Pop culture franchises have long been used by US president Donald Trump’s two administrations to push his political agenda, and in the latest example of this, the White House has announced a collection of arcade games tied to the Republican’s immigration and healthcare policies, using pastiches of popular video game and console brands to promote them.
The White House announced the games on Thursday, with a series of tweets featuring start-up videos from Xbox, PlayStation 2, Sega and the Nintendo GameCube.
The five games available on the arcade.gov webpage – with a sixth “coming soon” – are a take on Flappy Bird involving a bald eagle flying down the National Mall (“Flappy Bill”); a Tetris-like game where players have to “protect the border from the coming horde” (“Build the Wall”); a Snake-like game where players collect people to deport (“Rio Run”); a game where players have to “sort the school lunch to Make America Healthy Again” (“Supply Line”); and a game where players have to “fill [their] kids’ Trump Accounts” (“Trump Savings Tycoon”).
The latest move from Trump’s White House has since been criticised online, with Wu Tang is for the Children writing: “They literally can’t do a single thing that can actually help Americans in a meaningful way in their everyday lives”:
“Lol not even Sega is legally allowed to use that music,” wrote one, referencing the Sonic music featured in one White House video which was created by composer Masato Nakamura, who owns the copyright:
Polling USA tweeted: “It’s going to be great when Americans get rid of this chud government”:
Former Epic Games vice president of business development, Joe Kreiner, shared the Xbox video and wrote: “Half the Microsoft legal team just spat out their 5pm cocktail”:
Political commentator Brian Krassenstein described the games as “bigoted” and added: “Everything is a game to them”:
And journalist Aaron Parnas noted: “Whoever created this doesn’t realize that in Tetris you don’t actually build a wall, you destroy walls”:
Embarrassing…
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