Play the 2006 Bernie Sanders-Themed Arcade Game

Bernie Arcade, Bernie Sanders for Senate 2006/via the Web Archive

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Imagine the delight in the Mother Jones DC office this morning when, exhausted from last night’s marathon Republican presidential debate, we discovered a nine-year-old web-based arcade game starring Bernie Sanders. We started playing it, and you can too.

The game, Bernie Arcade, comes from the Vermont senator’s 2006 reelection campaign and feels both very 2006 and very Bernie Sanders. It still lives online thanks to the Web Archive. The game features the candidate in an eco-friendly hydrogen-fueled plane. Using the arrow keys, the player navigates the plane through unfriendly skies, dodging the “extreme right wing,” big bags of special-interest money, mud from mudslingers, and literal fat cats. Wonky underdog that he is, Sanders fights back by shooting these objects with fact sheets as a jaunty bluegrass tune by a Vermont band, the Cleary Brothers, plays in the background.

The game gives players a glimpse of Sanders’ can-do pluck, even after his plane has crashed due to an onslaught of flying felines. “The good news is—and there is some good news out there—that is an unbelievable number,” his voice says after the game—even if your score is abysmally low.

Sanders’ isn’t the only candidate with a game to his name. This summer, the Mother Jones office gathered to play Trump: The Game, a bizarre Monopoly-style game in which players learn about the GOP front-runner by borrowing from an endless credit line with the bank to buy up real estate properties. But Sanders’ game takes the opposite approach. Instead of winning by acquiring cash, players are supposed to dodge the flying bags marked with dollar signs. As MoJo reporter Pat Caldwell observed, Sanders’ game forces successful players to unlearn what video gamers have been doing for years: winning games by acquiring money. “I lost immediately,” said MoJo reporter Tim Murphy, who reflexively went for the money on his first flight in the hydroplane.

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate