Artist Jesse England is in search of an old video game about terrorism that for now exists only in his memory.It's an old simulation game for the Macintosh Classic that asked players how they would behave in case their plane was hijacked. It's a heavy, weird subject for a simple game of that era to tackle, and even weirder since England remembers playing it as part of a 7th grade social studies class."What most interests me about the game, or what I can remember in retrospect, is that it presented the fear of the hijackers," England told me. "I remember the game being part of a larger curriculum of understanding the root causes of terrorism."There are countless threads on video game forums where people try to find games they remember from their childhood, but they're usually resolved pretty quickly. So far, England hasn't had the same luck.He even went through the trouble of redrawing what he remembers of the game in emulation software that would make it looks as much like the original as possible.England mainly makes creative works like a Comic Sans typewriter he calls Sincerity Machine or printed e-books, but in the case of the "hijacking sim," he hopes to present his findings as a sort of media archaeology report.He concedes that memory isn't perfect, and that there's always the possibility that the real game is different than what he remembers, but he sounds confident it exists."I can only affirm to you with my memory, as tenuous that may be, that I'm sure I played such a game," he said.If you think you can help England find the game, get in touch, and let us know because we want play it too.
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