On the eve of the 41st anniversary of John F Kennedy's murder, a dramatic new 'docu-game' is set to bring his tragic assassination by Lee Harvey Oswald to life for a whole new generation. The game, produced by Scotland's Traffic Games, has been criticized by the family of former US president John F Kennedy, for being insensitive. The game asks you to take Lee Harvey Oswald's place at the book depository and rewards players for getting their shots as close as possible to those fired by the assassin.
JFK Reloaded recreates the last few moments of the President's life and challenges participants to help disprove any conspiracy theory by recreating the three shots that Lee Harvey Oswald made from the infamous sixth floor of the Dallas book depository.
The 'docu-game' accurately recreates the surroundings and events of 22nd November 1963 in downtown Dallas, using information from the Warren Commission report, and has taken a ten-man team seven months to research and six months to program. Painstakingly detailed, the reconstruction enables players to examine the challenges that faced Oswald.
Crucially, it shows how so many conspiracy theories have emerged surrounding the incident, given the difficulty of the task.
This new form of interactive entertainment brings history to life and will stimulate a younger generation of players to take an interest in this fascinating episode of American history, commented Kirk Ewing, managing director of Traffic and the creator of JFKReloaded.com. We've created the game in the belief that Oswald was the only person that fired the shots on that day, although this recreation proves how immensely difficult his task was.
Although they are based in Glasgow, Scotland, Traffic is aware of the passion in the US surrounding the death of one of America's greatest heroes and is determined to promote the title respectfully whilst encouraging as many people to play the game as possible.
Downloaded from the the game website, link available by following the download tab above, for USD 9.99 (approx GBP 6), players are invited to participate in a global recreation of the assassination in order to disprove the conspiracy theorists once and for all. Traffic has offered an incentive of up to USD 100,000 for the first person to most accurately recreate the three shots made by Lee Harvey Oswald.
We genuinely believe that if we get enough people playing the game we'll be able to disprove once and for all any notion that someone else was involved in the assassination. The computer ballistics model says it's possible, but players will discover just how hard it is to place those three bullets in exactly the same way that Oswald did.
Editors note: JFKReloaded is a downloadable game only available from the website from midnight on the 22nd November 2004 and will for 3 months thereafter.
