New 'Super Obama World' game (Think Super Mario with a new president)
The president-elect has gone retro.
No, he's not strutting around Chicago sporting Adidas Classics jackets and bell-bottoms. Barack Obama stars in an online computer game called Super Obama World -- a remake of the 1991 Nintendo classic "Super Mario World."
Playing as Obama, you collect American flag pins while battling against cash-toting lobbyists, lipstick-wearing pigs and department store clothing racks.
Instead of nabbing mushrooms to expand your character's abilities, players must grab slices of pie to outfit the pixelated president-elect in a snazzy suit and sunglasses.
Just because the election is over doesn't mean the political jabs have to end. You'll find plenty of Gov. Sarah Palin parody to tickle your funny bone as you guide Obama around six levels set in Alaska.
Burning books at the Wasilla library, a seemingly endless Bridge to Nowhere, a jab at Sen. Ted Stevens' "series of tubes" comment and a boss battle with a snowmobile-riding Palin are among the game's humorous highlights.
The wisecracks are only targeted at the Alaska governor in the current version. But ZenSoft, a three-person team of developers that created the free Web game, plans to release additional levels every two to three weeks.
The next version will send Obama to Sen. John McCain's state of Arizona, with plans to expand to Obama's home state of Illinois and eventually to Washington, D.C., in future releases.
Though the Super Obama World website has netted millions of hits, Robert Sundling, chief software architect for ZenSoft, plans to keep it free for now, he said in an e-mail. Xbox 360 and iPhone versions may also arrive in January for Obama's inauguration, Sundling wrote.
With all this attention the game is getting, the real question is how long can it fly under the radar of the many companies on which it depicts -- Neiman-Marcus, Macy's and, perhaps most blatantly, Nintendo -- especially while selling merchandise of its own. (That logo looks strikingly familiar.)
Is it only a matter of time before the Super Mario Brothers throw a legal fireball ZenSoft's way?
-- Mark Milian
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Photo credit: ZenSoft
Andrew Malcolm's immigrant parents repeatedly stressed the importance of active participation in a democracy. Early lessons included learning the alphabetical list of states by watching televised roll calls of national political conventions. That childhood exposure led to a lifelong fascination with politics, including 40-plus years of covering them and a brief stint practicing them as press secretary to Laura Bush in 1999-2000. A veteran foreign and national correspondent, Malcolm served on the Times Editorial Board and was a Pulitzer finalist in 2004. He is the author of 10 nonfiction books and father of four.
Johanna Neuman is a veteran Washington correspondent for both The Los Angeles Times and USA Today, having covered presidents and politics as far back as Ronald Reagan. A former president of the White House Correspondents Assn., she authored a book on media and foreign policy, “Lights, Camera, Wars.” Most recently she was co-author of the 
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Mario spit fireballs, but fair enough.
The game was pretty creative. It got a little boring after awhile.
Posted by: Jeff Balla | November 25, 2008 at 07:20 PM
very nice work. thanks admin...
Posted by: super mario | February 25, 2009 at 02:49 PM