A gunman who opened fire in a Montreal school, killing a young girl and wounded more than a dozen others, played a video game based on the Columbine shooting.

The game, called "Super Columbine Massacre," uses 1980s graphics and can be downloaded from websites. Players recreate the U.S. tragedy that left 13 people dead.

"It's really not about the graphics but it's really about him acting on his impulses and having a way to express these impulses," psychiatrist Ariel Dalfen says of the game's typical player.

Kimveer Gill, 25, who went on a shooting spree at Montreal's Dawson College on Wednesday, listed his favourite video games on his blog.

Along with "Super Columbine Massacre," he mentioned the game "Postal 2: Share the Pain," in which the player goes on a shooting rampage inside a post office. It must be ordered from England and takes two weeks to arrive.

"You would have to go out of the continent to get this product, so it's not something that little Johnny and little Suzy are playing," said Dalfen.

The game's creator has said "Super Columbine Massacre" has been downloaded about 40,000 times. But Alex Davis, the owner of Gamerama in Toronto, said the games Gill played were on the fringe and did not reflect what most people play.

"You're usually the good guy fighting the good fight," Davis said of most popular games. "You're not the villain killing innocent civilians."

Experts argue video games -- not matter how violent -- should not be held responsible for Gill's actions.

"The world, as usual, is more complex than we'd like it to be," Ian Bogost, a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, in Atlanta, Ga., told The Canadian Press.

Bogost said "Super Columbine Massacre" is an easy target for blame, but argued several deeper problems led to Wednesday's shooting spree.

"Certainly, Gill was using media of all kinds to culture his antisocial fantasies," said Bogost. "Should we hold (this game) responsible? Clearly, these are overly simplistic explanations."

John Pungente, of the Association for Media Literacy, said violence in the media is an old issue. In the 1950s, when gruesome comics were blamed for youth violence, the government created the Comics Code Authority to censor them. But comics no longer generate the same concern among today's parents.

"You can't blame the media," Pungente told CP. "People have been doing these violent things since before there was even media."

Instead, he urged that parents should teach their children the difference between fantasy --- as depicted in video games -- and reality.

"Parents certainly have to be more aware of what their children are seeing," said Pungente.

With a report by CTV's Paul Bliss and files from The Canadian Press