Lemmy Kilmister was Born to Raise Hell, this you cannot dispute. As the frontman of the best metal band of all time*, Motörhead, Kilmister and co. has been able to bring awesomeness to just about everything, from greasy grown men fondling each other (WWE) to one of the absolute worst movies of all time (Zombie Nightmare, starring Tia Carrere and Adam motherfucking West). Sure, some music fans may have found the saturation of Motörhead in the 1980s to be a little Overkill, but whatever.

In 1993, with heavy metal dying a slow and painful death at the hands of grunge, Gremlin Interactive decided that it was a good time to Eat the Rich and decided to release a Motörhead game, cleverly titled Motörhead. With Brütal Legend being released today, I figured now would be a good time to step into the way back machine, Leaving Here and going back to 1994 to show you the game that is truly “the most metal game of all time”.

If you were to take Golden Axe and dip it in a vat of motorcycle chrome and liquid death, the resulting product would be Motörhead. An old school 2D beat ‘em up, you played as Lemmy as he travels across strange lands with the singlular goal of rescuing his bandmates from disgruntled fans of lesser forms of music.

Each of the six stages has a specific musical theme. One stage is a play on Country/Western with Lemmy taking his Rickenbacker 4004 to the faces of inbreds. Another stage has him fighting off Japanese businessmen (a play on karaoke) with the help of giant monsters, ala Godzilla. But the best stage has to be the opening stage, in which Lemmy fights the worst kind of musical scurge: Vanilla Ice-era white rappers. It’s strangely satisfying to smash somebody who’s dressed like Rob Van Winkle in the face with a bass guitar.

The bass is Lemmy’s primary attack, but far from his only one. When enemies get too close for his Bomber to hit them, he’ll simply use his Iron Fist to make ‘em choke on their own teeth. There are also a variety of special attacks that come in handy. Drinking a can of beer will allow Lemmy to burp fireballs, collecting certain items will allow you to call on a groupie to distract your enemies, and filling your special meter (in the form of bullets) will have all of your enemies be Killed by Death, aka the Grim Reaper.

There are also many minigames that let you earn extra points and extra lives (which are represented by the [Ace of] Spades). These minigames are all heavily influenced by some classic gaming titles, like Beer Tapper, Kaboom! and, oddly enough, the car smashing minigame from Street Fighter II, only replacing the car with a hotel room.

The art in Motörhead is quite nice. Everybody is drawn in a somewhat over-the-top, cartoonish style (with Lemmy looking downright crazy at some points), but the levels and characters are quite colorful and works to keep the game fun without really offending anybody. The music is also quite nice, with several of Motörhead’s songs making it into the game in some form or another.

Motörhead was another in a string of music-related video games released in the early part of the 1990s and while it doesn’t have the “WTF” factor that a Revolution X or Crüe Ball has, it’s a solid Amiga game that I would love to see re-released on Good Ol’ Games or Steam. Sadly, the game itself is very rare, but I Got Mine on eBay for about $35.

*Lemmy doesn’t even consider Motörhead to be metal, which in itself is metal

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