Vaporize politicians! Zap skinheads!

GayBlade manual cover, 1992, image credit Ryan Best

GayBlade was a role-playing game developed by Ryan Best in 1992. According to the manual: “GayBlade takes players into an ancient and dark dungeon on a terrifying Quest—to rescue Empress Nelda from the disgusting right-wing creatures inhabiting the dungeon. Fortunately, the rescue party is made up of heroic Drag Queens, Queers, Lesbians, and others who will stop at nothing to get their beloved Empress back to luxurious Castle GayKeep. But can they succeed when so many others have failed before them?”

When the game starts, players in table-top RPG fashion, roll to create a team of characters (Jones,1993). Each type of character has a different ability set encouraging players to create a balanced coalition team. “Armor” in the game includes leather jackets, aprons, tiaras, and condoms, and “weapons” include purses, mace, press-on nails and blo-driers. Enemies in the game include TV evangelists, young republicans, rednecks, homophonic cops, etc., as well as some STIs. The evil forces are led by Lord Nanahcub (or Buchanan backwards) (Nissenbaum 1993). The castle includes 1300 rooms, 13 levels, and 100 bad guys (USA Today, 1993). Much of the coverage of the game asserted it was the “first” LGBTQ game, however this is because its creator and journalists covering the game were unaware of Caper in the Castro.

We stumbled across this game during our archival research into early 1980s and 1990s gay and lesbian newspapers, looking hard for any additional LGBTQ specific games. This otherwise undocumented piece of LGBTQ digital game history was actually widely covered at the time of its original release. According to creator Ryan Best it achieved a large amount of press coverage (particularly for an indie queer game in 1993): “It took me by surprise how much press coverage GayBlade received. My phone was ringing day and night with calls for interviews,” Best said. “Coverage included National Public Radio, USA Today, dozens of national and international GLBT newspapers, Der Spiegel magazine, and I was interviewed by Howard Stern on his radio show.”

We were able to find some of these articles including coverage from the Bay Area Reporter, Village Voice, The Advocate, USA Today, The Boston Globe, and UPI Newstrack.

Article about GayBlade from the Village Voice, July 13 1993, page 46,