2007: Play the news

This is the news

On Saturday, 15 September 2007, a meteorite streaked through the Earth's atmosphere over Peru, slamming into the dirt a few miles away from the village of Carancas. Locals reported that "boiling water" spewed from the still-smoking crater, accompanied by clouds of “fetid, noxious” gas.

Within days, villagers who'd approached the crash site were struck down with an inexplicable illness. In real life, the sickness turned out to be a result of the fierce impact vaporising water in the earth, which contained high levels of arsenic. But what if it were due to extraterrestrial infection...?

The game

SAM METEORITE: SUPER SCIENTIST

The blurb

"Disaster has befallen the town of Maracas, America. An extraterrestrial asteroid has crashed into the town hall, spreading a deadly fungus and filling the air with spores, infecting the brains of the locals and slowly transforming them into terribly dull alien-controlled Maths teachers.

"As Sam Meteorite, America's top super scientist and surgeon supreme, you must interrogate everyone in the town, using your heightened skills of deduction and observation to isolate the contaminated civilians, before employing Sam's super shrinking serum to shrivel into microscopic form and enter the patient's body, fighting off the infection from within..."

The review

"Awesome use of the stylus here, both when you zoom in on a suspect's eyes as they answer your questions - tricky questions trouble the alien infection, causing symbols to appear behind the person's eyes - and when guiding Sam through the cerebellum. We don't think there's ever been a better game pitting you against a mind-controlling outer space fungus."
8.544/10, Gamerswank.com

The game

SAM METEORITE: SUPER SCIENTIST

The blurb

"Disaster has befallen the town of Maracas, America. An extraterrestrial asteroid has crashed into the town hall, spreading a deadly fungus and filling the air with spores, infecting the brains of the locals and slowly transforming them into terribly dull alien-controlled Maths teachers.

"As Sam Meteorite, America's top super scientist and surgeon supreme, you must interrogate everyone in the town, using your heightened skills of deduction and observation to isolate the contaminated civilians, before employing Sam's super shrinking serum to shrivel into microscopic form and enter the patient's body, fighting off the infection from within..."

The review

"Awesome use of the stylus here, both when you zoom in on a suspect's eyes as they answer your questions - tricky questions trouble the alien infection, causing symbols to appear behind the person's eyes - and when guiding Sam through the cerebellum. We don't think there's ever been a better game pitting you against a mind-controlling outer space fungus."
8.544/10, Gamerswank.com

Ben Richardson is a former Staff Writer for Official PlayStation 2 magazine and a former Content Editor of GamesRadar+. In the years since Ben left GR, he has worked as a columnist, communications officer, charity coach, and podcast host – but we still look back to his news stories from time to time, they are a window into a different era of video games.