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Cuban Video Game Recreates Revolutionary History
Hugh Pickens writes writes "The Guardian reports that Cuban programmers have unveiled a new 3D video game that puts a revolutionary twist on gaming, letting players recreate decisive clashes from the 1959 uprising in which many of their grandparents fought. 'The player identifies with the history of Cuba,' says Haylin Corujo, head of video game studies for Cuba's Youth Computing Club and leader of the team of developers who created Gesta Final – roughly translated as 'Final Heroic Deed'. 'You can be a participant in the battles that were fought in the war from '56 to '59.' The game begins with the user joining the 82 rebels who in 1956 sailed to Cuba from Mexico aboard the Granma. Players then fight their way through swamps shoulder-to-shoulder with bearded guerrillas clad in the olive green of Fidel Castro and Ernesto 'Che' Guevara to topple 1950s Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. The game lets you pick from three player profiles, one in an olive hat similar to the one Fidel Castro was known for, another wearing a Guevara-style beret and the last with the kind of helmet worn by the ill-fated Camilo Cienfuegos in many revolution-era photographs. Rene Vargas, a 29-year-old gamer who tried his hand at 'Gesta Final' when it was presented at a technology fair in Havana last week, says the graphics were surprisingly sophisticated. 'Bearing in mind the level of technical support there is in Cuba, it looks pretty good,' says Vargas. There are about 783,000 computers in this country of some 11 million inhabitants, according to government statistics from 2011. Private ownership of computers is low, but many Cubans access them at work, school or cyber cafes. 'We developed (it) keeping in mind the purchasing power and reality of Cubans,' says Corujo. 'It doesn't require incredible technological features.'"
Look you may not know this, but the Batista government was the bad guy, and was a puppet government propped up by the US after the Spanish American war...you know the one US started so they could get take huge chunks of spanish territory. Before those 82 rebels started their revolution Cuba had the following problems:
75% of rural dwellings were huts made from palm trees.
More than 50% had no toilets of any kind.
85% had no inside running water.
91% had no electricity.
There was only 1 doctor per 2,000 people in rural areas.
More than one-third of the rural population had intestinal parasites.
Only 4% of Cuban peasants ate meat regularly; only 1% ate fish, less than 2% eggs, 3% bread, 11% milk; none ate green vegetables.
The average annual income among peasants was $91 (1956), less than 1/3 of the national income per person.
45% of the rural population was illiterate; 44% had never attended a school.
Now they have a better Literacy, infant mortality and healthcare than the US. I would call that a pretty heroic tale.