If Presidential Candidates Were Old School Video Games

February 13, 2008
Game With a Brain has a bit of fun picking old school vido games to suit its view of the top four presidential candidates. Barack Obama is Final Fantasy VII, the site says:
...[FFVII's] slick graphics and presentation have led many to accuse it of being more style than substance. In fact, while Final Fantasy VII is often cited as one of the best games ever made, you are likely to find just as many who decry it as the most over hyped ever.

Meanwhile, Democratic rival Hillary Clinton equates to Donkey Kong Country 3, according to Game With a Brain:
The Donkey Kong Country series of games were huge blockbusters... many viewed them as the best games ever... Still, as the series progressed gamers grew weary of the titles... By the third title’s release gamers were seeking change...

On the Republican side, GWAB's selection of Bible Adventures for Mike Huckabee seems almost too obvious, given that the candidate is a minister. Still, it's clear that GWAB has old-school gaming sensibilities:
Huckabee, like Bible Adventures publisher Wisdom Tree, is a fighter. Wisdom Tree was one of those rare companies to release unlicensed titles for the original NES... The actual game may not impress you much upon first play, but there is a certain fun, winning charm to its weirdness...

Republican front runner John McCain? He's Desert Bus:
...Desert Bus tasked you with driving a bus from Tucson, Arizona to Las Vegas, Nevada in eight hours of real time. The game could not be paused, and the bus occasionally would veer to the right. So, like the Arizona senator you set out on a grueling long journey (to your party’s nomination) and occasionally veer off to the right (frightening potential independent voters). Uncanny.

Comments

guidance*

Over half ot them are ET for the Atari 2600, easy enough

Godwin!

Huh. This one is harder to do than the console one.

So, the republican party is comprised of games no one ever heard of? Ok. But McCain vearing off to the *right*?! This guy can't be serious. He's conservative on matters of foreign policy and the military, but that's it. He's scaring *conservative republicans*, many of whom are planning not to vote this year, not independents.

What no love for Ron Paul???

Why is everyone ignoring this superb candidate???

/Ron Paul Lemming rant.

Very funny list. Never would have made these comparisons.

I think Game With a Brain could have done a little better. I'd try myself but I haven't slept yet. Oh and before I go pass out, 9 straight for Obama !

Eat that Hillary...

"Meanwhile, Democratic rival Hillary Clinton equates to Donkey Kong Country 3, according to Game With a Brain:

The Donkey Kong Country series of games were huge blockbusters… many viewed them as the best games ever… Still, as the series progressed gamers grew weary of the titles… By the third title’s release gamers were seeking change…"

Don't worry. At worst, she can only serve 2 terms. :P

:)

:: Personally wishing for a cancelled title to begin with. ::

Nightwng2000
NW2K Software
Nightwng2000 NW2K Software http://www.facebook.com/nightwing2000 Nightwng2000 is now admin to the group "Parents For Education, Not Legislation" on MySpace as http://groups.myspace.com/pfenl

Ron Paul would be Final Fantasy X-2. While it was a good game with sound mechanics, people would still prefer to ignore it and pretend it never happened.

@ T5

If you think of it that way, I would have to go with Final Fantasy Mystic Quest.

It tried so hard to be a part of the Final Fantasy franchise, but no fan would give it the time of day, because it sucked.

I loved that line about "veering to the right" for McCain.

Obama as FFVII = Overrated, overhyped, and the only guy those morons on Gamefaqs would vote for
Clinton as DKC3 = I'd pick the GBA version. Completely screwed up and not as good as the original, plus overshadowed by something bigger.

So umm.....is he just some blogger or considered an actual reporter, b/c his basis shows pretty strongly. I guess we all know who he is voting for.

@E. Zachary Knight

Not a bad choice at all, but Ron Paul doesn't suck, unless you mean Final Fantasy as the Republican Party, in which case Ron Paul does suck at being part of this new party, but a fine example of old school like Mystic Quest

Obama as FFVII..

Damn it, now I keep imagining him as some shirtless dude with a vest, and a gatling gun for a right arm.

@Twin-Skies

Better than imagining him as a long haired chick in short shorts and a rather skimpy top. And apologies for being crude, but that would also give him a rather large chest, which would be very, very confusing to many males. And probably a lot of females too.

@Davian2K5

Better him the Hillary.

Referring to Donkey Kong:
Wow, that's a lot of indirect praise for one of the most scandalous Presidents in the history of our country.

Pardon the double-post.

That's:

"Better him than Hillary."

I would say Ron Paul is like Zork. It appealed to only a select subset of people, there really weren't any rules or too much guidane on what to do or where to go in the game, and if you followed it around blindly, you got eaten by a grue.

@Twin-Skies

Thanks, you just made my brain try to climb out through my ears for the inadvertent mental image. :-P

@ Weighted Companion Cube

The polling place is upstairs. It appears the light is turned off upstairs, and it is nearly pitch black. What do you do? > Climb stairs.

You cannot see the booths to place your vote. It is pitch black and you are likely to be eaten by a grue. What do you do? > Try to find booth.

Fill in the finish as you wish :-P

Obama is more like Super Smash Bros

They are all more like cheap, poorly coded copycat versions of pong that cause GPF's in Win95 if you ask me.

The first thing that comes to mind is that somebody should do a mock-up of Obama as Sephiroth and Clinton as Aeris. Phoenix Down won't save your campaign now, Hilary!

Also, Ron Paul is clearly EarthBound: they're both loved by cultists.
---
Fangamer

Earthbound is awesome though, hmmm...

Obama wishes he was FFVII but he's more like a hundred games that are all style (or just pretty graphics) and no substance. If Hilary was a game she's be a buggy unplayable mess. McCain and Huckabee would be boring and tedious.

SIIIIGH, I guess I'm voting "None of the above" this year...

Guess no extremist right-wingers read this site. On most webpages you'd have to gotten at least 3 "NOOOO McCain is really a scary leftist demon!" comments by now. Apparently he's a staunch liberal, and Obama/Clinton are Lenin. Or something.

Still hoping that Bloomberg changes his mind and throws his hat into the ring...

Wow, so this isn't really a fair shake for McCain.

I hate the man, true, but he's not that boring. Hell, I don't see how Hitlery is Donkey Kong anything, when it comes dow to it.

@ WCC:

http://xkcd.com/261/

Only 20-some odd replies to Godwin's Law the convo. Is that a win, or a lose? :-P

Yeah, I love xkcd. I guess the probability that this was coming closer to 1 happened pretty quickly this time, eh?

Apparently so, although given the fact that I've seen that nickname for Hillary before - repeatedly - we were probably dealing with influenced statistics.

Hrmmm... I wonder if we could make use of a giant elliptical dish for dealing with politicians....

I think I'd have to equate Hillary with Wii Sports:

Women love it, but it's bad for the industry (country) in the long run.

See, this kind of comparison makes my descision (as if I hadn't already made it) a lot easier.

I'm the guy who has the victory music from FFVII as my cell phone ringtone.

[...] If Presidential Candidates Were Old School Video Games February 13th, 2008 Game With a Brain

So, whuch candidate would be Lemmings?

Now that I think about Ron Paul would be Lair. Technically superior, the previews look great, far and away a good looking choice on paper... but horrible in practice, critically lambasted, but with a very few extremely vocal supporters.

Since when is FFVII old-school?

Hillary and McCain would be "King of Fighters" .

Mogbert you will see at the upcoming march how many people support Ron Paul. There are more than you have been led to believe.

@E. Zachary Knight
The reason they don't include Ron Paul is because he doesn't stand a chance... there's really no point in talking about a candidate that has no hope of winning at this point

Yes a couple of months ago it would be/was unfair for him to be ignored, cause back then anybody could have become a surprise frontrunner if given their fair share of time and good campaigning; like how Huckabee went from the near bottom of the list to hop up to the top 3 (top 2 by default of Romney dropping out)

But now, we are halfway through the primaries and it is clear that he has no hope for getting the republican nomination and really no hope of getting into the whitehouse even if he ran under a third party... he might make a fairly impressive stand compared to previous third party, but in the end he doesn't have the chance... only way a third party candidate would stand a chance is if they were like Liberman; in that they only barely lost the nomination for their party, but were popular enough between citizen's of both parties that they could win despite not having the former party's nomination

@ Monte

I was kidding about the no love for Ron Paul thing.

I still stand by my Ron Paul = Final Fantasy Mystic Quest.

A sub par game that only few people could love, only because they have no idea what Final Fantasy is supposed to be.

It wants to be a part of something bigger, but the franchise has disavowed its existence.

Hehehhe! Good article with a unique spin.

Jack Thompson would be Pong.

Nah, Jack would be Custer's Revenge -- best forgotten by the world.

Wow and look so unbiased too. So from a non rep = evil dem = good view point.

Obama: Tony Hawk (original). Plays on youthful and different image. Plays well but there are those annoying bugs.
Hillary: Dikatana or Lair. Hyped, Hyped, get it home and suddenly not so great
Mcain: Everquest 2 play either side, shiney, talks about war alot.
Huckabee: actually super bible adventure and its creator are a pretty good analogy scrappy and God fearing
Paul: Mighty final fight. small man in a big fight and alot of people don't remember it.

[...] Original post by GamePolitics Related Articles Fatal error: Call to undefined function: related_posts() in /home/gamerblast/domains/gamerblast.com/public_html/wp-content/themes/SlickAdsense/single.php on line 26 [...]
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ConsterTPB works fine for me (didn't work the day of the verdict). Apparently they switched IP addresses, meaning Brein has to re-sue to have that added to the block-this list?05/22/2012 - 8:16pm
ZippyDSMleesigh...was playing anice game of empire at war and then boom crash...hope new oparts come soon ><05/22/2012 - 1:17pm
Andrew EisenI still say the particular word or phrase the MPAA uses to describe what it's fighting against is the least of its problems.05/22/2012 - 1:12pm
ZippyDSMleeMPAA finally admits piracy is not the same as stealing, kinda http://tinyurl.com/chtcf8p05/22/2012 - 11:55am
ddrfr33k@EZK Bwahahaha! @Michael: Yeah, several news sources have said that google DNS can bypass the TPB roadblocks.05/22/2012 - 11:38am
Michael ChandraWeird, I can still visit piratebay. Wonder if Google DNS is related to that, or I simply have an exotic ISP?05/22/2012 - 9:03am
Lisa PhamNo harm done, E. Zachary Knight. :)05/22/2012 - 4:50am
Uncharted NESBSA Claims Half of PC Users Are Pirates- http://slashdot.org/palm/17/12/05/22/0051216_1.shtml05/21/2012 - 11:18pm
E. Zachary KnightAh. Missed that. My mind just connected DDR3 with ddrfr33k and ran with it. Oh well.05/21/2012 - 10:12pm
Lisa PhamHe also mentioned the game "Shadows of the damned" which is on PS305/21/2012 - 8:08pm
E. Zachary Knightddrf33k, I think Zip is referring to computer hardware.05/21/2012 - 7:33pm
ddrfr33k@Zip: Excellent game. It's a trip.05/21/2012 - 7:09pm
Lisa PhamIanC - if you read/looked at the report (PDF and written) then you'd see where they failed and why. Some games have come close to passing and some have passed. The list of games evaluated. http://www.reclaimyourgame.com/content.php/18-RYG-Evaluations05/21/2012 - 5:49pm
Andrew EisenMaybe I'll luck out and the Wii version won't have this retail exclusive DLC nonsense.05/21/2012 - 5:12pm
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E. Zachary KnightYeah, that's how I feel about retail exclusive DLC too. ;)05/21/2012 - 3:37pm
RedMageThat's what I started to figure too. They seem to have trouble coming up with an effective scare tactic. At one point they referred to it as "online looting" which just sounds stupid.05/21/2012 - 3:34pm
E. Zachary KnightOf all the sucky suckiness that ever sucked. Lego Batman 2 will suffer from sucky retailer exclusive DLC. Suck! http://tinyurl.com/ckq67vg05/21/2012 - 3:30pm
E. Zachary KnightAs for Dodd, I think it is mostly that he realizes that calling copyright infringement "theft" is bad for PR and that they need to change tactics. Just like how they went from using "piracy" to using "theft."05/21/2012 - 1:48pm
E. Zachary KnightIan, I think in this case, the rating is well deserved. To get a good rating, I would assume that a company would have to release the game with no DRM, or at least fully disclosed DRM.05/21/2012 - 1:46pm

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