I want to look at a very precise kind of texture, the human-readable comments that appear in the code in one of the two WAD files that comprise JFK Reloaded‘s game assets. In other words, the game emerges out of a specific time and place, textured by the touch of countless hands. But it is also a historical artifact itself. The game is indeed part of a documentary tradition, or to be more precise, an engagement with documentary evidence and historical archives, as Poremba suggests. Today I want to double back on my and these other videogame scholars’ interpretations of JFK Reloaded. JFK Reloaded doesn’t ask us to play history so much as to reimagine history. For my own part, I argued that the game’s greatest strength was not as a documentary videogame, but as an engine of counterfactual historical thinking. Even though the Kennedy family called the game “despicable,” many scholars argued that JFK Reloaded was a legitimate engagement with history (see Raessens, 2006 Bogost, 2007 Fullerton, 2008 and Bogost et al., 2010). The game lets players reenact the Kennedy assassination, the goal being to match the findings of the Warren Commission Report with as much accuracy as possible. Preserved on this site for historical value as 'abandonware' - proceed at your own risk.In my previous post on Play the Past, I looked at the way critics and scholars made sense of the videogame JFK: Reloaded (Traffic, 2004). The 'educational value' of the game, in my opinion, is questionable, but it does try to do more than simply shock and titillate. For conspirary buffs, though, it is an interesting 'tool' that tries to prove the feasibility of the 'magic bullet' theory, and therefore they are probably the only ones who will have 'fun' with this game that we can all do without. And no matter how you try to cloak it, the game's moral dimension still looms large and has a real impact I am not American, yet I still felt my heart skip a beat when looking through the rifle scope in the game, seeing JFK's face squarely in the crosshairs. After the event, you get a ballistics reports that tell you how your bullets traveled, and how closely they match Oswald's shots.Īs a game, JFK Reloaded falls short mostly because its objective and context are far too narrow: your only objective is to recreate that tragedy. The graphics, while not state-of-the-art, is more than adequate: all passengers of the fateful limo, from JFK to his wife, driver and everyone else, are recognizable. You can replay as many times as you want.Īs a simulation, JFK Reloaded is quite good: no matter how I shoot, I see bullets behave in ways that one would expect: smashing glasses, bouncing off the limo, etc. The perfect score of 1,000 is awarded if you can replicate the three bullets' trajectories perfectly. The 'official goal' of JFK Reloaded according to Traffic is ".to debunk assassination conspiracy theories by buttressing the Warren Commission's conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone and fired only three bullets." Accordingly, the game places you in the exact spot that Oswald stood, and offers you the chance to re-create his three shots (the last of which was the one that caused "the fatal wound"). ![]() While I do find the game morally questionable, the designers deserve credits for shying away from focusing on pure "shock value" (which would be extremely easy to do, given the circumstances) - focusing instead on the physics behind the vent. ![]() ![]() Anyone who finds such games offensive is advised to stop reading now. Let me say here first that I *was* concerned about whether this 40-year-old event is still 'fresh enough' in the minds of Americans for them to find the game offensive - that's why I asked people's opinions about whether they think it's a good idea to upload the full version before doing so. Perhaps due to intense backlash, the game was removed from circulation in 2005, and the $9.99 shareware game is no longer sold or supported. Released on the 41st anniversary of the assassination in 2004, the game not surprisingly provoked a huge public backlash ranging from Ted Kennedy (who called it "despicable") to scores of media criticisms. No doubt one of the most controversial games ever made, JFK Reloaded is a shareware game made by a Scottish company called Traffic Management that lets you recreate the assassination of President John F.
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