I have more.

This kind of thing never gets old to me, so I bring you a third installment of box art that unsettles that inner part of our brain, that bit of jelly left over from early in our primordial roots that causes us to recoil from eyes in the dark or a sharp hiss. That along with some art that just beggars belief in its ridiculousness. Gird your loins. Stand ready. The time has come.

Note: This time there are one or two titles I had trouble finding the year of release for. Forgive me and feel free to email me if you know.

Skate Board Joust (Silverbird)

I feel like this one’s heavy with symbolism. Writ large upon the rocket powered skateboard is the word “DEATH.” Is it the ghastly, bat-like monster whose death is imminent, or does the rabble-rousing ripped-jean teen ride death into oblivion, kicking sick ollies along the way?

Also, does that bat-creature have tits? The lines of its form suggest that it does, and I find that immediately unwholesome.

Pro Wrestling (Sega, 1986)

Again, I think we’re in existential territory here. Thus the nature of my first question: is this man wrestling with himself in the sense that he rebels against his own nature (thus his desire to destroy his head and therefore his thoughts), or is this a battle symbolizing body image?

As a finishing note, I would like to ask another question: Which part of him is sweating? His head or his armpit?

Cuthbert and the Golden Chalice (Microdeal, 1986)

Yes, another treasure from Microdeal. Here we see a glimpse into the madness that wealth can inflict upon mankind. A profoundly mentally ill child leers at the viewer, beset on all sides by various threats (including a mantis with an unnervingly humanoid face). Cuthbert smiles despite his pants-shitting predicament, because in his worship of Mammon he has sought the golden cup in the background. Should we pity the child, or is it us who should laugh, in light of Cuthbert’s folly? He is but one human being of untold billions. This story repeats itself ad infinitum through the great torus loop of past and future.

Seriously though, that mantis-ape is creepy as fuck and if I ever saw a hornet that big I’d need to be committed. I’d never go outside again.

Bad Cat (Rainbow Arts, 1987)

This is just plain fucking ghoulish. I mean, this has to have been rendered with the intent to harm or frighten someone. I can almost hear this thing talking to me, and I hate its voice in my imagination. Dressed up like Rambo in an alley full of trash, it bares its little teeth in a mockery of a human smile. It knows what it’s doing is vulgar. It knows it’s breaking unspoken laws. And it fucking loves it. Is that some kind of candy bar, or a stick of butter? For some reason, my mind insists on it being a stick of butter. That just makes more sense within this senseless ensemble. I want to find this thing and fistfight it. And that’s heartbreaking, because I love cats. You know, actual ones. Ones that belong in our fucking dimension.

X Man (Gamex)

A woman, rendered in reasonably human (albeit subtly exaggerated) proportions undresses while looking into “camera.” Meanwhile, X Man, who I’m guessing is our protagonist, wages what I can only assume is a brutal war for the integrity of his own penis against a set of horrors that pursue him through a maze in Hell. Though the visceral fear of having his genitals bitten, scissored, or assaulted by a giant crustacean is very real to our questionable hero, his terror mingles with another emotion etched across his cartoon face: raw, primal lust.

X Man keeps it simple, though, and that probably works well for him; his outfit is casual, but the high socks indicate his athleticism. He’s not going to let gigantic crabs, sentient novelty chompers, or possessed shears get in the way of his libido. He’s packing iron and riding high in the saddle. Look out, lady.

No, seriously, lady, watch out. You seem woefully oblivious to your peril.

Thanks again for braving the madness with me again, Retro-readers. Keep it old-school!

But not too tame. It’s still pretty bonkers.

ALCATRAZ II

Microdeal, 1982

So there’s no doubt about it… prison sucks. Even without all the darker parts of prison life (which we don’t need to detail; pop culture can and will do that for you), you’re still locked up. You’re not free. One of the worst was Alcatraz, just off the California coast, an island prison fortress that was meant to be nearly impossible to escape.

Well, since people kept attempting (and possibly succeeding, as in the 1962 attempt), Microdeal decided that Alcatraz needed a sequel. A meaner, iron-clad, merciless follow-up.

With a goddamn minotaur in it.

What immediately strikes me as strange is how cool they both seem about the situation. As if they had a conversation beforehand, free of rancour or posturing.

“Okay, so when you bolt down the hallway, I mean, I’m a fucking minotaur, dude. I’m gonna chase you.”

“Yeah yeah. I’m gonna run like hell, so don’t worry too hard about it. I’m not.”

“You know, I’m glad we talked about this. Thanks.”

“Yeah man, oughta be a good show.”

GOODY

Opera Soft, 1987

This is some straight-up Bakshi shit. A lot is loosely implied here, at least to me, and it’s done in that way that creeps in at the seams of the mind and leaks inward. I think this one deserves an itemized list.

• the policeman commands the power of the Moon itself to avoid a very, very “happy” gorilla gazing up at him.
• That bird (buzzard? What fucking kind of bird is that?) looks suicidally depressed. Or maybe I’m wrong and it’s just seen all this shit before. In any case, a city with birds like that flying around in it can’t be a cheerful place for humanity to thrive.
• Goody (is that this dude’s name?) seems to be wearing a coat, but are those his hands gripping it from behind, near the collar? If so, how the fuck do you pull that off, and if not, why isn’t he alarmed by it?
• That woman could be one of two things, going by how tropes work in this kind of media: a newswoman or a hooker.
• Wait, Goody’s an ape too, isn’t he? That woman’s trying to get it on with a gorilla.

Normally I’d go on a quest across Wikipedia and the Internet to find out more about this game, but I’m shook. Too shook to even open Google.

CASH MAN

Microdeal, 1984

This is what the working man’s day is like, represented by symbolism, I guess? Let me try:

You go to such great lengths (or heights) to earn your living. You grab and reach – everyone’s gotta struggle a little when they work for a living, right? Keeps you tough. Keeps you on your toes. The rank and file military man, he knows what it’s about; you have more in common than you might think.

Then the fucking vultures show up: the banker, the bill collector, the loan shark. Just as you’re starting to do well for yourself, you gotta deal with all this.

The title/logo being crafted weirdly out of smiley faces is a slapping contrast to this dark scene of class warfare and defeat. Also, I’m already noticing a theme with birds. The men and women involved in creating these games must have found birds supernaturally terrifying. Or they were just easy to justify as dickheads in any scenario. Because that’s true. Birds are absolute dickheads.

PIMANIA

Automata, 1982

Little preface for this one: there was a period of time in my early to mid 20s when I played around with psychoactives and hallucinogens a lot. I don’t think I did any serious damage to myself (though some people may enthusiastically disagree), but I did experience some… well, interesting things. I remember very clearly the tail-end of one LSD experience, sitting on my back porch and watching the grass visibly grow and recede before my eyes, as the sun was rising. Once it occurred to me that I could see the sun’s light, but not the sun itself, I froze with panic. Then, over the course of another hour or so, I kept carefully positioning myself so that the treeline or other solid objects would obscure the sun’s full disc from my view. I was convinced that a full look at the sun would drive me mad or destroy me.

I’m pretty sure this image is a good approximation of what my mind was expecting.

End note on this one: man, I don’t know what you’re up to, but you brought a telescope, a saxophone, a rubber ducky and a live snake, not to mention you are totally nude. Best of luck.

MR. DIG

Microdeal, 1984

Microdeal must have had a stable of depraved and insane artists on lock during this time period. Mr. Dig’s eyes aren’t eyes at all but eyespots; he must have echolocation or sense his way by tremors in the ground. He’s clearly in some hellish system of tunnels, and has just found an apple with more mass than himself. An underground Hadean giant apple. His face betrays no emotion. He’s… he’s thinking this one through. If Eris’s golden fruit wrought the discord so told in legend, what will a bite of this one do?

Also, it’s hot as fuck down here in those footie pajamas. He’s thinking the hardest about that – going back and changing clothes.

Thanks for joining me on another sojourn through the outsider art of the fringes of retro gaming. We may do this again. I’ll leave it on that note. A note of menace. Stay Retro!