X

Hey Dad, you left your 1986 computer porn on this old Mac

Softcore software? A Reddit user buys an old Macintosh SE and discovers an adults-only game hidden in an AOL folder.

Gael Cooper
CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," as well as "The Totally Sweet '90s." She's been a journalist since 1989, working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. She's Gen X in birthdate, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she'll be first in line.
Expertise Breaking news, entertainment, lifestyle, travel, food, shopping and deals, product reviews, money and finance, video games, pets, history, books, technology history, generational studies. Credentials
  • Co-author of two Gen X pop-culture encyclopedia for Penguin Books. Won "Headline Writer of the Year"​ award for 2017, 2014 and 2013 from the American Copy Editors Society. Won first place in headline writing from the 2013 Society for Features Journalism.
See full bio
Gael Cooper
2 min read
maxiecrop.jpg
Enlarge Image
maxiecrop.jpg

MacPlaymate. It was a simpler time.

 Imgur/wowbobwow

It was hidden in an AOL folder, because even in the '80s, no child with the sense of a Cabbage Patch Kid was going to go digging around in that.

On Wednesday, Reddit user wowbobwow posted a photo-filled tale of his acquisition of a Macintosh SE off of Craigslist. The story starts off as something that might only be of interest to a devoted old-computer collector, and then takes a bizarre turn. The program tucked into that AOL folder was MacPlaymate, a 1986 program labeled as "interactive erotica for the Mac."

Related stories

If you're old enough to remember the Leisure Suit Larry games of the 1980s, you might be envisioning a humor-filled romp, with cartoony characters and goofy scenarios that contained less sex than your average "Game of Thrones" episode does today.

Nope, nope, nope. MacPlaymate just put it all out there, with a black and white (blue and white?) illustration of a naked Bettie Page-looking woman (dubbed "Maxie") and a variety of adult toys that can be manipulated, plus a very simple idea of what a 1980s artist thought might be sexy lingerie.

The new owner actually was given the computer for free, when the would-be seller thought it no longer worked, which may explain why that person didn't delete the software program.

"Now I'm blushing in black and white," wrote wowbobwow, whose user name became even more relevant as the game progressed.

MacPlaymate wasn't the only surprise left on the computer. There was also a painstakingly drawn floor plan of a home done in MacPaint, which led to this top comment on the Reddit thread.

Wrote Reddit user MC2037, "I really hope that when this makes it to the front page someone recognizes the floor plan of the house and realizes that this is their dad's old computer."

(Via Atlas Obscura)