4th August 2024The Shady Side Of The Beeb
Many years ago, when Bulletin Boards and Teletext were still things, and when one would buy games by sending a cheque through the post, I started accumulating a lot of BBC and Electron "stuff". Partly because I bought up 'lots' on eBay, and partly because people gave it to me because they knew I would take care of it, I ended up with hundreds of cardboard boxes all filled with leads, cassette recorders, machines, magazines and other oddities. And one of the most intriguing things I found was a three page dot-matrix list of BBC and Electron discs with a section headed "Porno Stuff". The associated games (or, more likely, demos) hadn't made it to me unfortunately and it may be that the list itself had been sent by mail order to someone in the Eighties and the recipient had never asked for any of this software. But it's interesting that there must have been a small userbase for this type of adult content back in the day.
A smattering of smut has been found over the years too - in the form of digitised video grabs. It is completely awful in terms of quality and downright embarrassing to waste a disc on. It all looks like it was sampled from terrible-quality VHS in four colours and the idea was that the end-user turned down the colour knob on his CRT monitor to create a greyscale image in order to "see" it. All I can say is that you'd have to be beyond desperate to bother!
Well, this article isn't about those dodgy discs. Firstly, because that dot matrix list is the only evidence we have of such coding gems as Freddy Says F**k and What The Butler Saw. And, secondly, because, even being the BBC retro obsessive that I am, I draw the line at reviewing still pictures from Deep Throat just because "they're on a BBC".
However, the last 25 years have resulted in some superior 'adult entertainment' for the Acorn machines. So in this article we're going to take a look at what I consider to the top five adult games, all of which come from the Scandi coders The Horny Elk. As you might expect from a group with that name, all of their wares were originally coded for the Electron rather than the Beeb, but they work on both machines.
Although it might seem from first blush that there are a variety of demo and game styles in THE's library, all of these adult demos do share a few elements - namely, they're totally unique to the BBC and Electron machines and their artists have really laboured over the artwork. As someone who designed a number of loading screens for BBC and Electron games back in the day, I know that drawing complex images by hand with a 4 (or 7) colour restriction is a challenge - but you can trick the eye into seeing a darker or lighter shade by using a "mesh" effect, i.e. plotting a yellow and white chequered pattern in an area will give the impression of a light yellow. These techniques are used very impressively in all of the images. Indeed, there are actually very few high quality slideshow collections available - only Acorn User really seemed to put these out back in the day - and it's somewhat regrettable that THE's artists haven't put their talents into designing more "mainstream" content.
Also, as you might expect, most of these demos and games are XXX rated, so in describing them there will be quite a bit of NSFW (Not Suitable For Work) language.
5. Ayana The Yellow Star
Demo, Hentai Images, MMF, Abuse/Incest/Rape, 2003
Originally released in 2003, Ayana is more of a demo than a full game, although the pictures can be loaded into Europress' Jigsaw game (or Budgie's Shuffle). The demo offers a vertical scrolly message in both English and Swedish language, eleven half-screen images and artwork originally designed by Yatsume Umetsu, who is actually a household name in Japan.
Originally digitised from a little-known anime series called Cool Devices, the pictures involve a schoolgirl being initiated into sex by three older men. It's all hand-drawn art and runs in Mode 1, which limits the palette to four colours. It's sexy enough (Umetsu does seem to like explicit 'defloration' of his female characters), but the smaller size of images and the greater emphasis on typical demo elements is actually more distracting than you might imagine. You can choose your favourite picture and/or freeze the 'action' but, as one of THE's earliest demos, it's more of a historical artefact than anything else when judged by their more recent releases.
4. ROTAM II
Demo, Hentai Images, Abuse/Tentacle Porn/Rape, 2023
If this were a list judging these releases by graphics alone, then there's no doubt in my mind that ROTAM (Rape Of The Alectro Module) II would easily take the number one spot. Released on an unsuspecting world in 2023, this is an epic slideshow which fills two ADFS L or three double-sided DFS discs, and is a full "digitisation" of one of the most hardcore scenes from the movie Urotsukidoji III: The Return Of The Overfiend. Manga/hentai fans may well recognise the Urotsukidoji name as the Godfather of Tentacle Porn, and the subject matter is beyond the pale. Alectro is the name of a green-haired princess and, in ROTAM II, is lusted after by her own father. As if that's not disturbing enough, he transforms into a hideous gargoyle-type yokai with half a dozen tentacles to inflict his "punishment" upon her.
This is one of two demos that THE have released (the other being The Humiliation Of Akemi Ito) which are made in psuedo-movie style and can be watched full-screen or with subtitles (although these don't really add much). The pictures have been 'demade' from a hitherto lost print of the film which didn't feature the censorship that plagued the US and UK releases of the movie. There's literally no interaction at all on the part of the end user but the moody green-yellow-white-black graphics are the very best I have ever seen on the BBC.
3. The Kaori Cel Experiment
Demo/Game, Hentai Images, Declothing/Violence, 2007
This is a very odd game and whether it counts as adult I'm not really sure. This is, as you might glean from the name, an experiment based on a US TV show called The Monty Hall problem. This show invited its contestants to choose one of three doors. Behind two of them was a gorilla and behind the other a new car. After the contestant made his choice, the host, Monty Hall, would open one of the 'gorilla' doors (thus taking that choice away) and then ask the contestant if he wanted to change his mind.
Mathematically, changing your mind is the right option... although many people refuse to believe it makes any difference. But you have a markedly higher chance (66%) of winning the car if you do.
This game replaces the doors with cards and simulates the contestant changing his mind or sticking to his guns. On the first runthrough it plays as if the contestant changed his mind. That doesn't mean he will always 'win' of course, just that he has a higher chance of not winning. If he does 'win' the slideshow of anime girl Kaori advances by one frame; if he 'loses' it drops back by one frame. However, because the probability of winning is higher, no matter whether the contestant wins or loses, the runthrough will complete. On the second runthrough it plays as if the contestant stuck with his initial choice. This gives only a 33.3% chance of probability that this run will ever complete.
The slideshow features a young girl being disrobed by two masked bikers. It runs in Mode 2 so all seven colours are used (one of only two of THE's demos to do so), the graphics are full-screen and, if the whole experiment thing doesn't interest you, there's an option to just run through the sequence sequentially.
2. Mikura Rape Adventure
Illustrated Text Adventure, Hentai Images, MMF, Abuse/Rape, 2011
Those Commodore 64 adventurers from the early Eighties might remember an old text adventure called Farmer's Daughter in which the titular character responded to a whole manner of risqué commands. Mikura is a similar deal and pits you in the role of one of two kidnappers who have taken a young girl hostage. As with Ayana, the artwork comes from Yatsume Umetsu but this time, in full screen and without the demo effects of the first one, it all feels much more perverse and darker in tone.
In all honesty, this is one brutal "game" and there's nothing consensual about anything that happens in it. Unlike THE's demos featuring forced sex, you actually need to play this one... essentially you have to 'be' one of the rapists. The commands you issue affect the pictures you see. This makes it probably the most disturbing game ever written for the BBC and Electron.
It comes on two DFS discs and actually requires a double-disc drive - there's no single disc version. Images, of which there are about thirty, are rendered in Mode 1 four colour mode. It's about fifteen years old now, and it's based on the anime Mezzo Forte which is about 25 years old. Still, when something is this explicit and exploitative, it can't fail to shock. You have been warned.
1. Hot Blocks
Game, Hentai Images, Sex/Nudity, 2010
Well, congratulations on wading through all that filth to the game that takes our top spot.
Hot Blocks is a sliding blocks game, depicting a scene from Pink Pineapple's Shin Angel 2. As far as explicit sex goes, it's actually the most tame of the productions in that, at least in this game/slideshow, it's all consensual and the girl involved genuinely seems to be enjoying what's going on.
Originally released in 2005, I've put this at the top of the list because, although gameplay-wise it's clearly nothing spectacular, at least it offers the most interaction. And by interaction, I mean using the usual Acorn movement keys ZX*? to move the blocks around to create the next picture.
What story there is, is wafer thin. Think naughty Japanese schoolgirl invites a boy behind the bike sheds and you've more or less got it. But the graphics are amazing - as the game is done full screen in Mode 2 they are very colourful although slightly lower resolution than the majority of THE's stuff. There's a choice of sixteen images to choose from and, if you don't do sliding block puzzles, there's a slideshow option.
Where Can I Get Them?
All of THE's stuff is available on the Everygamegoing website or on the Acorn Electron World DVD. Otherwise, it's actually very hard-to-find. In the early 2000s it did have its own website which was done in blog format and showed off some of the utilities used to create the early demos (http://www.thehornyelk.se) but it doesn't seem to have been archived by The Wayback Machine. At time of writing there are three other demos by THE: ROTAM, Ariel Is A Slut and The Humiliation Of Akemi Ito.
