Within the last fifty years or so there has been a constant production of Western video games around the world, with the first ones showing up as arcade games in the early 1970’s. The Oregon Trail is considered to be the first Western video game to do well and open the gates for other developers to give video games set in the Old West a shot. This video game was designed to teach school children about the realities of 19th century pioneer life on the Oregon Trail and overall received very well reception selling over 65 million copies. In its gameplay, The Oregon Trail didn’t focus much on the gun slinging that was prominent on the Old West but instead took the route of showcasing what people did on the frontier in order to survive and be able to travel West. The Western video games that followed within ten years after the release of The Oregon Trail took a turn and began to focus more on things like outlaws and gunfights on the frontier. Titles like Outlaw which released in 1976, were video games which you played as a gun fighter whose goal was to shoot the other person before they shot you. Although these Western-themed games became more violent, they continued to be widely acceptable. Things changed for the worst when Mystique, an adult video game company, released Custer’s Revenge for the Atari 2600 in …show more content…
The black stripes in the air represent arrows which are fired at General Custard to prevent him from raping the woman. The creators of the game were quickly under fire as they caused outrage from many activist and even Atari. Many Indian and Women group activist took to the streets to protest the game in hopes of pressuring legislators to outlaw the game, which Oklahoma City eventually did. As stated by the “Atari Trying To Halt X-Rated Video Games” article in a 1982 Ocala Star-Banner newspaper, “About 100 people from a women’s organization and American Indian groups protested Friday in New York, where one of the games (Custer’s Revenge) was on display at an audio-visual show. “it’s absolutely disgusting,” said one of the protesters, Lois Red Elk of the American Indian Movement. Kristen Reilly of Women Against Pornography said “Custer’s Revenge” is a game of “attack and rape.” Michael Bush of the American Indian Community House in New York said the game provides “a reinforcement of the stereotyping of American Indians as something less than human.”” Even though Atari had nothing to do with the creation of this video game, they received a lot of the backlash due to the fact that they were the only console where you could play this game at the time. Atari followed up by suing Mystique over the