Probably the best conversation piece in my collection, which is saying a lot, Terrifying 9/11 is a strange work of heated anti-imperialist schadenfreude gestating a surprisingly competent Metal Slug port for Game Boy Color that outdoes its Neo-Geo Pocket Color siblings in terms of faithfulness to the original game
Some speculate, based solely off the game's remarkable adherence to its source material, that this may have been an official port from Takara (who made numerous SNK ports for GBC) that got canceled, and I can definitely see that
The dialogue is incredibly tone-deaf, especially because this came out in 2002, but it's precisely its status as a cursed artifact that makes it interesting
It's the kind of thing that feels like it should only exist as deliberate satire, like somebody made a video game out of an article from The Onion, but yet this game bafflingly occupies the status of being naïve camp, and not deliberate
It's a weird sight as an American who lived through its cultural shockwaves in the haziest fog of early memory, who knows people who were personally impacted by this tragedy, to imagine the people who created this in 2002, a room full of people so far removed from the national trauma that shaped multiple generations that they found it fit to use our seismic cataclysm as gag gift wrapping for a (probably) laundered incomplete prototype game?
Who can forget Osama bin Laden himself telling GWB "I DIDN'T DO THE ATTACKS. NO EVIDENCE."? and then having that juxtaposed with a shockingly faithful rendition of one of the best run-n-gun games ever made, on a platform where it shouldn't exist, on top of knowing that this isn't some rom hack or another form of satire but rather a real commercial product somebody found fit to sell on store shelves?
Don't mean to be disrespectful towards people who were impacted by 9/11, rather, I think this game's existence makes some sort of point on just how quickly 9/11 entered a purgatorial state of existing as a cultural unreality. 9/11 became realer than real, for us it redefined the boundaries between private and public for the next century, the rest of us rebuilding our cities and psyches around the negative space the towers left, for them, they were so far removed from it that within a year they laughed at us, or, if you prefer, were so far removed from our psychic scars that 9/11 was just another brand to capitalize from them, either way, this game was immaculately conceived by the anonymous cultural subconscious in some twisted act of hyperreality, outside the mortal bounds of good taste, and copyright, trauma, and visible intent.
Worth 70 bucks to me, when faced with the financial choice between a new-in-box next gen game and...this, the choice is obvious, 4/5 would "buy off an obscure regional competitor to eBay in a country I don't live in" again
Limited Run wouldn't have the balls to reprint this lmao