Custer’s Revenge in Gensoukyou is a parody of 1982’s infamous Atari 2600 game that involved Custer having his way with a tied up Native American. Well, he’s back at it again, but with a slight twist. Instead of a Native American, he’ll be after nine different girls from the Touhou franchise. One of the first things you’ll notice if you are familiar with the original title is that the play area is far smaller and the pixel art is somehow worse than that of its 1982 release.
Your task is still to make it to the right side of the screen and mash the interact button to thrust into whatever character finds herself unlucky enough to be in Custer’s way. They are not tied up though, they are all kind of just standing there unwittingly staring off into space. All the while, you will be under attack from a volley of arrows flying through the sky as you try to trust into your waifu for extra points.
The arrows are randomized so there is no memorizing their patterns, though they are shot in simple volleys that are much easier to avoid than in the original. Your main challenge will be learning when to pull out and when its safe to go back in. A single arrow will kill you and you only have three lives throughout the entire game. There is no timer meaning you can play it as safe or as recklessly as you want.
Every fifty thrusts will set you back to the beginning of the area and change the girl to a different character. As previously said, there is nine girls in total, but there are actually two extra characters. One is Custer himself, which got quite a laugh out of me as he slowly wobbled towards his clone to do the deed. The other is a digitized version of an actual person and is a character from Brief Karate Foolish. They are quite late into the game and add a nice bit of humor for those that manage to get that far.
There is no music nor voice acting such as moaning. All of the sound effects are lifted straight from the original Custer’s Revenge. It is quite something to be thrusting into a far more modern looking anime sprite as the Atari 2600 sound effects blare out. The girl’s animations are clearly some kind of default knock-back effect from receiving damage, probably from another game. That makes it pretty surprising about how well they work here. If it wasn’t for the very bizarre animation of the second girl, I likely wouldn’t even have noticed.
In all likelihood, you won’t be staring at the girl, but at the sky to be ready for arrows. Ignoring the rapey aspect of it, it is a simple yet pretty addictive gameplay loop. You only have three lives and you can’t help but want to see what character is next every fifty thrusts. I am honestly unsure if the game actually gets any more difficult as time goes on. I’ve played it multiple times and felt like it did get a tiny bit faster, though that could be my mind playing tricks on me and is negligible nonetheless.
From the get-go, this title doesn’t have keybindings to play it on your keyboard. It is set to default Xbox controller mappings to be used with gamepads. It is also listed as untranslated, though since there is no text to be found other than the dev’s website handle, it doesn’t matter in the slightest. There were no issues playing it on the English version of Windows 10. All told, Custer’s Revenge in Gensoukyou is a decent recreation of the infamous original title, with a more humorous tone. It is much easier, though it is still a disturbingly compelling gameplay experience featuring many characters to see. So yeah… buy a copy for all your friends.
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