Memory Reloaded

A chilling game about the fluid changes time and active revisionism lend to understanding of huge and unambiguous historical events, this game plays in a very straightforward fashion like the children's card game "Memory", where the goal is to match pairs from a face-down deck of cards, only recalling the position of like cards through the player's memory. Well, memory is fallible. As this game goes on, the "revisione" meter advances and faces on the unseen cards change as their meaning erodes: the western imperialism card quietly changes itself to the western altruism card, while Pinochet gets a make-over from ferocious to elderly, Hitler is smoothed out from being a killer to being a poor fool, and concentration camps are refashioned as sunflower fields. Several of the political references are particular to Italy, but the gradual shift of Partisans to Communist brigands and Palestinian resistance fighters to terrorists still lend a deeper understanding to the fundamental struggles of the 20th century, their roots and their new faces.

An updated English-language version of this Italian original, featuring more contemporary polarized issues, was released in 2010 as Memory Reloaded: the downfall.