‘Electric chair’ popular in Italy
July 21, 2000: The Vatican warned Italians the popularity of a virtual reality game, appearing in the nation’s amusement halls and called “The Electric Chair Game,” could result in “highly dangerous confusion between fiction and reality.”
“[The player] sits on a wooden chair, identical to the one used in capital punishment in [some parts of] the United States and, after inserting a few coins, undergoes the chilling experience of the electric chair,” the paper L’Osservatore Romano said.
Vatican officials blamed the “superficial culture” of the Western world for tolerating such a game. Officials also said they were especially concerned because the game seemed to target youth.
“Whole families wait in line. Hundreds of children, adolescents and adults fill the hall to see ‘who can last the longest,’ to see who makes it to the end. The winner is the one who ‘lets himself be killed,’ those who give up before the end are ‘chicken,'” the paper said.
“Do we want our youth to understand this, or will we calmly continue to line up with our children to ‘play the electric chair’ game?” said a Vatican statement.
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