Released in 1997, Shadow Warrior almost immediately came under fire for everything from its offensive stereotyping to its apparent ignorance regarding the source material. Elliott Chin wrote in the August 1997 edition of Computer Gaming World that the game was "patently offensive," and displayed "great ignorance" through its seemingly-random mixing of Asian stereotypes. As a ninja, the game's main character was presumably Japanese, but his name was unmistakably Chinese. He would occasionally shout out remarks about Hiroshima while butchering coolie-hat wearing enemies and scarfing down fortune cookies to regain his health. For gamers looking for any sort of cohesiveness in their ethnic stereotyping, it was confusing to say the least, and while the Build Engine-powered game was actually quite a bit of fun, the whole thing turned out to be an embarrassment for the company. It received decent reviews and admonishing finger-wags in roughly equal measure and faded from sight relatively quickly. Plans for expansion packs were dropped, and 3D Realms seemed happy enough to pretend the whole thing never happened.
But none of these compare to Custer's Revenge, a 1982 train wreck for the Atari 2600 whose very existence is nearly beyond belief. The "plot" features a nearly-naked General Custer, equipped with nothing but a hat, boots and a boner, who must work his way past various obstacles in order to have sex with a naked Native American woman named Revenge - who just happens to be tied to a post. Leaving aside the criticisms leveled at the game as a result of its crappy (and sexual assault-based) gameplay, the game took heat from various corners over its apparent trivialization of sexual violence against Native Americans.
It can be difficult to focus on Custer's Revenge as a racist game - rape has a way of being the focal point in just about any list of wrongdoings - but imagine for a moment if this had been a game of "white guy rapes white girl": It's a safe bet nobody at Atari would have even admitted knowledge of the thing's existence, much less allowed it to be published. Yet by adding the racial conflict, the game somehow became framed in a context that left it tasteless and objectionable, but still marketable. Utterly inconceivable today, the game actually sold around 80,000 copies, hardly a smashing success, but given the small, niche status of home videogaming in the early '80s, far from a dismal failure. At the end of 2002, GameSpy rated Custer's Revenge as the most shameful videogame ever, calling it "either a monument to sexual abuse or to sheer stupidity."
Luckily, newer releases have made better use of ethnic minorities. While Prey is the most obvious example, F.E.A.R.'s chief supporting characters included the Korean technical officer Jin Sun-Kwon and the black Delta Force soldier Douglas Holiday, both of whom fill prominent roles. Half-Life 2's oh-so-capable (and sexy) Alyx Vance and her father, Eli, leader of the human resistance, are also African-American. Carl Johnson and his brother Sean - better known as CJ and Sweet - may not be any parent's ideal role model for his children, but there's no questioning their popularity in the San Andreas chapter of Rockstar's wildly successful Grand Theft Auto series. And Tracer Tong of Deus Ex fame, who turned out to be a pretty solid guy, was Chinese.
We've seen tremendous changes in attitudes over the years, and videogames reflect those changes. I think it's a bit sad that we'll never again have the opportunity to see Lo Wang (or his brother, Hung Lo) swing into action, but I have to admit it's probably for the best. Over the years, we've done good. We've done bad. And yes, we've done really bad. But nobody can say we're not getting better.
