Almost as long as we’ve had computers, there have been pornographic computer games. It doesn’t matter whether we’re limited to 16-bit graphics, or the latest 4K tech, developers have always found ways to add smut to the gaming experience.
Admittedly, the graphics and gameplay weren’t always great back in the 1980s, but from those humble beginnings, the industry spawned the vast adult video games market we have today.
But what about the very first examples of porn in video games? Ever wondered what the first sex games looked like? In this guide, I’ll walk you through the earliest titles to raise some serious eyebrows for their NSFW approach.
So when you’re playing the latest hentai RPG, VR sex game or interactive AI porno, spare a thought for these early examples of porn in video games. The true pioneers. Without them, you might still be playing nothing more titillating than Tetris!
Early Adult Pioneers: What Are The Oldest Porn Games?
It goes without saying, we’re going to be using the term ‘porn’ loosely here.
The earliest adult games were restricted to just a handful of pixels and some extremely primitive animations. It’s not exactly the recipe for an eye-popping fapathon. The cult status of these games was the product of illicit thrills and our imaginations running wild, much more so than any visual appeal.
Here are some of the oldest adult games, and how they shaped the porn gaming industry:
1. Softporn Adventure (1981)
1981’s Softporn Adventure is one of the earliest examples of porn in a computer game. It was written by Chuck Benton and published for the Apple II by On-Line Systems, which later published the seminal Half-Life series as Sierra On-Line.
The text-based adventure features no actual graphics, just an interactive story and a command prompt that allows the player to move around, pick up and use objects. Benton originally wrote it to learn programming in BASIC, but Softporn’s popularity among his friends eventually led to its commercial release.
In order to win the game, players must solve a sequence of escape-room-style puzzles, using found objects to bypass security guards and, ultimately, to get laid by a number of female characters (and one puncture-prone blow-up doll).
Sierra’s founder, Ken Williams, claims that the game sold 25,000 legitimate copies (not counting pirated copies) at a time when there were only 100,000 Apple II computers in use – leading Leisure Suit Larry writer Al Lowe to claim that “Softporn was probably played by the highest percentage of computer owners of any game in history“.
While text-based adult adventures have come a long way since the original Softporn Adventures, the formula remains much the same. Check out Hornstown for a modern (fetish) take on this genre.
2. Artworx Strip Poker (1982)
Strip Poker: A Sizzling Game of Chance was the first of five Strip Poker titles developed by Artworx between 1982 and 1995. The game was distributed by Anco in Europe and was multi-platform, with versions available for Apple II, Atari 8-bit, Commodore 64, Amiga and DOS by 1986.
The first-person card-game simulator came with two on-screen opponents, Melissa and Suzi, who would appear in less and less clothes if the player continued to beat them at five-card poker. A ‘modesty switch’ built into the game allowed players to hide the screen at a moment’s notice.
Character graphics were drawn by Joanne Adams on the Apple and Doug McFarland on the Atari. Five data disks were later released which added two new female characters each (or two male characters, David and Tony, on data disk #2).
Reviews were mixed – some critics felt it would be easier to pick up a Playboy than win your way to an 8-bit image of a naked opponent – but the popularity of Strip Poker endured throughout its expansions and sequels, and spawned a whole subgenre of computer-based strip poker.
3. Bachelor Party (1982)
Bachelor Party is the first of three games from American Multiple Industries (AMI) and was released in 1982 on the Atari 2600. It’s a horizontal Breakout-style game with pornographic nude male and female sprites in place of the ball and bricks.
Check out those trouser-tenting graphics. Yes, I shit you not. You had to be 21 to play this.
Gameplay was, uhh… simple: After a blast of Auld Lang Syne, the ‘ball’ (represented by a nude man with an erection) would be fired across the screen towards a ‘wall’ (represented by a number of nude women). Make contact with one of the nude female ‘bricks’ and the man would return to the left-hand side of the screen with a flaccid dick.
The ‘paddle’ was represented by a bottle of Spanish Fly, a natural aphrodisiac similar to Viagra. After bouncing off the paddle, the man’s erection was restored, and he would head off across the screen in search of his next conquest.
A gender-reversed version of the game called Bachelorette Party was also published, with a naked woman as the ball and naked erect men as the bricks – an early triumph for gender equality. 😉
4. Beat ‘Em & Eat ‘Em (1982)
Another AMI title from 1982, Beat ‘Em & Eat ‘Em gives the player control of two women at street level, in front of a building. On the building’s rooftop is a masturbating man and, as he shoots his load from the roof, the player must move the women into position to catch it in their mouths.
Despite this simple gameplay, there were two difficulty levels: an easy mode, where the semen can hit the women on any part of their bodies, and a harder mode where they must catch it at head-height. Miss four cum drops and it’s game over, but score 69 and you get an extra life. Nice.
For even more challenging gameplay, there was a separate ‘game mode’ option which would remove one of the women, leaving you with only one mouth to ‘eat em’. That makes four different difficulties, from two women on easy/hard mode, to one woman on easy/hard mode. Not a bad way to add to the playability and challenge of the game, without needing too much extra programming and game code.
Yet again, there was a version ‘for the ladies’. Released under the completely different title of Philly Flasher, this featured two male convicts with their dicks out, who had to catch drops of milk falling from a witch’s tit. At the end of each successfully completed level, the two men would masturbate furiously before the game moved on.
5. Custer’s Revenge (1982)
Custer’s Revenge was AMI’s most controversial title.
In recent years, it has come to be known as the ‘worst video game in history‘. Quite a feat!
The player took control of General George Armstrong Custer, who fought in the American Civil War and American Indian Wars. The aim was to avoid being impaled by arrows raining down from above, while moving towards the right-hand side of the screen.
On the right was a Native American woman tied to a pole. Upon reaching her, the player would repeatedly tap the joystick button. Custer would penetrate the woman once per tap, and the player was rewarded with one point per penetration. Yep, the chances of this one getting re-mastered for 2024 is lol/10.
The game proved to be AMI’s last stand. In early 1983, publishing rights were sold to PlayAround, which specialised in adult games. PlayAround was formed by AMI co-founder Joel Martin and tried several methods to increase sales, including creating the female versions of some AMI games and shipping two games on opposite ends of a ‘double-header’ cartridge.
If he’d just waited until 2024, he’d find the original game selling for $250 per copy on eBay!
Due to the controversy surrounding Custer’s Revenge, the game was not re-released in the US, but was published for the European market as Westward Ho. A gender-flipped version with a tied-up Custer was also created for Europe, under the title General Retreat.
6. X-Man (1983)
The video game crash of 1983 was looming when Universal Gamex released X-Man for the Atari 2600, and as a result it was not as successful as some of the games mentioned above. (It also had nothing to do with Marvel’s X-Men, in case there’s any confusion…)
X-Man was a simple maze game, and the player had to find a route from the corner of the screen to a door at the centre of the labyrinth. At the same time, three enemies (Crab, Scissors and Teeth) would be let loose in the labyrinth, and colliding with one of these would cost the player a life – think Pac-Man without any dots or power pills.
Reach the centre of the maze and you’d progress to the bonus round, referred to in the manual as ‘A Sexy Surprise‘. This gave the player 30 seconds to waggle the joystick. For each waggle, the player would penetrate a female character known only as ‘Sexy Blonde’. Waggle fast enough and you’d fill the Sexual Excitement Meter, allowing X-Man to reach climax.
X-Man arguably had better gameplay than the AMI games, which were very one-dimensional. But the bubble had burst, and the flood of low-quality independent games onto the market, combined with the growth of personal computers, led to an industry recession that lasted through the middle of the 1980s.
7. Leisure Suit Larry (1987)
Although the 1983 crash marked the end of the early days of video game porn, there are a couple of honourable mentions, starting with 1987’s Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards.
Written by Al Lowe and Chuck Benton, Leisure Suit Larry was inspired by 1981’s Softporn Adventure, and used the same basic structure and challenges. On top of this, the new game received graphics and characters, with almost entirely new dialogue. It was released by Sierra On-Line after their licence agreement with Disney ended in 1986, freeing them up to work on an adult-oriented game.
Leisure Suit Larry wasn’t easy to win. To remove the fixed time limit for completing the game, Larry must have sex with a prostitute who appears at the start. However, having sex with her will lead to an even earlier death (attributed to an STD contracted from the prostitute – this is the 80s, after all!), unless the player visits the convenience store and buys a condom first.
One of the more unique features of Leisure Suit Larry is the inclusion of an age verification trivia quiz at the start. Players must answer questions that only someone aged over 18 in 1987 would be likely to know the answer to – get too many wrong answers, and the game shuts down.
Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards was originally released for PC, DOS and Apple II, with a point-and-click 1991 update published for Amiga, Apple IIGS, Atari ST, Macintosh and Tandy Color Computer 3, and remains one of the best-known porn computer games of all time.
8. Bar Games (1989)
Accolade’s Bar Games wasn’t overly pornographic, but several of the tournament-style mini games featured scantily clad female opponents. The most graphic of these was Wet ‘n Wild, a surprisingly gender-neutral wet T-shirt contest in which the player dumps buckets of water on a computer-controlled contestant walking below.
Each round gave the player the chance to choose their opponent, with female characters such as Della, Scarlet and Victoria. But for every female contestant, there was a male alternative: Dex, Steve (who was dressed in pyjamas and clutching a teddy bear) and Vince, in the first three rounds.
Bar Games originally launched for DOS, with an Amiga version landing in 1990. Personal computing was evolving fast now; with 1993’s Doom and 1994’s Tomb Raider (which could be NSFW-modded using the Nude Raider patch to remove Lara Croft’s clothes) there was a shift away from text-based and point-and-click titles, towards professional studio-made first-person video games.
Of course, there are still literally thousands of porn games available on the PC, especially with the rise of online platforms like Steam and GOG making them infinitely easier to access.
But despite their janky graphics (or no graphics at all) and dubious storylines, those early titles of the 1980s laid the foundations upon which modern adult video games are built.
Alright then, smut fans. Which old porn games have I missed?
Are there any nostalgic bangers that deserve a mention on this list? Let’s hear them!
