“Ronaldinho sucks air.” That’s the bold
claim made by Ronaldinho Soccer, a thoroughly
fascinating bootleg of International Superstar
Soccer 64.
As you might expect from a pirated title,
there are a few issues here. Firstly and most
importantly, it should be noted that Ronaldinho
is nowhere to be found in this game. Not even
those pictures on the splash screen are Ronaldinho
- they are Ronaldo!
Well OK, maybe Ronaldo was known as Ronaldinho
for a brief period in his career. But it's
still a bit sloppy that both his monikers
appear in the game.
And never before has he been so blurry in
a Nintendo 64 game. Also his left calf appears
to have been stung by bees and ballooned to
the size of Bradley Wiggins'. Well, I suppose
it’s more noticeable in high definition
emulation; you would probably have got away
with that on a CRT television in 1998.
Here, we also see that the game was developed
by LAI PEN Computer Group, a pseudonym of
the Twin Eagles Group, Peru. This is Version
1.0; I don't think there ever was a 1.1, but
maybe there's a chance of an update now Ronaldinho
64 has reached superstardom.
No new music has been added to this hack,
but the existing tunes have been shifted around.
For example, the menu theme is now the 'Special
Game' music you hear just before you play
World Stars after completing the World League.
It’s a seemingly trivial change, but one
which makes you think ‘cool, I’m playing
a mod!”
The next modification you’ll notice is the
addition of real player names (forgiving the
odd typo).
Perhaps the greatest casualty of this change
is that the real international superstar,
Allejo, is not selectable. Notable as the
player with the highest stats in previous
iterations of ISS, he’s omitted in favour
of our (semi-) titular hero Ronaldo.
It’s a little-known fact among English-speaking
gamers, but Ronaldinho 64 isn't the first
International Superstar Soccer 64 meme to
achieve celebrity status. Allejo, AKA the
greatest player that never lived, has been
the subject of Brazilian memes for years.
In fact he is so revered that he’s been
the subject of a short mockumentary entitled
“Allejo Eterno”.
Allejo’s popularity went hand-in-hand with
the success of the International Superstar
Soccer series in Latin America during the
1990s. He even came out of retirement to return
15 years later in PES 2014, entering the game’s
Hall of Fame alongside fellow legends Minanda,
Ximelez and… er… Oranges102.
However, as
famous as he is these days, a name like Allejo
wouldn't really have sold this game back in
1998. The original ISS64 didn't have the license
for real player names, and instead continued
to use the classic fabricated rosters from
ISS on the SNES. The Ronaldinho 64 hack remedies
this issue, adding more accurate contemporary
player names just in time for the World Cup
in 1998.
They’re not without mistakes, however: for
example, Teddy Sheringham is apparently England’s
best player, while ‘Schearer’ - spelled
with a c - is relegated to the subs’ bench.
But we’ll forgive the programmers for that.
Ronaldinho Soccer 64 was published by the
Twin Eagles Group, also known as Eaglesoft.
They have a long and celebrated history, sometimes
cited as the “founding fathers” of Peruvian
game design.
On occasion, they would organise ‘copy parties’
to distribute their cracked software for home
micro computers and video game consoles.
However, it should be noted that TEG wasn’t
about simple piracy. Far from it, in fact
- they state that they made “no profit whatsoever”
from their cracked games. Phillip Penix-Tadsen,
in his book Cultural Code: Video Games and
Latin America, contends that TEG used the
process of reverse engineering commercial
video games as a tool for education in software
engineering. In the absence of an established
Peruvian gaming industry, TEG literally became
the industry.
During their heyday, they released a plethora
of football game hacks that updated player
rosters or changed them to South American
domestic teams - hardly trivial to a football
fan. In the mid-90s, they produced two such
ISS hacks for the SNES: Futbol Excitante and,
bringing us back to our hero, Ronaldinho 97.
However, Ronaldinho 64 is perhaps the most
notable of all their pirated efforts, as it
can be seen as an extremely rare early example
of ROM hacking for the Nintendo 64. I’m
also interested in this ‘Sextris’ hack,
but let’s not get too distracted here.
As we go into the game itself, we note that
the match commentary has been drastically
overhauled. According to Kevin Ames of Micro-64.com,
the “Portuguese announcer has a very heavy
Spanish accent and his commentary can be a
bit confusing at times.” I’m gonna take
his word for it because languages aren’t
my strong point.
However, we can tell that the commentator
is just as enthusiastic, if not more so, than
the original British guy. In fact, for extra
authenticity, he sometimes screams so loud
that the speakers begin to crackle and hiss
- just like real life South American football
commentary.
There is a bug (or maybe a feature) that removes
the standard looping crowd noise, which means
sections of the match sound like they’re
being played in a library.
However, let’s not forget the technical
achievement of hacking a whole new commentary
track onto the game cart.
Most importantly, the commentator does a good
job of making things exciting, so that’s
a positive.
Those are the main changes I could find. My
copy of the ROM is a bit dodgy and liable
to crash - for example the training mode just
hangs at kickoff - but as mentioned earlier,
perhaps someone might find the time to fix
this game now it has entered the public consciousness.
Much of what you’ve seen here may seem shoddy,
but you know… I’m actually quite impressed
with this hack. As a rabid ISS64 fanboy in
the 90s, I would certainly have been very
interested in a roster pack like this; it
would have taken hours to hunt down the relevant
information and change all the player names
myself, and I needed that time for hitting
lamp posts with sticks, or whatever else I
did as a kid.
In the context of software modification, Ronaldinho
Soccer is doubly impressive in that it was
released during the Nintendo 64’s commercial
lifetime, when the console’s hacking potential
was brand new.
It’s all too easy to get the wrong idea
and view a game like this as a shameless cash-in.
But remember that Twin Eagles Group made no
profit from their games as they never really
distributed them commercially.
If Ronaldinho 64 seems outwardly amateurish
and unfinished, then… well, yeah, it kind
of was. But that’s what makes it so intriguing.
“Hey, look at these things we managed to
hack into the game! There are pictures of
Ronaldo and everything!”
And knowing the context, I hope you think
it’s cool too.
Sayonara, Yack Watchers.
