Why videogame mods were (and still are) the greatest feat in Brazil’s gaming history

Flamengo jerseys and funk bangers in the best amateur creations of the aughts

giant snakes and monstruous fish at the margins of the amazon river

Brazilian representation in video games works very much like in hollywood movies. In the 90s, when movies were obsessed with the Amazon rainforest and Anaconda snakes, videogames followed suit, with characters like Blanka from the Street Fighter series — probably the most well-known brazilian character — a kid who fell from a plane and inexplicably became a green creature from contact with chlorophyll and electric eels; or Rikuo, from Darkstalkers, another amazonian creature inspired by horror movies, in this case 1954’s Creature from the Black Lagoon.

With the rise of favela movies like City of God and Elite Squad, Hollywood had to adapt again, giving birth to bastardizations like Incredible Hulk and Fast Five — which despite Toretto’s “This is Brazil” shout, was actually filmed in Puerto Rico. This change from jungle to slums also occurred in games, in Call of Duty maps, or in Assassin’s Creed 3, the most ignorant example, which takes place in a version of São Paulo where everything is covered in litter, illegal MMA competitions are the main form of entertainment and people ride the subway in bathing suits whilst drinking from enormous bottles and speaking with american accents. A recreation so oblivious and absurd that even Ubisoft had to later apologize.

Those representations come from an idea of a certain otherness, based in the same dualities that permeate colonial thinking: Normal and exotic. Safe and dangerous. Civilization and barbarism. There’s a need to retake the narratives and create our own gaming history, but how can you do that without the necessary knowledge, funds and tech? That’s where mods come in.

For many years Brazil wasn’t really a part of the gaming industry. Companies didn’t have offices here, or any interest really, so we were left to our devices. As shown in the documentary Paralelos, what this meant was a great freedom to explore outside of legal boundaries. In the late 80s and 90s, like in most of the global south, our most popular consoles were Famiclones — alternative versions of the NES — since the original one was scarcely available and very expensive. Some games popular at the time were localizations that included popular characters in our culture, like Turma da Mônica no Castelo do Dragão, a Wonderboy reskin, or Chapolim x Drácula: Um duelo assustador. Other massively popular game was Futebol Brasileiro (sometimes known as Ronaldinho Soccer), a Peruvian bootleg that swapped the teams in International Superstar Soccer for local ones.

In the aughts everything grew in proportion, due to a multitude of factors. Games were now in CDs, which meant it was easier and cheaper to pirate, broadband internet was beginning to be available in major cities and a left-leaning Workers’ Party government meant people had more money to expend on non-essentials. While the rest of the world already had Playstation 3s, here it was a age of cheap PS2 games sold in street markets and LAN Houses — makeshift internet cafés located at small garages where you could play for a couple reais an hour. That’s when some mostly anonymous heroes began modding every possible game, with the help of just some online tutorials and the shared knowledge that circulated within the scene. It might seem a small feat, but to us they were the most faithful reinterpretations of our daily scenery we ever had.

An omnipresent game in this period was Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. The street stalls were flooded with versions that promised virtual recreations of almost every Brazilian city, adaptations from films like the aforementioned Elite Squad, and anime characters. Those versions almost never delivered what they promised, as PS2 modding is way harder, but sold thousands of copies nonetheless. On the PC though, the GTA modding scene was booming.

some examples of the extremely popular speaker mods

It started with translations. Then, came the cars and the soccer jerseys. After, the possibilities were endless, from paredões (walls of speakers mounted on automobiles) that look like Transformers, to an extremely popular (and slightly questionable) multiplayer mod based on football hooliganism, to even some recent attempts at total conversions. In a way, GTA SA was the perfect game for this kind of reappropriation, with it’s humorous and sunny setting in a LA riddled with structural racism, gang violence and police brutality. All it needed to become Brazil was a little effort, which still keeps the game’s mod scene alive and pulsing here.

Bahia x Corinthians in GTA Torcidas, a San Andreas masterpiece.

Another mod that portrays this kind of everyday violence — and probably the most popular internationally — is “cs_rio”, a Counter Strike map that takes place in the aforementioned city. At first glance, it might seem similar to other maps that share the same scenario in later games, but it precedes them by at least half a decade. It is in the small details that you can see the authenticity. From the makeshift soccer field, to the fact that you could get hit by stray bullets, to the soundtrack, a probidão funk similar to the ones you would actually hear in this place. Counter Strike may have started as a mod, but this was the one that really made the game for us.

meu vizinho jogou uma semente no seu quintal

“cs_rio” was ubiquitous in the lan houses. Kids used to miss school to play CS, and it’s hard to measure, but “cs_rio” was probably more popular than even maps like dust2 or aztec. The mod was so impactful that it actually motivated a nationwide ban on Counter Strike sales, with the allegation that it incentivized violence against cops and induced kids to banditism, failing to realize that the game reflected society, not the other way around.