Sex games have always been a bit Carry On Commodore. There’s nothing horny about Tit Attack, is there? I wondered if there was anything in the last forty-odd years of gaming that was…well, actually hot. There are a ton of strip poker games, but there had to be something more exciting than Maria Whittaker in a pound shop Santa outfit, right? I went looking.
1981: Soft Porn Adventure (Apple II)
See, this is what I had in mind when I figured there had to be something erotic on the old machines. A text adventure is perfect because your filthy mind fills in the bits that the pixels won’t do any justice to. All it needs is some good writing. Er, yeah. You already know where this ends.
You’re a “down on his luck party animal” looking for sex in a grubby American bar. Using the keyboard you BUY WHISKEY, LOOK GIRL, TAKE CAB. Your night out isn’t straightforward, though. If you anger the parser you’ll get crowbarred to death by bouncers.
Soft Porn Adventure was written by twenty-something New Englander Charles Benton. He wrote it as a way of teaching himself to code on the Apple II, and the dumb theme was a way of staying interested in the task (playing it through again for this article, I realised that every puzzle uses a different programming trick. Charles is just riffing). A lot of the story was based on his own awkward attempts at picking up women in the ‘70s, and although he’s never confirmed which bits are real it is sometimes excruciatingly specific. In one scene, after being promised sex, you’re tied up and robbed.
Benton’s mates loved his work, and encouraged him to sell it. Mail order proved tricky, ‘cos magazines wouldn’t accept his classified ad. He took the game to some trade shows on the US West Coast, where it was picked up by On-Line Systems (later known as Sierra On-Line).
Magazines wouldn’t accept Charles’s coupon ad, but they were happy to take the big bucks from On-Line Systems for a full page spread. It’s the image you see at the top of this page, and it’s where the game’s legacy is.
The Cali girls in the hot tub are all company employees. That’s Roberta Williams on the far right. She designed 1980’s Mystery House, making her one of the first known female games designers. The waiter’s a real waiter, and the photo was taken by somebody from the local newspaper (he was the only person that manager Ken Williams knew with a good camera).
So we’ve got a dude who’s made a slightly goofy pick-up game. It’s bought by a start-up. They make an advertisement for it on a budget of whatever the waiter cost. It’s mundane. But when that ad ran in September 1981’s SoftTalk the truth was smothered by public anger. “Women will never get out of the bedroom if this type of advertising is continued”, wrote one reader (Roberta Williams would disagree there). Soft Porn Adventure was slated by broadsheet journalists, television commentators and even some of the games press itself as damaging to women. Most of the critics had only seen the advertisement and not the bumbling reality:
“I’m in the swinging single’s disco! There’s a crazy DJ playing the newest hits. The dance floor is filled with guys and gals doin’ the best steps in town. The crowd is really getting in to it - everybody’s having fun!”
Even the bit where you get robbed is slapstick at the expense of an idiot:
“Lay down, honey! Let me give you a special surprise!”
I lay down.
“OK, now close your eyes!”
I close my eyes and she starts to go to work on me. I’m really enjoying myself when suddenly she ties me to the bed!
“So long, turkey!” she says and runs out of the room!”
Most of Soft Porn Adventure is men getting it wrong and women laughing at them. There is very little sex, and nothing special about the gameplay. But the ad did the job. It sold 50,000 copies at $29.99 a pop, and even got reheated in the late ‘80s. The puzzles were used for Leisure Suit Larry In The Land Of The Lounge Lizards.
1982: Night Life (PC-8801)
Until the spittle drenched emails come in, I’m calling Night Life the first sexy software with graphics. The Japanese “game” was marketed as educational; something to help couples have a better time in bed. You scroll through a bunch of wireframe characters who are shown having sex in different positions and decide which ones you want to try out at home (no, really. It’s like a sex manual). Then you choose how much time you want to spend on each one before clicking on the only English text in the game – “let’s fuck” (“educational” game, remember). The computer then goes through the motions and you’re supposed to follow along. And that’s it.
I tried to put this in some context. It’s 1982. People did not have a great deal of access to information about sex. But it must’ve been awkward even forty years ago, and the chilling mental visual of somebody actually thrusting along to Night Life, spectacles half falling off their sweaty ‘80s sex face, is about as erotic as an hour with the Soft Porn Adventure parser.
1988: Sex Vixens From Space (Amiga, C64, PC, ST)
In 1988, British customs seized and destroyed 75 Amiga copies of Sex Vixens From Space. It was publicity Spirit Software couldn’t pay for. The US publishers shouted very loudly about the confiscation. They told newspapers it was the act of a “brutally fascist regime”, ensuring reams of press coverage for a game that the European publishers conceded wasn’t even as racy as a crappy strip poker sim’.
You’re Brad Stallion, a government agent who’s got to travel to a planet full of sex-starved women. There, for reasons, you must locate and destroy the “sex-ray gun”. If this sounds like the sort of VHS tape your Dad kept in the cupboard with “FOOTBALL - DON’T TAPE OVER” felt-tipped on the label, you’re right: the inspiration came from ‘70s skin flick Flesh Gordon.
On the Commodore 64, Vixens is pure text adventure. On the 16-bit machines you’ve got graphics and the mouse to use but it’s the same game: you pick a direction, see what’s in every room and use the objects the make your way to the, er, sex gun. Unfortch, it’s difficult to navigate the sexy planet of Mondo thanks to a terrible interface. There are also some soul crushing insta-deaths that put you right off. Early on, you encounter a crate of the “priceless aphrodisiac, orgasium”. So you take it, right? Wrong. It’s only there to kill you, and there’s no save feature. Back to the start you go. Argh!
I couldn’t see any reason for the plod to have a problem with Sex Vixens. There’s the occasional cartoon bare breast and one hairy foof, but nothing that Channel 4 wasn’t showing on Actual Television more explicitly. Seriously, here are the graphics. Here is what they were saving the United Kingdom from:
There’s some bad taste humour here and there, I guess, but nothing more offensive than the game’s execution. It’s a shame, ‘cos a piss-takey adventure based on vintage adult movies could be great. But it isn’t, and this game was bodied by the reviewers. We’ve got another one here that’s only notorious ‘cos of the name.
1991: Bubble Bath Babes (NES)
There were loads of tile arranging games around the turn of the ‘90s thanks to Tetris. This one uses bubbles instead of blocks. They float up from the bottom of the screen and you’ve got to match up identical colours to make ‘em disappear.
Bubbles Bath Babes was not licensed by Nintendo, available only by mail-order and now changes hands for hundreds of bucks. Why? TEH BABES, of course, who’re perched at the bottom of the screen in pixelated “glory”. The suds emerge from behind them and yes, you’re right: it does look like they’re farting in the bath.
Your reward for clearing stages is a “saucy” intermission, but the NES’s limited graphics make them feel more like an attack. Perhaps that’s why they don’t stay on the screen for very long. Still, Bubble Bath Babes is fun. A US approved version eventually appeared to prove the point, released minus the girls but still playing great.
1994: Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties (3DO)
It was easy to make games for the 3DO console: you just agreed to a small per-disc license fee of three dollars. Trip Hawkins’ curious 1993 machine is home to some opportunistic adult titles as a result. Look at the state of these. There’s Super Models Go Wild, Sex and Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties.
Plumbers was where I thought I might finally see something a bit exciting. The 3DO was capable of actual video and that’s what you get here. The box says it’s an “interactive romantic comedy” with naughty bits:
“He's a plumber, she's a daddy's girl. Only you can get them together, or tear them apart! Plumbers have (sic) everything: Greed, sex, spirituality, white-knuckle chases, shameful propositions, a nun, humor, true love, jaded love, jealousy, taut action, comedy, a bad guy, a good guy, a hero, spine-tingling suspense, a hot babe, brazen bravado, a damsel in distress, and a Hollywood ending! Plays like a game... feels like a movie!”
Sex! It says the sex! Let’s *fumbles box everywhere, falls off chair* LOAD THIS THING UP!
The game is like one of those choose your own adventure novels. Every so often you’ve got a decision to make, and what you click on impacts the characters and how Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties ends. If you’re playing properly, you’re supposed to do everything you can to get the main characters Jane and John together. In reality, you’re going to choose the options where Jane gets naked (John does gets topless, but it’s another disappointing outing if you fancy men).
The first thing you see is Jane standing in front of an un-ironed cotton sheet. The shitness is utterly staggering. It has clearly been filmed in somebody’s living room.
She tells you that she wants a boyfriend but hasn’t been having much luck, setting up the “action” to come. She slowly undresses - no reason - with each bad edit revealing more flesh. Actress Jeanne Basone looks incredible. Make sure to enjoy this bit ‘cos it’s some of the only full motion video in the game.
That’s right. Most of Plumbers is like a Power Point presentation. It was absolutely battered by journalists for touting itself as an “interactive movie”, and justifiably so. Everything about the game is low quality. The photographs are grainy. The microphones pop. The voice acting is distorted and wooden. There are also some needlessly sinister and, frankly, unacceptable moments. Look at this:
I mean, why would you advertise the game as a racy comedy and then make it so fucking unsettling?
Plumbers is now widely recognised as one of the worst attempts at a videogame in history. The only thing going for it is the limited nudity, and if that’s supposed to be the selling point why isn’t there more? You can watch all of it on YouTube now, if porn minus the actual porn is your thing. Go on, see if you can last long enough to discover why the game’s got that name (‘cos that’s weird AF too).
There were two things I noticed about every adult game I loaded up this week. The most obvious one is that over 90% of this stuff is for straight men. Nobody else seems to exist (apparently, On-Line Systems looked at doing a female version of Soft Porn Adventure but “couldn’t find a collaborator”, whatever that means).
The other thing is that the marketing of this software created expectations which the limited technology could never deliver. Soft Porn Adventure, Sex Vixens From Space and Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties are just a bit cheeky, and nothing more. They could never really be much else.
Still, did I succeed in my quest to find something actually a bit hot? Well, Jeanne Basone is very cute. So yes. But I didn’t have much fun “playing” the game she’s in. Tit Attack has it right after all. It’s at least a laugh. 🦏