"Post 9/11 computer games have attempted to recolonise the world and make it conform to the dominant US value system. Yet a colonising impetus was present from the earliest days of computer gaming. Mary Fuller and Henry Jenkins, discussing the Japanese bestseller, Super Mario Bros (Nintendo, 1983), made that point 10 years ago: in order to progress through the game the player had to take control of virtual territory in the manner of 16th-century explorers by eliminating its inhabitants (the enemy) and collecting its resources (gold coins and mushrooms). Super Mario, the icon of computer games, has its roots in the western myth of the discovery of the New World."
ur Le Monde Diplomatique, july 2007.
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