately only had a limited format release, on the PC-88 and the Sharp X1. |
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These games do beg a question about the culture in which they were developed. Unlike the Mystique games, which were developed in America for an adult gaming audience, and though weird and creepy, are essentially done with a sense of tongue-in-cheek humour. They're bawdy, and fun, if that's your thing to play adult centred games featuring badly drawn sprites engaging in some kind of pixelated sexual activity. But these examples from Japan, have a much, much darker under-current that goes to the very centre of a Japanese culture of sexual repression, where sex is commodified, and all perversions catered for. In a male dominated and still very much misogynistic market-place, these kinds of games must have found their customers. These games are you could claim, of their time. Harmless vintage games, that we can gawk at and snigger disapprovingly?! With the advent of powerful home console, hyper-realistic graphics, and super-fat Internet connections who knows what kind of sickness is being played out in dimly lit bedrooms all over the world as you read this.
8-Bit Porn: Mystique And Their Atari 2600 Games - In the 80s a games company released the worst games of all time, while attempting at producing erotic games on an 8-bit console!
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The Rapeman: The Weirdest Japanese Superhero?! - Originally a manga series in 1985, the bizarre anti-hero character of The Rapeman has spawned both an anime and movie series.
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