Why? Oh, why?
On an Islamist website , you can find a game called Islamic Mali. The link below is from MEMRI, a Washington based organization that was nice enough to host it for us to witness the fact :
http://www.memri.org/downloads/index.htm
You put up a game easily by adapting programs found here and there on the Web. The guys at Al-Qaeda probably thought it would boost enlistment or spur vocations?
I’m not sure if that will work. The game is a 2D scrolling third person shooter. If you remember shooting gallery games, any variant, it will seem familiar. The ground and enemies come at you from the top and you move right to left to shoot at them and avoid incoming missiles. It is HTML 5 based too so that you can play it on a mobile device that drives apps.
Now, if one takes a critical look, it becomes funny and laughable.
The black plane bearing Al-Qaida’s flag is an F-117.
-The Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk is the famous incarnation of the stealth bomber. It is an American aircraft that was retired in 2008.It was never sold to any other client than the US Air Force and so to no other nation as well. Likelihood that Al-Qaida could get its hands on one is zero point many orders and not much.
The Grey plane sporting the French flag is an S-47.
-The Sukhoi S-37/-47 Berkut, a prototype and demonstrator from estimed Russian military plane maker Sukhoi only counts 4 copies so far. It is a program of design initiated by the possibilities brought along with Fly-by-Wire when computers translate the pilot’s inputs and drive the control surfaces. France has no intention to buy even one.
Your plane endures 10 hits before failing.
-Quite unlike the F-117 in real life stealthy but fragile almost to the point of being sensitive to small arms! It was not supposed to be seen, remember?
France’s planes destroy on 1 direct hit.
-The French will never ever buy Sukhois now? 
Action is daytime.
-Not only would the NIGHThawk not do that but even the French in Mali made copious use of night operations when modern soldiers rely on technology not often in enemy possession. I.E. Safer and more effective.
The game offers delicious messages worth the translation the star of which when Game Over is replaced by Congratulations, you are a martyr? Oh! It’ a win-win deal then?
You get the idea. If recruits to Islamism train with it, they may develop the idea that they are 10 times more resistant than the enemy which could come back to haunt them on the real battlefield. The original video games in my honest opinion may not have been the cause of a single soldier vocation and this one will marginally pass that at best.
The only real thing to say about this childish effort is to wonder if it is not an example of the simplistic way in which his originators see the world to begin with? That’s saaaaad!
Good game all, Tay.
Really helpful for we who don’t know too much aboutmilitary warplanes. Mary.
Good and thank you then, Mary. It is the intent on this blog to explain and provide access to information on the workings of such subjects to my readers. Glad it served its purpose, Tay.