Videogames Don’t Grow Up, They Rock Out

No medium has proudly embraced the Heavy Metal comic-book aesthetic more than videogames.

Despite being around for decades, comic books hit a very unique stride during the 1980s with titles like Watchmen, Batman: The Killing Joke, and pulp-fiction sci-fi guns-and-boobs erotica epic fantasy Heavy Metal. But while cartoonists grew up, the torch of the Heavy Metal aesthetic was carried into another nascent form of media – videogames. As Jonathan Glover argues in Issue 235 of The Escapist, no other comic series has had quite the influence on gaming as Heavy Metal.

It’s telling that one of Heavy Metal‘s videogame spin-offs looks totally derivative, because no medium has embraced the magazine’s aesthetic like games have. While the anthology certainly didn’t single-handedly create Frazetta-style heavy metal fantasy, it has been its torch bearer for over 30 years now. That signature combination of fantastical, dark settings and childish brutality, sexism and “baditude” have both helped and hindered the gaming landscape. It’s made its way into innumerable titles, from Altered Beast to Devil’s Crush, from Demon’s Souls to pretty much everything Epic has done after Jazz Jackrabbit. There’s even a little Heavy Metal in World of Warcraft, as any person that’s ever spent an evening in the World’s End Tavern in Shattrath City watching the The Artists Formerly known as Level 80 Elite Tauren Chieftain (or TAFKAL80ETC) jam out can attest to.

To read more about the unique love that games have for heavy metal culture, read “We Are Heavy Metal” by Jonathan Glover in Issue 235 of The Escapist.