The Atari 2600 wasn't just built for games. It was built to punch our brains in the face with it indescribable madness. And this article is here to try to describe some of its most disturbing games. For example, the screen shot to the left is from the Atari 2600 version of the A-Team. I've done some strange things in video games like hopping on alligator heads, running through mazes to eat dots, and throwing root beer at monsters, but nothing could prepare me for the severed Mr. T head I controlled in this game. As you can see from the picture, my opponents are: a little green Michael Jackson, a pink guy in a yellow jumpsuit juggling pixels, and creatures that look like the letter "H." I, of course, make Mr. T's head bounce around and fire blasts of glowing power from his face. Just like the show, sucka. If you're in trouble, if you need a fucked up game, and if you're close enough to a stupid family's garage sale to find it, maybe you can play... the A-Team. Later in the game, Mr. T's floating head finds itself in an empty room fighting against the pixel slinging green Michael Jackson. Your task is to hit him with heat seaking lightning bolts that bounce off of him and fall to the bottom of the screen. This is the only way to disarm the nuclear device. The whole fucking thing is so surreal and nonsensical, you hardly notice it when you get to the second level and your Mr. T head is replaced by Face's ass. And if anyone can tell me what in the name of god this creature to the right has to do with the A-Team, I would be happy. (right: this game brought to you by the letter H.) The coolest thing about the A-Team is that it was just some crap a lazy programmer made when he was bored one afternoon. It is exactly the same as another shitty 2600 game called "Saboteur." Evidentally, the programming geniuses thought that changing their little space man into a Mr. T head, and switching the nondescript enemies into other nondescript enemies like the letter H was enough to exploit the much sought after A-Team video game license. But they did more than slightly rearrange pixels. They also generously spent five minutes changing the text, "STOP ROCKET SAVE BIRDIES" to "SAVE HANNIBAL." Well, shit. Now it's an A-Team game. I am glad they changed the birdie saving thing to saving Hannibal. I always like to know my protagonist's complicated motivation, and I honestly couldn't play a game where Mr. T is told to "SAVE BIRDIES." Not only is he way way too tough for a goal like this, Mr. T is scared of flying. I remember how he loved milk, though, and Face, Hannibal, and Murdock would use this weakness of his to give him drugged glasses of milk to they could get his unconscious ass on a plane. Then he would wake up in a different state, scream something like, "You put me on a plane, sucka?" and try to kill Murdock (he was the useless one that just acted like an idiot so kids would watch the show). These are the ideas that made the A-Team cool. Why didn't they make a video game about milk and airplanes? "Hey, B.A., if you guys need to get across the ocean in a few hours, don't drink the fucking milk that Murdock gives you. Retard," was the advice given to the television when my friends and I were in third grade. Sneak n' Peek. Graphics by Timmy. To it's credit, A-Team came out when people still thought bouncing a square back and forth across a screen was an impressive use of electricity. They also had a delusional outlook on the effect video games had on people. They were under the impression that Atari games would soon replace every single other activity in the world. Besides all the porno games your parents kept in leather cases for those intimate video game sex nights (later), there were other good examples. Here are screenshots from "Sneak 'n Peek." It sounds like a game about voyeurs who score points by catching women changing in their windows, but it was actually something less complicated. It was the video version of the popular children's game, Hide and Seek. This was another attempt by the creators at Atari to eliminate the need to have any sort of non-video game recreation. After this game, they released "Wash Body Shower(tm)" and "Eat 'n Potty!(tm)." Both of them came packaged with a little portable toilet and a water hose that hooked into the back. It's too bad the Atari's popularity died before they could release "Muscle De-Atrophier." It could have saved literally sixes of lives. Player One starts to Count, Peek! (Yeah, each of them has an arm(?) coming out just above their crotch. It's probably why I spent most of first grade trying to pick things up with my penis.) Player Two prepares to Hide, Sneak. Let the fun begin. I guess the title, "Hide and Seek," is copyrighted by elementary schoolers everywhere, so Atari had to settle on that "Sneak 'n Peek" crap to avoid lawsuits. It was a two player game on the cutting edge of entertainment; both players sat down and decided who was it. This was usually accomplished by putting in the cartridge, "Decide Who It!(tm)" After this, the first player would close their eyes and be reminded by the Atari not to peek. Then Player Two would move their grotesque pixel man through the house and hide him somewhere. This could be in a closet or even behind a couch! It's limited only by your imagination and the fact there are only four things to hide behind! After this fun task is completed, Player One removes the palm from their eyes and tries to guess where the other hid. Just like real Hide and Seek except you don't have to walk, and the name is dumb. I used to win this game all the time by taking out the cartridge when Player One wasn't looking and replacing it with Air Sea Battle. Try to find me now, bitch! In modern times, the level of interaction has risen to a fantastic new level. Now you can name characters and distinguish them from one another by more than their different shades of gray. Sometimes the games will even ask you questions like the one to the left. This one may seem obvious, as what else would you do with a little shivering armored turtle but name it? Hopefully something fun like "POOP" or "PANT." Sometimes video games ask you interactive yes or no questions. Don't be tricked by having two options. They're only teasing you with one of them. For example, in the game shown, Shining Force 2 (Sega Genesis), you often get asked things like, "Will you help the king?" If you answer NO, it'll say, "Oh, but you must!" If you answer NO again, it will say, "Oh, but you must!" This will go on until someone or something destroys the power lines outside your house. And don't think you can just kill the King to get him to shut up, there's no button for that. I like to pretend there's interaction, so I'll keep answering NO and drag the conversation out for days. I'm stupid enough to think that maybe next time, the king will finally listen to my point of view. Maybe after 10,000 of these, the game gives up and lets you play checkers with the king instead of help him. He probably shouldn't be looking for help from some kid in a cape and his best turtle friend anyway. Can't the fucker pay a guard to go find the magic whatever in the deadly cave of whatever? Eventually I screw up and hit the wrong button, and then damn. No more interactive video gaming. I remember in Choose Your Own Adventure books each page ended with two or more options. Like "hug the bear... turn to page 23" or "feed bear a pinecone... turn to page 518." There was never an option "look blankly at bear... go back to the top of this page and read again." I think that's because books haven't caught up with video game technology. It's stupid enough already. Write your own funny caption. Atari and Johnson & Johnson came up with a brilliant way to encourage dental hygiene in stupid children in 1983 with the smash hit, "Tooth Protectors." America spit out their mouthwash and sprinted to stores to wait in line in hopes of purchasing this amazing video game. In it, you play the part of a dancing green thing on giant set of teeth. There's a tan thing floating above you, probably with a hideous plot involving tooth decay and plaque. Needless to say, America was in a toothbrushing frenzy. Orthodontists got laid every night and those stickers you get at the dentist's office that say, "I'm a winner! No cavity club!" were harder to find than a Cabbage Patch Kid. The glittery smiles shining brightly today owe much to the clever propaganda devices of Atari and Johnson & Johnson. In a game written for adults by two drunken 10 year olds, Beat 'em and Eat 'em takes all the eroticism of a man with a giant penis for a body and adds hideous naked women catching his man goo in their mouths from a floor below. It makes me so hot. And if you were tired of pretending to be good in front of your toothbrush, you could get the Atari back out of the closet, take off your pants, and put in a Playaround cartridge. They were a strangely motivated company that released porno games to try to get back to the ancient Chinese tradition of "lovemake in front happy video game." You might have read that on a fortune cookie. Is one hundred percent good advice. Most of their games were released as two versions: one for creepy sick boys and one for sexually deviant girls who were probably touched by their priests. This gender specific marketing was totally unnecessary. The graphics were so bad you couldn't tell if you were fucking Kool Aid Man or Cookie Monster, much less distinguish the gender of the humping pixels. For all I know, my brother changed the label on the game and I spent my childhood masturbating to Chuck Norris Superkicks. All these games came in cute leather carrying cases with locks on them so you can keep your kids from playing. This was very important. A parent can explain their drinking problem and the fact that half their brothers and sisters look like the mailman, but I don't even know how to begin explaining to a child that you find your Atari 2600 arousing. After the sexy Knight on the Town was released, Atari took a poll of American women to see what they thought. Some women claimed to find 3 foot penises "too big." Others said their biggest turn off is a man with a small creature attached to his ass. Sorry, Knight on the Town. The people have spoken. And they think you're nasty. The saddest thing is, once you got these games home and realized you got more excited watching your goldfish suck each other's faces, they were no fun to play either. They were failures whether you judged the game on play control or how big a hard on they gave you. It was like they took the fun out of another video game and added a pixel to the chest of all the characters to look like nipples. In Knight on the Town, you took a pile of bricks and built a bridge. Yeah, there were a couple of bad guys that could kill you, but all that really did was teleport you to the bottom of the screen while everything changed colors. And since you have unlimited lives, all this does is take 4 valuable seconds away from your life. Of course, if you spend your life playing porno Atari games, no one's really going to call it "a life." If you do struggle through the obvious self esteem problems the game causes and finish the bridge, you can jump on the tower and give the damsel in distress the full 3 feet of fuedal fury you carry between your legs. It was so sexy, there was a romance novel adaptation of the game. Here's just a small pungent taste: "I watched him build the bridge for hours. His huge manhood tripping him up at every step, he hopped and built until a glistening layer of persperation covered his only slightly deformed body. The bizarre tail on his head bounced rhythmically with his pixel totem as if they danced a dance written just for my womanly crotch. I stood in a puddle of my own arousal that only got deeper with each piece of the bridge. Oh! The final brick was laid and with it would be me! He climbed up to my tower with a grin, his purple body covered in creature bites and postage stamps. But as I started to question his choice of clothing, he silenced me with a forceful thrust of his huge rectangular pelvis. My symmetricly square shaped love pudding spread wide to receive it. Could this... be heaven?" As my way to give back to the world that has given me so many fucked up video games, I've created this collection of Fucked Up Video Game Icons (256 color, 16x16, 32x32, 48x48 in each icon file). I don't expect a thank you. Just seeing small pictures from some of these games can destroy you. File size: 30,970 bytes. Includes icons for: Atari Video Cube, A-Team, Bachelor Party, Bachelorette Pary, Barbie's Vacation Adventure, Beat 'Em N' Eat 'Em, Bible Adventures, Big Bird's Egg Catch, Burning Desire, Cathouse Blues, Chuck Norris Superkicks, Coke Wins, Gigolo, Hot Slots, Journey, Jungle Fever, Knight on the Town, Kool Aid Man, Philly Flasher, Pocket Gal, Revenge of the Beefsteak Tomatoes, Shaq Fu, Smurfs Rescue in Gargamel's Castle, Smurfs Save the Day, Sneak n' Peek, Spiritual Warfare, Strawberry Shortcake's Musical Matchups, The King of Kings, Tooth Protectors, Wally Bear and the NO! Gang, X-Man, Zombie Nation, Exodus, Noah's Ark, and a Mr. T A-Team game .gif background (works in Windows 98 Folders).