Outrage as players compete for €75,000 to recreate JFK assassination

A CONTROVERSIAL new computer “docu-game” that lets players fire the fatal assassination shots at John F Kennedy from the Texas Book Depository over and over again has been branded “despicable” by aides to the late president’s brother.

Glasgow-based firm Traffic, which has launched JFK: Reloaded 41 years after the president’s death in Dallas, is offering up to €75,000 for the first person to most accurately recreate the three shots fired by Lee Harvey Oswald.

The product, which can be downloaded from www.jfkreloaded.com, recreates JFK’s last moments and, according to Traffic, challenges players to help disprove any conspiracy theory by recreating the shots fired from the sixth floor of the Dallas book repository.

David Smith, a spokesman for Edward Kennedy, said the Massachusetts senator’s office had begun receiving calls about the game on Friday.

“It’s despicable. There’s really no further comment,” Mr Smith said.

He would not comment on whether the family was taking any action to stop the game’s release.

Traffic said it was aware of the passion surrounding the death of “one of America’s greatest heroes” and it was determined to promote the game - priced at €7 - respectfully. Managing director Kirk Ewing said the product would “bring history to life” and stimulate a younger generation of players to take an interest in a fascinating episode of American history. “We genuinely believe that if we get enough people participating we’ll be able to disprove once and for all any notion that someone else was involved in the assassination of President Kennedy. The computer ballistics model says it’s possible, but players will discover just how hard it is to place those three bullets in exactly the same way that Oswald did.”

A 10-man team took seven months to research and six months to programme the recreation of the events of November 22, 1963, in downtown Dallas, as specified in the Warren Commission report.

The game is being touted as educational, but historian G Calvin MacKenzie said: “Aside from being in incredibly bad taste, the idea of marketing it as an educational tool seems to stretch the notion of education beyond belief.”

Mr MacKenzie noted that some games involving historic deaths - such as those which allow players to re-enact major battles - arguably have the legitimate value of teaching strategy and history. But he added that the JFK game had crossed the line of decency.

“The Kennedy assassination has been studied for 40 years,” he said. “There have been scores of books. What could we possibly gain from a video game?’