In 1992 Kaitsu Software, in what seems to have been the only game they ever put out, released a game for the Commodore Amiga using as its protagonist the greatest and drunkest frontman in rock history, Lemmy Kilmister.

Yes, Motörhead finally had its own video game.

Unfortunately, Motörhead was far from a great game. It was a bit derivative and it lacked any music by Motörhead, which seems like something you’d definitely want to have. It was one of those side-scrollers where you beat up your foes as you move from panel to panel. The game was heavily inspired by Golden Axe, a popular Sega franchise that had been delighting gamers since 1989. However, the gameplay of Motörhead was pretty good and it had a healthy dose of humor to enhance the experience.
 

 
In the game, Lemmy awakens from a bourbon-induced blackout to learn that his bandmates have been kidnapped. He has to progress through a series of music-related levels in which he must vanquish foes representing various genres (goth, country, acid house, rap, karaoke). In the “Nashville” level there’s a character who looks suspiciously like Dolly Parton, and the goth sequence, called “Enter the Morgue,” has a character who just might be mistaken for Robert Smith. Here’s an account of Lemmy’s capabilities, described by Mark Winstanley in the (mostly positive) review of the game that appeared in the January 1993 issue of Amiga Power magazine:
 

Lemmy can punch, headbutt, swing his guitar or use halitosis attacks, always assuming he’s loaded up on cockles or Jack Daniel’s first. By collecting magical Motörhead talismans he can unleash a devastating musical chord or summon up helpful demons, ranging from a tasty lass who distracts his opponents for a bit, up to WWF’s very own ‘Undertaker’, who just plain kills everyone.

 
It’s true: the game absolutely does literalize the metaphor of guitar-as-axe—indeed if you play the game that’s about 80% of what you’ll be doing, whacking people with a guitar. And yes, there is a feature where Lemmy knocks out his enemies by merely breathing on them! Amazing.

Between the levels you can scoop up power-ups or something on a vehicle, which is generally a motorcycle but in one instance Lemmy is perched atop a tractor! Another time (after the karaoke level) instead of his usual “hog,” he rides a bright red motorcycle clearly based on the one in Akira.
 

An amusing array of graphical elements from the game. My favorite bit is the “glug glug” icon which is the most Motörhead video game thing EVER.

Interspersed between the main levels are easier minigame modules—one of them is a copy of Root Beer Tapper called “Beer Frenzy” in which Lemmy is obliged to scamper all over a barroom lapping up brewskis. Drive responsibly, kids! 

More ‘Motörhead’ the video game, after the jump…

 
When Commodore released the Amiga (which was the highest-quality desktop computer out there for a little while), they got a really good get for the product launch press conference in late July of 1985: none other than Andy Warhol. Rather remarkably, according to Technologizer, the launch event was “a black-tie, celebrity-studded gala at the Vivian Beaumont Theater in New York’s Lincoln Center.”

The Amiga always was a funny duck, but at the time, it offered better graphics than Apple or PCs, and it also offered a fantastic thing called multitasking. People who owned Amigas were known to be evangelical about the subject. As New York Magazine told it, Warhol murmured into a microphone, “It’s such a great thing. I’ve always wanted to be Walt Disney. I’m gonna tell everyone to get one.” (The bulk of that article is a rave review of the newly unveiled Amiga.) It’s apparent that the pixelated version of the Blondie lead singer qualifies as a “Warhol” “original” on the strength of Warhol executing the fill function a couple of times, but still.
 

 
Warhol isn’t exactly synonymous with forward-thinking technophilia, but in a lot of ways, computer-generated art fits in perfectly well with his sunny, democratic, and somewhat automated take on the world. After all, this is the guy who in The Philosophy of Andy Warhol, penned, in what is one of my absolute favorite quotations of the twentieth century, “What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it.”
 

 
Warhol also made the cover of the third-ever issue of Amiga World (blurry PDF), which also scored an interview with the pop art master. In the introduction to the interview, it is made painfully clear how entirely crazy it was that the magazine got Warhol to agree to it. The interview is predictably amusing, and Warhol is epigrammatic and opaque and inscrutable in his oddly accessible way, but what does shine through is his genuine enthusiasm for the Amiga and computers in general. Also, out of nowhere Warhol uncorks this pithy gem: “Mass art is high art.”  It’s definitely worth a read.
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
John Waters and Divine on a rarely seen episode of Andy Warhol’s TV show
Warhol Polaroids of Sports Legends