- Reaction score
- 1,697
As the early home video game industry took shape, developers experimented with all sorts of different content in order to determine just what kind of interactive experiences the primordial gamer community desired. One of the strangest of these trial-and-error phases came in the early 1980s when a number of pornographic titles hit the market for the Atari 2600.
While there have been purposefully controversial games created on every platform, the adult titles developed for Atari were particularly surreal considering 1) the "wholesome family entertainment" reputation the company cultivated and 2) the early medium's notable inability to render anything remotely human.
Many of these explicit titles were developed by Mystique, an offshoot of porn film studio, Caballero Control Corporation. In Mystique's two-or-so years of existence, it published several "X-rated" games under the "Swedish Erotica" banner (though the titles were all created in the U.S.). As the completely predictable (and surely sought-after) furor erupted, Atari ended up suing Mystique to block the production of its digital debauchery.
But then came the video game crash of 1983 and Mystique went under. The games, however, enjoyed a few additional years of novelty existence when the rights were purchased by a new company, Playaround, which also created gender-switched versions of the original Mystique titles.
www.pcmag.com
While there have been purposefully controversial games created on every platform, the adult titles developed for Atari were particularly surreal considering 1) the "wholesome family entertainment" reputation the company cultivated and 2) the early medium's notable inability to render anything remotely human.
Many of these explicit titles were developed by Mystique, an offshoot of porn film studio, Caballero Control Corporation. In Mystique's two-or-so years of existence, it published several "X-rated" games under the "Swedish Erotica" banner (though the titles were all created in the U.S.). As the completely predictable (and surely sought-after) furor erupted, Atari ended up suing Mystique to block the production of its digital debauchery.
But then came the video game crash of 1983 and Mystique went under. The games, however, enjoyed a few additional years of novelty existence when the rights were purchased by a new company, Playaround, which also created gender-switched versions of the original Mystique titles.
Red Hot Blocky Porn: Atari's Lost Adult Titles
Sadly, the bizarre (and slightly NSFW) history of X-rated games on Atari is not particularly sexy.
