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Columbine Shooter Video Game Sparks Controversy

Columbine Shooter Video Game Sparks Controversy

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The video game industry has made national headlines again for a new free downloadable game called Super Columbine Massacre RPG.

To refresh your memory, the Columbine Massacre was the tragic school shooting where Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed twelve of their classmates and a teacher at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado before turning the guns on themselves and committing suicide.

Super Columbine Massacre RPG puts players into the feet of Klebold and Harris on the fateful day that the Columbine shooting occurred.

The game was posted on a website on April 20 of last year, the sixth anniversary of the shooting. Yet, the game didn’t receive media attention until recently. The graphics of the game are similar to the graphics seen on NES games circa 1990.

The creator of the game agreed to an online interview with the Rocky Mountain News. In his interview, he stated that he created the game to “promote a real dialogue on the subject of school shootings.”

“Columbine marked me deeply,” he wrote. “I was in a Colorado high school then. I was a bullied kid. I didn’t fit in, and I was surrounded by a culture of elitism as espoused by our school’s athletes.”

Columbin, the name the creator of the game goes by, estimates that the game took 200-300 hours to make. Over 10,000 people have downloaded the game so far.

The game opens with the statement, “Welcome to Super Columbine Massacre RPG! You play as Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold on that fateful day in the Denver suburb of Littleton. How many people you kill is ultimately up to you.”

The player is cast as Harris for the game. He must plant bombs in the school cafeteria and then meet Klebold on a hill outside the school where the two proceed to attack students inside Columbine.

Players have the option to play on “auto mode” where the game chooses the weapon or “manual mode” where the player can choose to use a gun or a bomb. Every time someone is killed, a dialogue box appears that reads, “Another victory for the Trench Coat Mafia.”

After Klebold and Harris spot the police outside the school, the two kill themselves. After they die, the game presents a photo montage of the dead shooters and images of students running, crying, and consoling one another from footage taken from newspaper and television coverage.

When the game starts back up, it shows the two shooters in hell fighting off demons that look similar to the enemies in Doom. Klebold and Harris then find Friedrich Nietzsche and give him a copy of his posthumously published book Ecce Homo. The game ends with a news conference held outside the school.

The game uses a mix of statements from Harris’ writings as well as documents and photos from newspaper and television coverage to try and explain what led the two to attack their school.

Of course, outrage has stirred because of the content of the game. The Rocky Mountain News interviewed the parents of several of the students who were killed that day.

“It’s wrong,” commented Joe Kechter, whose son was murdered in the Columbine library.

“We live in a culture of death,” lamented Brian Rohrbough, whose son was killed on a sidewalk outside the school.

We will keep you posted if more news emerges on this story.

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