JFK Reloaded

Shots can be reviewed in slow motion and from multiple viewpoints. Traffic Games founder Kirk Ewing envisioned a small-scale simulation of a historical event after leaving VIS Entertainment. He chose Kennedy's assassination over the Apollo 11 Moon landing in part due to the high amount of public domain information available on the former. A team of ten people worked with the game engine of Carmageddon to accurately recreate the event, taking several months each for research and development. Released on November 22, 2004, the 41st anniversary of the assassination, JFK Reloaded was denounced by public figures, including a spokesman for Kennedy's brother Ted.

JFK Reloaded is a first-person shooter. It recreates the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, as it occurred on November 22, 1963, according to the report of the Warren Commission. The player controls Lee Harvey Oswald from the sixth-floor window of the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas. As Kennedy's presidential limousine passes through Dealey Plaza, the player has to take three shots at the president with a sniper rifle. They gain points based on how closely these shots match the Warren Commission's report: The first has to miss the car, the second hit Kennedy in the neck and John Connally (the governor of Texas) in the chest, and the third fatally wound Kennedy in the head. The perfect score is 1,000. While the game does not prevent the player from pursuing alternative scenarios, points are deducted when the player deviates from the event, such as by hitting Jacqueline Kennedy, the first lady. JFK Reloaded includes a "Chaos Meter" that controls how heavily the motorcade's drivers are affected by panic. Following each game, individual shots can be replayed in slow motion and with a close-up of each bullet. The scene can be viewed from several angles, including from the grassy knoll, the location of the Zapruder film, and a virtual camera mounted to Kennedy's limousine. The player can further enable blood splatter effects and exaggerated physics.

JFK Reloaded was developed by Traffic Management Limited (trade name: Traffic Games), a company based in Stirling, Scotland. The company's founder and managing director, Kirk Ewing, had a background in producing documentaries for Channel 4. In the video game industry, he had previously worked for VIS Entertainment as the creative director for Earthworm Jim 3D (1999) and State of Emergency (2002). The latter was denounced for similarities to the 1999 Seattle WTO protests, despite not being inspired by them. Having worked on projects as large as State of Emergency, Ewing wanted to focus on smaller ventures. In establishing Traffic Games, he intended to create a game based on a historical event and initially considered modeling one after the Apollo 11 Moon landing. Ewing later settled on the assassination of Kennedy because there was a high amount of public domain information documenting the event. He also noted that ballistics simulations were a staple of video games and that many other forms of media had already covered the incident. Ewing sought help from a friend at Stainless Games, the developer of Carmageddon. The friend was fond of the game idea and provided Traffic Games with Carmageddon's game engine. Therein, the JFK Reloaded development team reconstructed the site of Kennedy's assassination with accurate object placements and appropriate weather conditions. According to Ewing, one aim of the development was to disprove conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination by demonstrating that Oswald would have been capable of carrying out the shooting alone under the conditions of that day. The ten-person development team, composed of former developers of State of Emergency, Grand Theft Auto, and Killzone, took several months to research the matter, followed by six months of producing the game. Before the game's release, Ewing sent a letter to Ted Kennedy (John F. Kennedy's brother and a United States senator for Massachusetts), who was informed of the game on November 19, 2004. Traffic Games announced JFK Reloaded on November 21 and released it on November 22, the 41st anniversary of the assassination. It was the company's first release. Traffic Games distributed the game commercially alongside a free demo via the game's website. The site was set to remain available for three months. To boost the game's commercial performance, the company held a month-long competition for players to replicate the shooting as accurately as possible. The reward was a cash prize of up to $100,000, depending on the game's revenue. "Major_Koenig", a 16-year-old boy from Paris, won with a score of 782 and received $10,712.