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New Video Game Recreates Kennedy Assassination
theodp writes "Lee Harvey Oswald-wannabes will be able to simulate the assassination of President John F. Kennedy when Traffic Games releases the $9.99 JFK Reloaded on Monday to coincide with the 41st anniversary of Kennedy's murder in Dallas. 'It is despicable,' said a spokesman for Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy, the late president's brother."
What is wrong with it? I see re-creations all the time on the History Channel, Discovery, etc, etc, etc. Why not create a game that lets you do it? It is something that happened. Where is the upcry when you have WWII games happening??
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
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Those bastards! AGAIN!
Seriously, tho, WTF?! Is this a way to commemorate what is reportedly (I wasn't born at the time, so I can't speak for it) a very sad day in US history?
Or is this just a thinly vieled cover for the "Shrubya" skin that will be showing up on 0-day sites shortly after release?
*When the simulation starts, you are viewing Dealey Plaza through Lee Harvey Oswald's eyes: from the sixth floor of the Texas Schoolbook Depository. A cross-hair marks the position of your rifle sight. Controls available to you are left-click to shoot, and right-click to zoom in/out, and mouse-movements to adjust your aim.*
so, you only get to aim and shoot. sounds quite boring, and doesn't really offer anything for the conspiracy heads either, as the conspiracy and plot is already played out with oswald as the shooter. now if you would be able to reconstruct the happenings in different ways, like placing the shooter at different locations or using multiple shooters.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
There was a new show, either on Discovery Channel or the History Channel, where they recreated the shot. The bullet pretty much did what the "magic bullet" did. Check it out.
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
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Or is that damn Magic bullet bullshit true?
The History Channel (IIRC) just ran a special about that last week. A team set out to prove or disprove the single bullet theory. They constructed two very realistic torsos, placed them the way Kennedy and Connally were seated and oriented in the car, and fired a bullet exactly like Oswald used from a rifle just like Oswald's from Oswald's relative position to the limo.
The result? They almost got a single bullet to produce all the wounds. The only difference was they broke an extra rib in "Connally's" torso-- that deformed the bullet more than apparently happened in the real assassination, and took away the energy it needed to penetrate a block of gel meant to represent Connally's thigh-- it just bounced off, instead. I thought the single bullet theory was a bunch of shit, but after seeing their recreation it certainly seems plausible.
The show was fascinating, and I'm sure it will see another airing or two this week for anybody who's interested. I think it was "Investigating History," and if so then it's on tonight (Monday night 11/22) at 10PM ET.
~Philly
The replays and ballistics through bodies stuff is creepy. First time it showed the replay of JFK losing a chunk of brain I was actually horrified. This is different than blasting monsters a bazillion times with unrealistic weapons. It actually friggin makes you see, hear, BE the killer. On the other hand it answers a lot of questions I'd always had about the distance and angle of the shots. The sim idicates that JFK was in an exposed position, much more so than I'd ever noticed before. Randomly blasting into the car seems to take out JFK more often than the other characters.
I'm quite skeptical of the games "re-enactment shows it's possible" contention. Sure, you can make a computer simulation where it's easy for the FPS player to shoot the President, but it's unlikely that they're doing the physics well enough to let anybody prove or disprove the Magic Bullet theory, and the news article and web site don't sound like they're giving you the choice of shooting from the Grassy Knoll either - just that you get to watch the bullet flying in Neo-like slow motion. It ain't science. (Also, of course, even if Oswald was the only gunman, that doesn't prove he was a lone assassin vs. getting support and funding from the Mafia or the Cubans or the Pentagon or whomever your favorite conspiracy theory likes to pin it on.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
It seems to me that the most despicable thing is the fact that the American people have never had the people who killed former Pres. Kennedy brought to justice, not had the whole facts of the assasination revealed publically and officially. Of course, such a revelation would probably reveal things still relevant today, so it stays secret.
If I was Sen. Edward Kennedy, I'd find this game less tasteless compared to a lack of answers and justice.
Of course, if I saw the game sold in a store, I'd reconsider ever purchasing from them again. Thourougly tasteless and disrepectful, regardless of whatever you might happen to think of JFK.
Si tacuisses philosophus mansisses. If you had kept quiet, you would have remained a philosopher.
1) Tens of millions of people were killed in WWII. The sheer number of deaths depersonalizes the victims. (Unfair as that may be)
Arguably, a game that desensitizes participants to the slaughter of thousands of faceless combatants is worse from a moral perspective than one that targets a particular individual. In any case, I have seen games that focus on individuals -- Hitler, for example. And again, the Kennedy assassination is an important piece of history -- I think it would be different with say a game that focused on the murder of Joe Blow from Indiana or whatever.
Time, WWII was two generations ago, the Kennedy murder was one.
I see the point, but who decides when enough time has passed? There are WWII vets alive today who are probably offended by WWII games. Besides, what about games that depict (and even celebrate) the slaughter of vaguely defined swarthy terrorist-types from the middle east? We have wars going on right now that some games portray (with varying degrees of specificity). I think the real difference is that American culture recognizes one as an "enemy" and it's ok to slaughter enemies.
3) Morality. All but the strongest pacificts would agree that killing another armed man in war is one thing and murdering an unarmed civilian is another.
Political assassination, however, is a third case. I think you're right that we shouldn't see games reenacting the gas chambers or Columbine or whatever, but I'm not so sure about an event that involves heads of state (especially when the past 40 years of popular culture have been obsessed with the details of this particular head of state's assassination).
I don't see that being a 'historical event' is much of a mitigating factor.
The problem is actually that you do see being a "video game" as a mitigating factor in the other direction. The fact that this is a historical event is important for the same reason that it is OK to write a biography exposing the sexual escapades of a President while it is not OK to write one exposing those of your next door neighbor. As a public official, his death is a matter of public interest and insofar as there has been intense public speculation about the circumstances of it, well, this is just another form of expression for that speculation. I agree with many that this is in poor taste, but I don't think it's beyond the pale, at least no more so than a documentary about the Kennedy assassination.
So was 9/11, and I think most people would be quite offended if someone were to make a 'hit the twin towers flight simulator'-type game out of it.
They already did -- some company called Microsoft made it - in 2000. As far as a post-911 game like that being offensive -- I think the bigger problem for many people would be the game's use as a training tool. There is no way this game could be used to train for assassination unless you're planning something in Dealy Plaza. But I don't think there would be as much objection to a post-911 game that simulated the collapse of the WTC or the Pentagon in order to cast doubt on the official story -- some sort of physics simulation of the buildings coming down or the Pentagon collapsing that implies that there is no plane or whatever. That's a more apt analogy.
Such a simulation would be too "serious" though; I think the real problem people have with this is that it is billed as "entertainment" rather than "education" or "advocacy," but we've got to recognize that many things are both.
Oswald was such a notoriously bad shot that his coworkers (when he worked at a factory in Russia) would shoot something for him on hunts, so he wouldn't look bad to his girlfriend.
This is a commonly repeated falsehood. Oswald was rated "Sharpshooter" in the Marines. He was able to place repeated shots in a small target at 200 yards, rather more than the 60 yards beteween him and Kennedy.
"An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it." Col. Jeff Cooper
I don't think it's supposed to be fun. It's supposed to be educational. BTW, I wrote a JE a while back with this very idea: Prior Art.
That's nothing. Back in the 80's a buddy and me wrote a game based on the Kennedy assassination for the Commodore 64.
It was kinda cool. It played a cheesy version of "Hail to the Chief" while you shot at the president. If you remember the kind of sounds that came out of a Commodore, you know what I mean.
Naturaly, not everybody thought it was as funny as we did. My girlfriend came home from work, took a look at our game and the collection of beer bottles around the apartment, and made a face like she'd bit into a lemon. She asked us, "Don't you two shingle-heads have anything better to do?"
I gave a copy of it to friend to take to work with him at the water department. He showed it to some old man who worked there. I understand the old geezer flipped out, and threatened to call the FBI on us.
We uploaded it up to some bulletin board, and promptly got banned after some of the other customers complained.
I guess we should have stuck with it, since it looks like there's a buck to made.
But we didn't exactly get a lot of encouragement at the time. Didn't look very promising. I wonder if there's still a copy of our version floating around on the net some where?