when you think about video games, reducing the form to the most simple level, it will be an experience where you press a button and things happen on screen: it's the so-called interactivity. when you think about buttons, the most important one, the one that is buried deep into your mind, next to some pop music from the 2000s that you listened to a lot as a kid but don’t remember the name and don’t want to (the magic will be gone!) is the “action button”, the button where your character or the game cursor or whatever is the representation of your actions in that world, does the most iconic mechanical thing he can do. you jump with “A” on super mario bros., is also the button which you select things on menu. is the most important button on that game -- not because the others doesn’t matter, you need to walk and run, but because is the button that defines the most important thing about super mario: mario jumps, we like mario because he jumps, we like mario because it feels good seeing him jumping with all his inertia through an alice in wonderland-like level, falling into the head of a apparently-innocent-goomba. perhaps we like mario because he kills? i don’t know, and it doesn’t matter either!

in killer7, your “action button” -- A, on the gamecube -- is the button which you walk and shoot. run and gun. movements and kills. the 2005 goichi suda’s masterpiece is a “on-rails” videogame -- not exactly what you expect from it, since you do move the character on this game, but your exploration is limited to where the game allows you to be, with options to go to corners and rooms popping up on screen and you, of course, selecting where you want to go with the action button. yes, you do utilize the other buttons a lot as well: there’s the R button, where you change the perspective of your character to first person in order to kill enemies, but not before you press the L button to scan them. you choose the place you want to shoot movementing the control stick, that is also used to choose things in the game in general. but still, the most important button is the one that you use to do what an assassin should do: localize yourself in a field and kill enemies. the game is so focused in letting you feel the viscerality of being an assassin and fighting biological terrorist weapons (heaven smiles) that don’t let you go to places you don’t have to, you just need to concentrate, to don’t let your guard down, doing what the game wants you to do. doing what the government wants you to do.

the group “killer7” is a group of assassins (or better, a multi-personality-body-something) leadered by harman smith, ordered to do the “dirty job” to the usa government under the covers, in a age where, until the heaven smiles appeared, world peace has been achieved. of course there is some questions about the validity of the usa, as well as a whole west vs east fight. the thing is: the usa, the country, can explode japan or any other country with, guess what, an “action button”. is a country to have fear of, if you think well, they have nuclear weapons, they have the most powerful marine, they are the most powerful country. and with a simple button they can explode a whole other one. politics are just like videogames: you have a lot of mechanics and tools, but there’s one, acessible with a simple button, that is the most important of all of them and, oh boy, can do a lot of damage.

the “action button” is also the button where you press the trigger of the gun. to what? to kill the enemy. what is the enemy? the past. killer7 is a videogame where the past always haunts you -- the ones you killed appear as “remnant psyches”, giving you advice or thanking you for killing them: they are no longer stuck in the past, they are free to move forward. even in politics, if you don’t kill the past, you will probably turn into a fascist. so what are you waiting for? kill the past, jump over the age, they say. press the “action button” to begin the game. press the “action button” to move. press the “action button” to shoot. press the “action button” to kill. kill the heaven smiles. give me blood! blood thirsty. oh no dan is dead, press the “action button” to revive him - give it life! press the “action button” to kill. kill the past.