Disclaimer: This article is based on actual news from the real world – honestly! However, it has been sprinkled with a healthy dose of satire.
Three fully functional arcade machines appeared overnight outside the D.C. War Memorial, where visitors can now play Operation Epic Furious: Strait to Hell, a combat simulator built around the Trump administration’s recently concluded war with Iran. The installation was completed without permits, public hearing, environmental impact review, or congressional notification, placing it on roughly the same procedural footing as the conflict it depicts.
The collective behind the project, Secret Handshake, is the same group that last summer erected a bronze statue of President Trump holding hands with late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The game pits players against Iranian schoolgirls, low-flow showerheads, the Pope, and a free-floating entity called DEI, which in this universe is apparently a country with armed forces. Successful runs unlock “Trump-style peace trophies,” rendered onscreen as gold-leafed certificates signed by a hand whose signature is also gold-leafed. A plaque beside the cabinets explains that the administration has been “pumping out the sickest Iran War hype reels,” and that arcade format is simply the next step.
The memorial being empty really tied the “no exit strategy” theme together. (Boldfrontiers/Wikimedia Commons)
“Just to save you time,” Secret Handshake noted in a statement, “the only way you can lose is by trying to hold Melania’s hand. But it’s the Middle East, so you also can’t win.” The cabinet has no win screen, no end credits, and no quit option, which one passing veteran described as the most accurate war game he had ever played. He did not specify which war.
The cabinets are expected to remain on-site for “a few days,” which in D.C. terms is either six hours or however long it takes someone with a clipboard to arrive. An online version is hosted at epicfurious.com, which has so far proven more responsive to the media than the actual State Department.
A White House spokesperson declined to comment, then commented, then deleted the comment, then reposted it with one additional exclamation point. The Department of War said separately that it had not been consulted on the simulation’s tactical accuracy. It has also not been asked to review the war,
Both the game cabinet and the online version are free to play, which Secret Handshake described as “thematically appropriate, given how this [war] was sold to the public.” Final billing for the actual war, which killed several thousand people across four countries, is expected to arrive in installments, to be paid for decades later by people who haven’t been born yet.
