Super Columbine Massacre was created with ASCII's game development program RPG Maker 2000 and took approximately six months to complete.

Super Columbine Massacre was released for free online and attracted little attention until 2006, when widespread media coverage fueled hundreds of thousands of downloads.

Reaction to Super Columbine Massacre was negative; the title was criticized as trivializing the actions of Harris and Klebold and the lives of the innocent.

Super Columbine Massacre's themes and content led to it being included in discussions as to whether video games cause violence; the title was later listed as one of the possible motivating factors of the shooter after the 2006 Dawson College shooting.

Players control the actions of teenagers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold; the pair entered Colorado's Columbine High School on April 20, 1999, and killed 13 people before turning their guns on themselves in a library.

[4] Much of the plot is constructed around the events as they are believed to have occurred; lines of the gunmen's dialogue are often lifted verbatim from their writings or from their own home videos of each other.

[4] In contrast to the 16-bit graphics are digitized photographs from the shooting or full voice samples from news reports; photos of the school are used as backdrops during battle scenes.

After the bombs fail to explode as planned, Harris and Klebold decide to enter the school and murder as many people as they can; the final number killed is up to the player.

The pair find themselves at the "Isle of Lost Souls", where they meet fictional characters such as Pikachu, Bart Simpson, Mega Man, Mario and personalities including J. Robert Oppenheimer, JonBenét Ramsey, Malcolm X, Ronald Reagan, and John Lennon.

[3] Some of the dialogue appears precisely as it was spoken after the actual event, while other lines caricature the political forces at work in the aftermath of the murders.

The conference references gun control advocacy, religious fundamentalism, and the media's implication of Marilyn Manson and the video games they played as culpable in the shooting.

[10] In 1999, director Stanley Kubrick's death and the Columbine High School massacre occurred within months of each other; Ledonne credited the two events with changing his life.

After seeing A Clockwork Orange, Ledonne discovered that film could comment on culture; after the Columbine shootings, he realized he was headed down the same path as the shooters.

[10] Ledonne had always conceptualized video games throughout his childhood but never produced one due to his lack of technical knowledge;[4] with RPG Maker he was able to fulfill his ambition.

Ledonne paid meticulous attention to detail, including giving players access to the exact inventory the gunmen used on their rampage.

[13] He watched videos, read newspaper articles and pored over 11,000 pages of documents released by the county government regarding the massacre and the killers.

[15] Ledonne added the hell segment and populated it with characters from the video game Doom, explaining that "[having the shooters] battle these monsters in an eternal recreation of their favorite videogame was a statement in and of itself.

[17] Ledonne sought to remain anonymous at the game's debut to avoid any possible controversy,[18] which he would later regret as it created the impression he had something to hide.

"[23] One victim of the shooting played the game and voiced reserved support, remarking that "It probably sounds a bit odd for someone like me to say, but I appreciate the fact at least to some degree that something like this was made."

"[33] David Kociemba, a professor at Emerson College, agreed with Bogost and commented that "the controversy should be that there aren't more games like Super Columbine Massacre RPG!

Super Columbine Massacre RPG is riddled with design flaws and has mediocre graphics by 1995, the maker of the game admits this, but it regardless is a work of art.

It puts you in the mindset of the killers and provides a very clear suggestion of why they did what they did; they were enacting an ideological demonstration through a terrorist act, and the game shines light on this as an indictment of the American dream and way of life painfully close to the main nerve.

[38]Developer Ryan Lambourn created a flash game called V-Tech Rampage in 2007, which allows players to control the actions of gunman Seung-Hui Cho in the Virginia Tech massacre.

[4] Ledonne posted a comment on Lambourn's website after V-Tech Rampage drew comparisons to Super Columbine Massacre, calling Lambourn's statement tantamount to a "hostage note", and asking bloggers to consider "not whether a game about the Virginia Tech shooting SHOULD be made but how we might go about making a game that accomplishes more than V-Tech Rampage does with the subject matter.

[4] In October 2006, Sam Roberts, the Guerilla Gamemaker Competition director of the Slamdance festival, emailed Ledonne encouraging him to submit the game to the contest.

Ledonne looked at the selection of the game as one of the competition's finalists in December as evidence that "all forms of art can be valid tools for societal exploration (even painful topics like school shootings)".

[18] The event's organizer, Peter Baxter, announced the removal of the game from the festival's "Guerrilla Gamemaker Competition" after its selection as a finalist.

[43] The announcement marked the first time the festival had pulled jury-selected content from the contest;[44] the incident was dubbed "Slamgate" by the gaming press.

[48] Developer Jonathan Blow of Braid stated: "[Super Columbine Massacre] lacks compassion, and I find the Artist's Statement disingenuous.

[4] Keith Stuart of The Guardian wrote that despite being confused and tawdry, Super Columbine Massacre "symbolizes a growing understanding that videogames have more to say than 'shoot the enemies and pick up health.