Chavez, foes duel in computer game - Venezuela conflict plays out in 'Political Combat'

www.cnn.com Monday, March 3, 2003 Posted: 11:20 AM EST (1620 GMT)

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is among the characters in the game.

It's just a way of liberating stress, just fun. -- Jesus Barrios, creator of "Political Combat"

CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) -- Venezuelans fed up with the long-running political duel between President Hugo Chavez and his opponents can now deliver the final knockout blow themselves in a new computer game.

The game "Political Combat," pits the pugnacious leftist leader against some of his best-known political enemies, such as business leader Carlos Fernandez and union boss Carlos Ortega.

The animated characters slug it out with kicks and punches in scenarios that recreate the hot spots of political violence around Caracas from the Miraflores presidential palace to the opposition stronghold of Altamira Square.

Players can take on individual opponents or adopt different characters to battle each other in a graphic action replay of the political confrontation that has kept the world's No. 5 oil exporter in turmoil for more than a year.

Chavez, a former paratrooper, appears as a camouflage-clad figure, barely recognizable except for the distinctive wart on his forehead.

The game's creator, Jesus Barrios, insists he is not suggesting that violence will solve Venezuela's crisis. Several dozen people have been killed and several hundred hurt in violent street clashes over the last year.

"It's just a way of liberating stress, just fun," Barrios told the Caracas daily El Universal.

Early buyers seem to have less peaceful intentions. "I just can't knock that damn Chavez out ... but almost!" wrote one customer on the Web site selling the game. "I want to give a beating to that fascist Carlos Ortega!" wrote another.

In real life, Chavez seems to have won some rounds against his foes. He was as first elected in 1998, six years after he staged a botched coup bid, and went on to survive a short-lived coup last year and a grueling opposition strike in December and January.

As for his real-life foes, business chief Fernandez is under house arrest facing rebellion charges and Ortega is in hiding to avoid a detention order against him.