For a brief moment in the 1980s, Australia became a global pop-culture fixation. Like the British Invasion two decades earlier, international audiences latched onto Australian exports across music, film and design – Olivia Newton-John, Kylie Minogue, Ken Done, Mad Max and Crocodile Dundee. Video games were also surging, and in Australia the local industry hit a high point. The NFSA’s game collection from this period includes games made in Australia as well as titles shaped by Australian themes and imagery. Together, they show a curious mix of official and unofficial visions of the country, shaped by trends and the realities of where funding and work could be found.
In 1986, Crocodile Dundee shattered box-office records and cemented Paul Hogan’s Mick Dundee as a defining screen figure. Game developers moved quickly to capitalise on the film’s global reach, informally echoing Hogan’s crocodile-hunter persona. In 1988, Japanese company Konami released the Famicom title Mad City. Set in the swamps of Louisiana, the game nevertheless features a lead character unmistakably modelled on Mick Dundee.
One-sheet poster for the Japanese release of Crocodile Dundee (1986)
Australian developers were riding the same wave. In 1989, Beam Software released Aussie Games, leaning directly into the era’s appetite for Australiana. The game featured yet another unofficial, Hogan-adjacent crocodile hunter, surrounded by a parade of local clichés – pies, eskies, stubbies, tinnies and utes – all rendered in bright 8-bit.
The still-young games industry showed little hesitation in repurposing familiar ideas. Aussie Games nodded to Crocodile Dundee while also riffing on the US hit California Games (1987), adopting and twisting its mini-game format. In a final twist, this distinctly Australian send-up was produced for export, released only in the United States and Spain.
Sharing the spotlight was the Mad Max franchise, iconic in its portrayal of the Australian outback and as culturally recognisable as Paul Hogan’s larrikin persona. In 1990, a Mad Max game was released for the Nintendo Entertainment System. It drew on Mad Max 2 (1981), despite arriving years after the third film had reached cinemas.
A sequel followed, but after the licence was lost, it resurfaced as Outlander in 1992. An officially licensed game would not appear again until 2015. In the interim, developers continued to channel the series’ ozploitation aesthetic. Adelaide studio Ratbag Games, for example, delivered the post-apocalyptic racer Powerslide in 1998, capturing the dusty, metal-crunching mood without the formal branding.
Mad Max NES Game (1990)
Despite the franchise’s strong Australian identity, the 1990 Mad Max game was developed by Canadian studio Gray Matter, while the 2015 instalment came from Swedish company Avalanche Studios Group.
While Canadian studios were building digital Australian wastelands, Australian developers were setting their sights on the American desert. In 1990 – the same year Mad Max arrived on the NES – Beam Software released Bigfoot, a licensed monster-truck game for Nintendo. Players tore across a blazing orange landscape, far removed from the outback. Original artwork by Russell Comte places its racetracks between Los Angeles and New York.
From the late 1980s through to the Global Financial Crisis in 2008, American and British publishers routinely outsourced projects to Australian studios. A weaker dollar, strong technical expertise and an English-speaking workforce made the arrangement commercially attractive. Market demands often outweighed questions of cultural voice. The result, reflected in the NFSA’s collection, is a striking mix of distinctly Australian titles alongside games that appear Australian in origin only on the credits
Russell Comte’s hand-drawn map for the monster truck racing game Bigfoot (1990)
As Australian culture enjoyed a surge of international attention, games made in or about Australia during the 1980s both fed and fuelled that appetite for local characters, landscapes and tropes. The NFSA collection across this decade and the next points to a clear industry upswing, with studios navigating the pull between homegrown references and global markets.
The results are often offbeat. Rendered in chunky pixels, Australian stereotypes appear with a straight face – largely untouched by the cultural cringe that would later shadow such imagery.
