Guerilla War: a hall-of-shame embarrassment
Jan 30th, 2008 by admin
Submitted by Gaming Briefs and Nostalgia Bits
I think some time should be taken now to make a note on an atrocity of a game that whitewashed the crimes of a monster who was in truth just that: Che Guevara.
I once found an example of Che Guevara whitewashing on this fansite for the old Neo-Geo game system, where the site’s main review editor fawns over Che in an article he wrote, in a review of SNK’s 1988 overhead scroller called Guerrilla War.
When I first saw that video game two decades ago, I’d thought then that it was just a simple good-vs-evil action game with a pair of resistance fighters on a mission to bring down a cruel king in an unnamed South American country. But I hadn’t realized then that the picture in the game captioned “hail the heroes of the revolution!” was an allusion to Guevara. Today, I’m pretty disappointed that the company (SNK) bothered to make it, totally oblivious to the fact that Che was in truth a bloodthirsty hypocrite. But what’s really dreadful is that the fansite would go so far as to fawn over it!
I once had this game fansite on my list of bookmarks, until I found out one day that they’d pulled this stupid whitewash. I promptly took them off. The whole notion that it’s “just a game” doesn’t wash with me. And what, for heaven’s sake, was company head Eikichi Kawasaki thinking when he and his staff greenlighted this game development? Come to think of it, what were even Nintendo thinking when they licensed the stinky game for use on their Famicom console?
Maybe that’s why SNK later made ‘Nam 1975 as an apology for producing such an atrocity as Guerilla War back in 1988. But it still doesn’t excuse how they basically produced a propaganda game that whitewashes what Guevara was really like, and that such a game should never have been made in the first place, and the fact that they downplayed what the version sold in the US featured does not excuse anything.
Since then, I don’t think this has turned up on any console or any archive collection of old games since. If it hasn’t, I’m glad. Guerilla War should be tossed into the depths of oblivion as the insult to the intellect it truly is. Period.
Visit 1800blogger to see all of our industry leading blogs.
