General Custer Misunderstood |
Custer's Revenge was released by Mystique as an erotic adult game to be played by adults during the height of popularity for the Atari 2600 Game system. The game focuses on the notorious General Custer braving flying arrows over a desert landscape to have his way with the captured Indian maiden. The box cover and cartridge label further portray General Custer as a pale, hairy, and perverted sex fiend looking to get the all time high score. The maiden is shown as the opposite of Custer. She is illustrated as the virginal, tanned, and captured beauty bound by rope to a post in the hot desert sun. It is understandable why so many game players view our good General in a tainted light.
Once the cartridge is put in the game machine, the graphics show an entirely different story. The pure maiden is far from pure and I would dare to say that she resembles the most experienced porn starlet. Her full breasts thrust towards Custer and her rounded buttocks beacon mankind's basic sexual instinct. She is no longer tied to the post and yet she waits with her mouth open wanting, waiting, and needing the hard embrace of her lover. And looking at General Custer, he is no longer the corrupted devil (as seen on the box cover) but is instead the good man, the strong man, the gentleman with his soft swagger and his cowboy hat fluttering in the desert wind. All vestiges of Custer as the villain are removed, for how can it be villainous to want and desire reunification with a lover? It cannot be.
There is a common misconception that General Custer tied up the Indian maiden to have sex with her as some kind of right of war. This assumption is entirely false and has clouded and corrupted the image of General Custer. In truth, the tribal forces tied up the Indian maiden nude and left her to die due to her and Custer's forbidden interracial relationship. General Custer is in fact attempting to rescue the voluptuous maiden from the hostile tribal forces. Custer suspecting that his plight to rescue the maiden is hopeless, attempts to save her from a slow death of exposure and starvation regardless of the cost to his own personal safety.
Aimee Manns's song "Save Me" comes to mind when I see the heroic and equally brave General Custer rescuing the tied-up maiden from hostile tribal forces. General Custer is in an hostile territory, alone (Atari-Custer Theory suggests that his army has been killed at this point), dodging a barrage of arrows and facing immanent death. Custer realizing that his men are dead, braves all odds to be with his lover one last time before death takes them both. The real General Custer was out manned at the battle of Little Big Horn, so I suspect Custer's Revenge is supposed to be Custer's last stand and dare I say last screw before he is killed at a battle he could never possibly win.
So let's take off our hats and put them to our chest and pay tribute to a challenging game and a brave game character who went against all odds to get one final screw with the beautiful Indian Maiden before death finally took him and his erection away.
Let us remember that love is not a crime, but it is human.
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