I've been reading The Ultimate History of Video Games. It's full of lots of details I didn't know, a thorough accounting of the development of the game business with lots of first person accounts. But what's most fun is the pointers to weird-ass games I'd never heard of before.
Like Chiller. It's a fairly straight-forward Exidy light gun game, only completely fucked up. See, the game is about shooting corpses and zombies. See the man in the Rocky Horror underwear on the left? Shoot his skin to flay him alive! See the guillotine? Shoot it to behead the woman! See the press on the right? Shoot it six times to crush the man's skull! If you get all the way to the last level there's a girl zombie whose clothes you can shoot off. Boobies! Then you shoot her to pieces. My favourite is the winch you shoot repeatedly to lower the guy into the river of blood where a crocodile eats him, one joint at a time.

There was some controversy when the game came out, and apparently it did not sell well in the US. I think it was intended to be funny, but really it's just disturbing. And not a very good game. Still, there it is.

culturegamesemulation
  2005-08-21 16:26 Z