Retro NSFW: Inside 'Beat 'Em & Eat 'Em,' The Most X-Rated Game of the '80s

In the early '80s there was stiff competition within the video game market to grab consumer attention, with developer Mystique contributing in a very unique way. Rather than catering to a mainstream audience, it saw a different market for the #Atari 2600. A very pornographic one.

The game was called Beat 'Em & Eat 'Em, and when I say pornographic, I mean a petri dish of X-rated WTF moments including masturbation, man chowder and money shots.

Knowing Beat 'Em & Eat 'Em exists takes the nostalgic reverence of gaming in the ‘80s on a licentious U-turn. We should have known people have always been naughty.

Back in the '80s, it wasn’t easy to get your hands on porn. Indeed, the medium was generally relegated to sticky magazines and well-worn VHS tapes. Sitting around a friend's house watching Debbie Does Dallas with pillows on your laps should have been awkward enough, but then along came Beat 'Em & Eat 'Em.

The gameplay consisted of catching falling sperm from a self-servicing man who has overcome his fear of vertigo to share his love of the perverse. If that sounds hard enough to get a grip on, the clammy truth only gets weirder.

At the bottom of the building stands two seemingly eager and nubile ladies who wish for more than life-sustaining droplets from fluffy clouds. I can see you beginning to put the pieces together. Your goal in the game is to maneuver the women to catch the string of pearls in their gaping mouths. If your steady hands manage to catch all the juicy drops, the two women would lick their sticky lips in a show of their satisfaction to end the level. As I said: WTF!

Using Space Invaders as a comparable archetype: Advancement saw the level of the overhead bombardment intensify as the game progressed. If the deluge became unmanageable, a saturated face would also count on a lower difficulty level.

Funnily Enough, It Wasn’t A Success

Developers have long tried to grow the adult gaming market. Sex sells, there’s no denying it. When Beat 'Em & Eat 'Em was released, however, it received a lot of criticism for its degrading objectification of women. The deranged outcome was a game that opened up a trench coat of 8-bit perversion.

To put it simply, it was in bad taste from all angles.

Compared to #Fallout2 for example, the sexual content of Beat 'Em & Eat 'Em was not seen as acceptable. Fallout's attempt at adult-specific content was done in a tongue-in-cheek way that allowed it to be considered tolerable.

It Does Matter What's Wrong Or Right

Who really knows what inspired Mystique to develop a game even a hyena would have trouble moralizing with? It may have been as simple as coinciding with the newly released Beat It by Michael Jackson that was then playing on the radio.

Classic gaming systems, games, and characters that formed the bedrock for future generations of button bashers were formed in the '80s. Seeing naked women catching semen from an ejaculating deviate on a rooftop is thankfully not one of them.

Have you played Beat 'Em & Eat 'Em?