Page 16 - IAV Digital Magazine #437

iAV - Antelope Valley Digital Magazine
Osama Bin Laden Was An Anime Fan And Played Pirated Naruto Games
By Dustin Bailey
Osama Bin Laden was the leader of terrorist group Al- Qaeda from its creation in the late 80s until his death in 2011 as a result of a US military operation. During that time he was directly responsible for some heinous attacks through- out the Middle East, and the
most significant terrorist action in US history. In addition to crimes against humanity too numerous to count, it turns out that Bin Laden was also a gamer, a pirate, and an anime fan.
Today, the CIA publically released nearly a half-million files recovered from Bin Laden’s hard
drive. That includes Al-Qaeda correspondence, video files, propa- ganda, draft materials, and Bin Laden’s personal journal. It also includes loads of copyrighted mate- rials, including films ranging from Antz to Resident Evil, loads of videogames, and a substantial col- lection of anime. Even Final
Fantasy VII makes an appearence, with evidence of sequel movie Advent Children having been watched.
It seems Bin Laden - or whoev- er else used his computer - was a connoisseur of emulated DS titles, judging by the ".sav" entries populating his file
index. Those nat- urally include standbys like New Super Mario Bros and Animal Crossing: Wild World. His tastes also ran along- side the otaku, with plenty of Naruto, Bleach, and Dragon Ball games in the list, on top of the complete Devil May Cry anime series.
Not everything originated from Japan, though. There are also PC games like casual ball-shoot- ing puzzler Zuma, as well as a tor- rent for plastic soldier RTS Army Men 2. It probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that Bin Laden was gath- ering his games illegally, but here’s your confir- mation: terrorists are sometimes also software pirates.
There’s little I can add beyond the sum ridiculous- ness of this list of files, but don’t for- get about it the next time you’re sitting down to enjoy your favorite shonen property. And remember, keep your computers safe - just like Bin Laden did, with a pirated copy of Kaspersky. (Please don’t actually pirate your software, or really base your life in any way on a terrorist leader.)
iAV - Antelope Valley Digital Magazine