Video game of plane on Husdon River

Try your skill at landing a plane on the Hudson River

By Walker Simon in New York. Well, well, I was wandering how long it would take for this game to come out...AND HERE WE ARE......Once again a tragedy has been replicated into a fun video game.

Reuters

Jet ... a scene from Hero on the Hudson, a simple online game that lets players recreate last week's dramatic landing / news.com.au

FIRST came the heroics of landing a crippled passenger jet on the Hudson River in New York City. Now there are the video games.

Hero on the Hudson challenges players to steady a plane nosediving toward the busy river. In Double Bird Strike, the goal is to evade flocks of birds – a suspected cause of the US Airways jet's near-disaster on January 15.

Both are free online games created by units of MTV Networks, a division of Viacom. Free games, which make money by selling advertising, are seen as a promising segment of the $US22 billion ($34 billion) video game industry in the US.

Players can try to emulate the skill of pilot Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, who won acclaim for his smooth emergency landing on the Hudson River that saved all 155 people aboard.

Hero on the Hudson has been played more than 1.4 million times since it was launched on January 21, said Kate Connally, spokeswoman for AddictingGames. Average success takes three tries.

"If you land it correctly like the pilot did, then the passengers come out and cheer on the wing," she said.

"The payoff is the joy of having saved all the passengers."

The plane sinks with burbling sounds if you fail.

Double Bird Strike, which launched on January 18, may be trickier. Scott Roesch, general manager of creator atom.com, said it took him at least a dozen tries to succeed.

"The decision to launch the project was made within 24 hours. It really is a story of heroism," Mr Roesch said.

"The more we started to think about, the thing that the plane was hit by birds was amazing."

Among those playing Double Bird Strike, he said, are mothers at home. Before playing the game, viewers must watch a laundry detergent commercial featuring models on a catwalk.

In 2008, politics mixed with online gaming.

Several of the most popular games of last year, Mr Roesch and Ms Connally said, featured Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, the outdoorsy governor of Alaska.

Hunting With Palin by atom.com was played more than 1.6 million times.

(http://www.news.com.au/technology/story/0,28348,25001796-5014239,00.html)