Would you be more or less likely to vote for Bernie Sanders if he ran around stomping on MAGA hat wearers until they disappeared? That’s the central conceit to Super Bernie World, a new, free videogame from Kitsune Games that puts the senator from Vermont into a world that’s remarkably similar to the Mushroom Kingdom of the Super Mario Bros. series. Instead of a portly janitor eating mushrooms to grow large, it stars a cantankerous senator eating Vermont cheese to grow large. Instead of Koopas, Goombas and Hammer Bros, Super Bernie has to avoid turtles that look like Mitch McConnell, angry Trump voters who are hunched up beneath their MAGA hats in a senseless rage, and smug, white polo shirt-wearing neo-Nazis who throw tiki torches. Each level is a different state, with Sanders running around collecting votes instead of coins, and defeating a different Republican politician in the castle at the end of each world. Get ready to send Ted Cruz, Jim Jordan and more straight to prison, for some reason, on your way to tackling the big boss himself, Donald Trump.
Okay, I’ve played this whole thing, and you can too: it’s free in your browser through Itch.io, or you can download it for free through Steam. Not to editorialize too much, but it’s not a particularly good game, and even as a Sanders supporter and voter, I’m not too big on its political content. If you were hoping for any information on what Bernie believes, or any insight into his policies, the closest you’ll get is a random real-life quote before every world. It’s a slow pastiche of Super Mario missing almost everything that makes that game such an enduring classic, and it also won’t help anybody on the fence understand Sanders any more or win them over to his side.
The best thing about it, then, beyond being free, is that you can find out ways to donate your time or money to the Sanders campaign through the game’s main menu. If anybody plays this free game and then decides to help Bernie 2020 in a material way, that will more than make up for a free game not being all that fun or informative.
You’re probably only here to take a look at the thing, though. Here are some screenshots, and you can find a video below.
