Trivia
Barbarian Controversy Timeline
1987
Barbarian ships
Barbarian: The Ultimate Warrior is released on C64, Spectrum, CPC, Amiga, and Atari ST. The cover art featuring Maria Whittaker and Michael Van Wijk in warrior costume is immediately eye-catching on software shelves.
1987
Mary Whitehouse campaign
Mary Whitehouse's National Viewers' and Listeners' Association raises objections to the Barbarian cover art, arguing it is inappropriate for a product available to children. The campaign generates press coverage in UK national newspapers.
1987
Streisand Effect
The controversy functions as free advertising. Each newspaper column condemning the game's cover art increases public awareness of Barbarian. Sales benefit. Palace Software makes no apologies.
1987–1988
German court ruling - blood goes green
A German court rules on the game's violent content - specifically the decapitation finisher. For the German market, the blood is changed from red to green. This modification becomes one of the most cited examples of regional censorship in 8-bit gaming history. The goblin-kick finisher itself is retained in both versions.
1988
Barbarian II ships
Barbarian II: The Dungeon of Drax continues the series without censorship controversy. The sequel's shift to side-scrolling action suggests Palace learning from - and moving past - the Barbarian moment.
Ongoing
Retrospective recognition
The Barbarian controversy is regularly cited in retrospectives on UK games marketing of the 1980s and histories of censorship in video games. The cover art has been reproduced in numerous books and documentaries on the period.
Michael Van Wijk and Gladiators
Michael Van Wijk, the Dutch bodybuilder who appeared on the Barbarian cover as the warrior, went on to become a cast member of the ITV series Gladiators - the enormously popular British game show in which "Gladiators" (professional athletes in lycra) competed against members of the public in physical challenges.
Van Wijk played the character "Wolf" - a deliberately villainous Gladiator known for gamesmanship and theatrics. His appearance on Gladiators made him a household name in early 1990s Britain, adding an improbable afterlife to the Barbarian cover mythology.
The connection between Barbarian's box art bodybuilder and the sneering Wolf of Gladiators is a beloved piece of UK gaming and television crossover trivia. Van Wijk's Wikipedia page credits both his bodybuilding career and his Gladiators role.
Green Blood - A History
The practice of changing blood colour to green or purple to satisfy censorship requirements has a longer history in video games, but Barbarian's German version is one of the earliest and most famous examples on home computers. The choice of green - presumably to signal "monster blood" or non-human fluid - has since become a tongue-in-cheek trope of discussions about game censorship.
Games from the Mortal Kombat series to Soldier of Fortune would later face similar censorship requirements in various territories. Palace's 1987 experience with the German courts was prescient of a debate that would occupy the games industry for decades.
The Palace Group / Evil Dead Connection
Palace Software's debut game was The Evil Dead (1984) - a text adventure licensed from Sam Raimi's cult horror film. The Palace Group's entertainment background (they had connections to film and music distribution) gave them access to licences that other software houses might not have been able to secure.
The Evil Dead licence was, at the time, a bold choice: the film had been classified as a "video nasty" in the UK, making Palace's association with it inherently provocative. The pattern of seeking out controversial or attention-grabbing licences continued with Barbarian's cover art strategy - a consistent studio-level attitude to controversy as a marketing tool.
Death Sword - The North American Rename
The Amiga version of Barbarian was released in North America under the title Death Sword. This renaming - presumably to distance the game from its controversial European box art, or simply to appeal to the North American market's different genre expectations - is a footnote in the Barbarian story that collectors particularly enjoy.
Death Sword is effectively identical to Barbarian in gameplay; the different title means that collectors sometimes encounter it without recognising the connection. MobyGames lists both versions.