TORONTO – Two Canadian programmers now living in New York City have turned Rob Ford’s follies into an original Nintendo-style video game.
In the game, you control a Rob Ford avatar while trying to jump over various foes including the police or media.
You can also collect small crack pipes, marijuana leaves or beer bottles, which will cause a quotable sound bite of the mayor to play.
While dodging the police and media, there’s a ‘Public Opinion’ countdown that, when it hits zero, ends the game. It changes to a full-frame photo of the mayor proclaiming he has been impeached (though it also admits Canadian politicians cannot be impeached).
Nick Mostowich was born in Vancouver but is working in New York City. He spent a few months working in Toronto (“I love the city,” he said) and said “Rob Ford is one of those larger than life characters that transcends countries.”
Chris Ngan grew up in the GTA and, along with Mostowich, went to the University of Waterloo. Ngan admits he doesn’t “hold too many strong opinions about the political state of Toronto.” Instead, he said, he just wanted to program a game.
“Another huge part of the inspiration is that I miss being in Canada and that making a Toronto-based game helped me express that,” he said.
Mostowich said it took the two programmers about 16 hours to code the program in Javascript and was fueled by “Red Bull and laughs.”
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