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By now you’ve likely seen the Russian-made video which uses the mobile game Angry Birds to have some fun with recent news out of North Africa. But if you’ve missed it, here it is:

As Ethan Zuckerman points out over at his blog it’s an acute take on events, including US involvement in the region. Zuckerman also points to the global mix that produced this piece of satire:

“There’s something very 2011 about a Russian video using a soundtrack from American cartoons and characters from a Finnish mobile phone game (based on an English fairytale) to satirize North African politics.”

Angry Birds is so well-traveled that it’s a great choice for a globally-minded satirist. But the resulting video is just that: a video, not a playable game. For that, here’s something called Libyan Hamburger Recipe. It’s like one of those ancient computer games where you had to press keys as fast as possible to, say, send your Olympic sprinter along a track. Here you’re trying to turn Muammar Gaddafi into dinner.

Libyan Hamburger Recipe hasn’t gotten half the online traction of the Angry Birds video, despite the interactive grinder. The things that spread are the ones that share our cultural playground. (It wasn’t so different for Jonathan Swift and other satirists of the past.) Today we find Nintendo drafted into action …

… and even two versions of Arabs’ Got Talent (a local version of America’s Got Talent), both of which place Gaddafi center stage.

There are countless more mashups like it out there. But, as Xeni Jardin writes today, the Internet is home to an unending stream of videos from the other end of the scale too: graphic imagery of the real-world impact of conflict. The turmoil in Libya and other places may be satirized as a game, but a game it is not.