Context matters. If Michael Meyers died with a single shot to the head after five minutes of screentime in the first Halloween , you'd probably write his death off as lackluster. It's the contemplation of what the ramifications of such an action would be after twelve movies where he was the villain that makes such an idea cathartic; "stay dead, asshole." Within the medium of cinema, context is somewhat straightforward. If the filmmaker wants to bend it into whatever shape they desire, that isn't a decision the audience is in on.

Video games like The Sims beg a certain type of question: what exactly happens when the audience is in control? The answer is a million stories per day about shady business ventures, fathers locked in rooms with fires, and Duke Nukem operating outside his zone of comfort. The deliberately flexible framework allows for a preposterous deluge of absurd scenarios to botched degrees that rarely fail to entertain. Calling The Sims a dollhouse is reductionist. Most dollhouses don't contain half the chaos that a single story can produce.

This is only what happens outside of the black box the developers have created for you. Once you catch a glimpse of what's in that black box, all hell breaks loose. The reason being able to fly with Blink by spamming it in Dishonored makes me laugh isn't because it's funny for traditional reasons. The developers never intended for you to have such power, as it would break the balance of the game instantly, thus they never considered what would happen if a player was able to do it. The result is stages that resemble some of Bethesda's greatest work in style but play more like Neon White in function, and it's adorable. Bethesda's greatest works, which can also be exploited in really funny ways, too. The Fat Man only has twelve Mini-Nukes for it scattered across 8.5k Square Miles of land in Fallout: New Vegas , but the second you hit the tilde key, that doesn't matter. Run faster, jump higher; Benny never knew what hit him and neither do I. I've been asked in the past why exactly I find humor in completely borking the context of the games I'm playing, but I don't believe I need to explain myself because the explanation lies within the footage itself.

Both inside and outside of that box is Shadow President , a presidential simulator made for MS-DOS with earnest intent. Where other games about the Cold War go for all-out action, Shadow President is a more strategic affair that punishes poor decision-making with a heavy hand. It's for this reason that I'd consider it an underdog of the genre in our current climate of Paradox Interactive keeping projects alive by drip-feeding hastily thrown-together expansion packs with aplomb. It's for this reason that it's also one of the funniest games I've ever played.

Ignore how serious this game tries to make your actions seem for a second and it's impossible to take seriously. What starts as a more cold and calculated version of Risk soon devolves into a game where you try to end the Cold War by arming rebels in Canada and trying to overthrow the government of Sweden because you think it's funny. These attempts almost never succeed, but unless you've done something on the level of launching 5,000 nukes at Norway, you can keep trying. The game's solution for getting you to reconsider your actions is a board of advisors you can resort to if you're ever unsure of how a certain action is going to play out in your situation. The game will have these advisors killed or even resign from their positions if you play your hand badly enough, but once "I just nuked Mexico and started a nuclear winter in my own country for shits and giggles" is out of the bag, this hardly comes off as a punishment. Why not nuke China while you're at it, try to invade Russia, or promote human rights in North Korea? The context necessitates that you're playing it seriously with deep consideration for your actions, but outside of it, this may well be the dumbest game I've ever played, and brother, I am here for it.

The beauty of video games is this: had this kind of experience been translated to film, its content outweighing its context would have been a boondoggle for its talented cast and crew. As a game, it can be a total failure and still manage to be one of the most entertaining pieces of entertainment I've borne witness to. Because I'm in charge, I'm making the stupid decisions. And because I'm making those decisions, I can laugh at them without hesitation.

I would love to see a more modern take on this because, as is, I can't get its sequel to work on DOSBox. But as it stands, Shadow President is delightful to look back on.