Refugee Mario

So when I was a young, callous person, I designed a board game called The An Loc Survival Game.

An Loc, for the young folks among you, was a town in Vietnam that was the centerpiece of a 66-day battle of mutual annihilation between North and South Vietnamese forces, the latter assisted by insane amounts of American air power, including at one point a B-52 strike flattening whole acres of ground every 55 minutes.

It was bad enough being a soldier in this fight, but being a civilian was far worse, because both sides were shooting at you as well as stealing your food and chucking your wounded children out of the hospital to make room for wounded soldiers.

So in my stupid, callous game, players were civilians who had to march around the board to the roll of dice, and try not to get killed, landing on squares that said things like, “You step on a mine and lose a leg!  Your movement is cut in half for the rest of the game.”

I suppose I thought this was satire.  Maybe it even was.  I think it accurately reflected the bleak mud-colored lenses through which I then viewed the world.

Anyway, the Syrian refugee “Samir al-Mufti,” who uses a  pseudonym so that he won’t get jailed or killed, has updated my concept with the Refugee Mario game, which adds contemporary content to the Super Mario video games.  In the game, Refugee Mario has to deal with corrupt smugglers in order to get across the Mediterranean, stay out of the hands of the border cops, then make his way to safety somewhere in Europe.  And he also stands a good chance of being drowned, blown up, or murdered on his journey.

It isn’t satire, because it’s too true for that.  It’s reality with some bright, splashy 16-bit colors and some catchy music.

(And by the way, I wish news reports would stop referring to these people as “migrants.”  They’re not migrating, they’re not moving to Europe so that they can have good jobs and health care, they’re fleeing because if they stayed they’d be killed, and their children would be raped and beheaded.  So let’s get the terminology straight, guys.  A little honesty is always appreciated.)