I beat Al Qaeda. The end guy is hard.

Strange toys are coming out of China these days. First, the musical box/night light toy that supposedly whispers “I hate you” and now this:

The photo was taken in Baguio City, Philippines, a city north of Manila and high up in the mountains (so high that the temperature drops to a chilly 12 degrees C — that’s 53 degrees farenheit — and the locals break out the leather jackets.) The game is made in China and retails for 250 Pesos (about US$4.70). You play the Americans, and the object of the game is to defend the World Trade Center from the bombers.

Another version of the game is shown on the Web site bootlegactionfigures.com. The packaging uses photographs from the September 11th disaster. Classy.

The Tapei Times reviewed the game:

Laden vs USA is a monumentally boring game, but its value as pure kitsch may be a turn-on for collectors of such items.

The game’s soundtrack is an attempt at a Middle Eastern melody, but the sound is so high-pitched and grating it’s almost impossible to listen beyond five notes. Adding a touch of surrealism, Deck the Halls or London Bridge plays when you win a round.

The game has two versions, one that pits bin Laden against Bush in a boxing match and a version in which a submarine shoots down fighter jets screaming around the tiny screen.

Both versions require some imagination on the part of the player. The bin Laden and Bush characters look nothing like their real-life likenesses in the boxing one and the submarine in the second version is hilariously out of place in the context of Afghanistan, which the manufacturers apparently forgot is a landlocked country. Made by Panyu Gaoming Electronic of Guangzhou, China, Laden vs USA is now out of production for reasons that a company spokeswoman refused to clarify. She also declined to answer what the submarine is doing in Afghanistan and whether the player in the boxing version controls bin Laden or Bush.

From neighbouring Taiwan comes Final Battle Afghanistan X-Tank (gotta love the names that Asian manfacturers come up with for their videogames!), which according to the Taipei Times, was conceived a day after the World Trade Center attack:

On Sept. 12, the managers of INSREA, a Taiwanese game software firm, convened a hasty meeting at their downtown Taipei office to discuss how to make the events of the previous day into a gripping video game.

Hu Long-Yun, marketing director at INSREA said (half-jokingly, for what it’s worth, according to the Times) “We’re the first company to make software for a game specifically themed on the conflict in Afghanistan…..we wish bin Laden would contact us so we could give him a copy of the game.”

Hey, Mr. Hu: Du lei lo mo*, punkass.

* Extremely rude. Ask your Cantonese-speaking friends, but not in front of their moms.

[Thanks to Ed’s Up, Hos Down!, where I saw the photo; he found it in Yahoo News.]