Video Game Changes Immigrants For Snuggly Animals

Remember Smuggle Truck? It’s the video game we reported about where the object is to cross a truckload of undocumented people into, presumably, the US. The score was based on how many people you managed to smuggle compared to how many fell off the truck.

iTunes rejected the original.

The game was to be sold on iTunes, but it didn’t happen. The game developers, Owlchemy Labs, from Boston, had to change it – some say clean it up, some say make it politically correct; Apple said it had to be acceptable. So, according to cultofmac.com,

…change “smuggle” to “snuggle” and the game about taking clandestine immigrants across the border becomes…a game about cuddly creatures escaping the wilderness for the comfort of a zoo, where they are provided plenty of food, shelter and “state of the art healthcare.”

Now the video game  is about cuddly animals escaping to a zoo. In the original game, Smuggle Truck, players had to navigate a truck filled with immigrants through mountains and perils while the immigrants were bumped off.

Smuggle Truck is still available.

But the re-working of the game doesn’t mean that the original is gone. Here’s a video from the developers that explains what they’ve done.

So now are the animal-rights folks going to protest? Are scores of PETA people going to trash their Mac’s?

What’s interesting is that this isn’t the first immigrant video game. There’s one called Jose Comes to USA, developed by Venevision mobile. According to cultofomac the premise is the same, almost:

Jose, a good Mexican kid, meets the love of his life Penny, a beautiful gringuita, on the Internet.. But when Penny invites Jose to her prom, the love story goes south as Jose decides to go north! The immigration officer in charge turns out to be none other than Penny’s father and he unjustly denies Jose entrance to USA…

You can buy Jose Comes to The USA on iTunes, for 99 cents.

Follow Victor Landa on Twitter: @vlanda