Sun, Jan 27, 2002 page24

• Cashing in on catastrophe

  While rescuers sprang into action following the events of Sept.11, so did Taiwan's enterprising computer game manufacturers

  • By Max Woodworth / STAFF REPORTER
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  For all the CIA knows, Osama bin Laden may be sipping cocktails in Tahiti. But in the virtual world of cyberspace, he's nowhere but in your crosshairs, thanks to some enterprising software programmers.

  On Sept. 12, the managers of INSREA, a Taiwanese game software firm, convened a hasty meeting at their downtown Taipei office to discuss how to make the events of the previous day into a gripping video game.

  

  INSREA's Final Battle Afghanistan X-Tank pits you against the world's most wanted man for the low price of NT$38 - and online charges.

  PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES

  They decided to include an Afghanistan-looking desert map in the Korean-made online computer game X-Tank, which INSREA distributes in Taiwan, Hong Kong and China. The end product is Final Battle Afghanistan X-Tank, the game packaged with the black-and-white mug of bin Laden which is available for NT$38 at 7-11s and software stores around the country.

  "We're the first company to make software for a game specifically themed on the conflict in Afghanistan," said Hu Long-yun (胡龍雲), marketing director at INSREA.

  In fact, INSREA is the first company to create a game themed on the Sept. 11 attacks for the open market. Basic Sept. 11-themed games were available online within days of the attacks. But, unlike X-Tank, these early games were mostly non-commercial knock-offs of old well-known games like Asteroids or Centipede with George W. Bush and bin Laden pasted onto the game's protagonist and antagonist characters.

  X-Tank has 12 different maps, with settings that include a cluttered desk, a chessboard, a computer's circuit board, the Champs Elysees, and now in the Final Battle Afghanistan version, an entire map modeled after Afghan battlefields. The company had drawn up plans to include a map of Iraq, but because the US had not gone after Saddam Hussein when the game went to press, the Iraq levels were shelved.

  In the game, players rush around the maps commanding various shapes and colors of tanks and blow each other up.

  Only half jokingly, Hu said, "We wish bin Laden would contact us so we could give him a copy of the game." It's unlikely, however, that bin Laden would get a rush out of Final Battle Afghanistan. The graphics are dull, the action sleep-inducing and the Afghan map unconvincing. But the game does have novelty value as the first, visibly rushed, software product based on Sept. 11.

  Another commercially produced game themed on the Sept. 11 attacks is the 1980s-style hand-held Laden vs USA. This game, even more than X-Tank, can only be appreciated for its novelty value and the eerie packaging featuring the imploding Twin Towers.

  Laden vs USA is a monumentally boring game, but its value as pure kitsch may be a turn-on for collectors of such items.

  The game's soundtrack is an attempt at a Middle Eastern melody, but the sound is so high-pitched and grating it's almost impossible to listen beyond five notes. Adding a touch of surrealism, Deck the Halls or London Bridge plays when you win a round.

  The game has two versions, one that pits bin Laden against Bush in a boxing match and a version in which a submarine shoots down fighter jets screaming around the tiny screen.

  Both versions require some imagination on the part of the player. The bin Laden and Bush characters look nothing like their real-life likenesses in the boxing one and the submarine in the second version is hilariously out of place in the context of Afghanistan, which the manufacturers apparently forgot is a landlocked country. Made by Panyu Gaoming Electronic of Guangzhou, China, Laden vs USA is now out of production for reasons that a company spokeswoman refused to clarify. She also declined to answer what the submarine is doing in Afghanistan and whether the player in the boxing version controls bin Laden or Bush.

  But then, if the details were all correct, Laden vs USA and X-Tank would lose a lot of their kitsch value and would just be bad games.
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