The White House has just updated its website with a bunch of online arcade games inspired by some of gaming’s greats, but with their own ‘Make America Great Again’ twist.
The five games appeared overnight under a new ‘Arcade’ section on the official White House website. Each wears its inspirations on its sleeve, clearly derived from the likes of Flappy Bird, Tetris, Snake, and more.
However, while these games look innocent on the surface, they have some pretty dark twists.
The description for Built The Wall reads. “Protect the border from the coming horde”, while ‘aliens’ attack the grid of blocks.
Meanwhile, Rio Run is described as ‘Border patrol along the Rio Grande’. Clicking play has you walking around a grid as what appears to be an ICE officer, rounding up characters and putting them in orange prison jumpsuits.
The White House has even parodied several established publishers to promote these games, posting a modified version of the SEGA startup logo that now reads ‘MAGA”. There’s also an Xbox 360 version that points towards the website hosting the games.
Speaking to The Washington Examiner, a White House offiicial said: “This administration is laser focused on ways to innovate and tell the story of the President’s many accomplishments in a way that resonates with every American.
“This is an effort to further contrast between a culture of fun and winning and the dark socialist vision Democrats have for America.”
Safe to say, gamers haven’t taken to these games kindly.
“America isn’t a serious country,” reads one comment on Reddit. Another writes: “WTF is this shittyass shovelware??? everything they do is equally evil and cringe.”
Meanwhile, a third writes: “Wow… amazing use of our tax dollars.”
However, despite Nintendo and SEGA usually being pretty precious about how their IPs are utilised, gamers reckon they won’t bother butting heads with the US governement on this one. “As litigious as Sega and Nintendo are, they won’t touch this with a 10 foot pole when their fanbases would love it for once,” reads a Reddit comment.
As it stands, no platform holders or publishers have made a move against The White House for these parody games.
