Time Killers, Bloodstorm, Micheal Jackson, and Atari porn

Mortal Kombat came out when I was in the fifth grade, and caused a huge stir for it's over the top violent imagery. Needless to say, I had to get my hands on a copy. When I finally got to play it at a neighbor's house, I was stoked. I came back to my fifth grade Catholic School class triumphant, "I played Mortal Kombat this weekend, it was awesome, the part where the guy rips..."

"That's nothing," interrupted my friend Matt Parson, who got to do everything before me due to a very fortunate lack of parental supervision, interrupted, "I just played Time Killers."

"What the heck is Time Killers?" I asked in my squeaky 11-year-old voice.

"They have it at Gator 'Cade, it's way bloodier than Mortal Kombat. You get to have swords and chainsaws, and cut each other's arms and legs off while you are fighting."

That's all I needed to hear.

I immediately planned a mission to Gator 'Cade for the weekend. This was not as easy as it sounds, due to the fact that all of the kids my age went to the Arcade in the mall, Aladin's Castle. Convincing your parents that you wanted to go downtown to the much seedier, Gator 'Cade, which featured less machines, (but more broken machines) and more homeless people was not as easy of a task as it sounds. So instead, I got Tim Hutchens (another classmate who also benefited from less overbearing parents) to convince his mom to take us.

Needless to say, it exceeded my expectations. There was blood, there was limb amputation, you could cut each other's head off. For an 11 year old pre-pubescent Catholic School virgin this was about as good as anything we could imagine.

So recently as an adult, I decided that a Time Killers arcade machine would be a perfect addition to our household. I searched Google in hopes of finding one for sale, and came across an old auction in Beverly Hills that not only contained that, but many other interesting items. It turns out the auction was for none other than the King of pop his damn self, Micheal Jackson.

Yes, Micheal Jackson owned a Time Killers machine. And not only that, it was actually affordably priced, being estimated to go for between $200-300. The only problem being that the auction was scheduled to happen in April (prior to MJ's death, there's no way that shit would be affordable now) and never actually took place. So unfortunately I can't say that I "almost" purchased Michael Jackson's Time Killers machine, but I am saying I "would have." (you should seriously check out the auction link too, there is a lot of cool shit)

Through my research, I found out there was an unofficial sequel to Time Killers called Bloodstorm.

Ever played it? Apparently, almost nobody has. It was one of the biggest flops in arcade history, due to it's ridiculously unnecessary over the top violence, which includes an old man ("the emperor of the world," no less) getting cut open with his intestines hanging out, in the opening sequence of the game. This happens BEFORE you put your quarter in! That coupled with stupid characters, poor graphics, and shitty gameplay made the game a complete flop. And due to that you can buy the boards for a Bloodstorm arcade machine on the internet for around $40, which is something that I just might do.

This is a video of all the "good parts" of Bloodstorm. Trust me you will be entertained.

Another interesting Bloodstorm fact is that the actor who played Johnny Cage in the first two Mortal Kombat games posed for a Bloodstorm ad with the tagline, "The fighting game for real fighters." Midway promptly fired him, and that is why Johnny Cage does not appear in any of the later Mortal Kombat games.

As badly recieved as Bloodstorm may have been, it definitely does not compare to the shitstorm stirred up by Custer's Revenge, a pornographic video game made for the Atari 2600 in 1982. The object of the game is for a cowboy with a very large pixelated erection to move across the screen whilst dodging arrows in order to have sex with a Native American woman, who is tied to a cactus on the other side of the screen. Women Against Pornography, Native American groups, and video game critics all protested the game heavily. Leading feminist Andrea Dworkin went as far as to say that the game "generated many gang rapes of Native American Women." As shitty morally (and as a game) as this game might be, I find this claim realitively hard to believe (not that this is a light-hearted subject), especially when viewing the actual gameplay below. (later versions of the game had the female giving a "come hither" motion with her hand to assure players that no sex crime was being committed)

In fact despite racism or other implications, I find Beat 'Em and Eat 'Em by the same video game company (Mystique, a division of Swedish Erotica) to be equally stomach churning. In this game a man with a large erection masturbates on top of a building, (his semen is yellow, which means someone needs to hit up the clinic) and you control two naked women who catch his emissions in your mouth. At the end of every round they lick their lips and rub their stomach. It's really pretty gross. CHECK IT OUT!!

To avoid claims of sexism every mystique game has a counterpart with the sex roles reversed. Custer's Revenge had General Retreat, with the Native American female trying to fuck the cowboy while dodging cannonballs. Beat 'Em and Eat 'Em had Philly Flasher, where an old witch squirts breast milk at men with exposed John Thomases, and at the end of every round they masturbate. It is equally as repulsive as Beat 'Em and Eat 'Em.

And that's all I have for you today, as i am now going to look in the couch for change to buy a quart. I hope that was somehow informative and that you don't get any weird bad idea's from that damn Custer's Revenge game. I also realized that I may need to change my settings to include adult content for all those pixelated Johnsons I posted this time.

Also I know some of you people like to think things, and say bad things about people, and point fingers and shit, but I want y'all to know I did not make these games. I am merely presenting information which i found to be interesting. So leave me the hell alone.