Hey guys, what did I mi--
The history of Japanese adventure games, visual novels, and dating sims is an extremely complicated one that I'm not enough of an expert in to go into with extreme detail, but suffice it to say that sexual and outright pornographic content have never been very far removed from them.
That particular era had an common trend of lech protagonists and Cobra is very much in line with the norm. I wouldn't say that it's supposed to be an actively critical parody, but it fits in with the often pretty messed up attempts at tongue-in-cheek humor that were common during the time period and is a perfect indication of the kind of development culture and trends in writing that were prevalent at the time, even though it itself is an adaptation and not an original work.
Space Adventure Cobra is based on a very popular early 80s sci-fi manga that turned into an even more popular animated series. White it is regarded as a classic, women arent depicted very favourably. Similar with Heavy Metal magazine in America during that era.
There is a summary about Japanese computer games in this article
http://hg101.proboards.com/thread/6923/japanese-computers
Of course, the programmers were bound by the technical limitations of these early machines. The high screen resolution, combined with the lack of hardware spriting found in consoles like the Famicom, meant that creating fast-moving action games was difficult. This in turn led budding game developers to create adventure games mostly involving still images and text. While initially similar to pioneering Western adventure games like
Mystery House, they gradually morphed into the kind of minimally interactive storybook adventures now commonly known as
visual novels. Also, given the complete lack of content restrictions, these adventure games often contained erotic elements.
The fact is, and this is something uptight commentators in the West have trouble dealing with, eroticism forms a major part of Japanese computer game history. It may be surprising to hear that the first commercial erotic computer game,
Night Life, was developed by none other than Koei (
click here for an extremely explicit and NSFW screenshot). Other now-famous companies such as Enix, Square, and Nihon Falcom all released erotic games in the early 1980s. In the best cases, the erotic content is meaningfully integrated into a thoughtful and mature storyline. In other cases, the game is just a flimsy excuse for pornography. Sometimes, erotic content will abruptly appear in an otherwise mundane RPG or strategy game, so caution should be exercised when playing in the same room with children or people who would feel uncomfortable.
Unfortunately, the proliferation of erotic software did taint the early computer scene in the eyes of the Japanese mainstream. It didn't help that many of these early computer users were still in middle school or high school. In 1986, a game called 177 (the Japanese criminal code for rape) ignited a furor that reached all the way to the National Diet. In 1992, another game called
Cybernetic Hi-School (
Dennou Gakuen) was declared to be obscene material in Miyazaki Prefecture. Thankfully, the issue was ultimately resolved without enacting laws for banning material. Instead, software makers self-organized and introduced guidelines for the distribution of erotic material, such as applying glittery "18+" stickers to game boxes (these still exist today) and using mosaic patterns to cover genitalia. (That didn't stop some software makers from sneaking in special keyboard commands to remove these mosaics, however.) Ultimately, it speaks volumes for gaming as a medium in the West that only recently have developers incorporated sexual themes into their games, such as
Mass Effect, only then to be pounced on by Western news outlets - whereas Japan has dealt with sex from the onset of the technology.
In any case, adventure games became a large fraction of the Japanese computer game library. These slower-paced, text-heavy games may hold little interest for the non-Japanese speaker, but they should not be completely overlooked, because they also showcase some of the best
pixel art in video game history. If an emulator such as Anex86 is used in conjunction with the Anime Games Text Hooker (AGTH) software, these games can be even played in (machine-translated) English. Even those who want to avoid erotic visuals completely should not miss out on the many excellent non-erotic murder mysteries and horror games, such as the J.B. Harold series, the 1920 series, and the
Nightmare Collection (consisting of
Dead of the Brain 1-2 and
Marine Philt).