The End of the Game

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve re-encountered some half-remembered childhood thing as an adult and reacted with horror and amusement at what the younger me had actually seen without realizing it. Today, it’s the Capcom arcade game Black Tiger, the promotional art for which was what you see below.

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It’s not just that the artist chose to emphasize the hero’s butt. No, it’s that the artist clearly relished the opportunity to depict an idealized, Mount Olympus bottom that’s just barely covered by a flap of loincloth in a way that’s almost teasing.

— “Hey, what if we just showed the barbarian hero character’s whole naked butt, for no reason?”
— “Well, you can’t actually see his butt in the game.”
— “Yeah, but gay kids.”
— “Oh, all right.”

That’s how I imagine it, at least. For the record, barbarian warriors and homoeroticism have gone hand-in-hand (or dick-in-hand) since the days of the first pixelated loincloth. It’s also worth mentioning that there’s an alternate version of the Black Tiger arcade flyer that skews slightly less homoerotic by virtue of a more substantial buttflap, though the tagline “The more you play, more exciting it gets!” kind of sounds like an ESL endorsement for masturbation.

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Guess which one I remember!

Here’s the game in action. Please enjoy the relatively little amount of butt the game has to offer, regardless of what that first flyer might indicate.

Sexy video games, previously:

• Old-school video games box art with heroines who aren’t oversexed
• Metroid and Kid Icarus and old-school Nintendo feminism
• Reassessing a fondness for Golden Axe’s Gillius Thunderhead
• Choosing your sexuality in Bahamut Lagoon
• Video games for girls (but only sexy girls)