Cris faces monsters

Manchester United winger Cristiano Ronaldo is used to dodging soccer players.

In Underworld Football, a new game designed for mobile phones and unveiled Sunday, he'll be playing against monsters to save the sport from extinction.

In the game, an age of darkness is threatening soccer and the winger must use his skills to lead a team of humans against hordes of scary creatures, including ogres, demons, ice trolls and skeletons, to rescue the sport from doom.

Skeletons that hide under the earth, supersonic green devils, trolls of ice and demonic goblins that have the ability to freeze time. This is the setting in which Cristiano Ronaldo and his team of humans will fight, in an attempt to save the world of football.

He, the hero on real pitches, fights a fantasy universe, but using a ball with and the tricks of the Portuguese player that will make the enemies explode. This is “Cristiano Ronaldo Underworld Football”, a game for mobile phones developed by YDreams Entertainment in association with Gestifute and PolarisSports.

The game was launched late in the afternoon this Sunday, in the Pavilion of Knowledge in Lisbon, and was attended by the Minister of Science, Technology and Higher Education, Mariano Gago, and by the national coach, Luiz Felipe Scolari. Jorge Mendes, owner of Gestifute, was also present at the event.

"I though it was a great idea", confirms Cristiano Ronaldo, who really enjoyed having seen the images of the presentation. "The game is heavily identified with me, and I feel very proud that this is a 100 per cent Portuguese project", he added, before expressing the wish that this would be "just the first game of many" and that he hoped "that children will have a lot of fun playing it". Just as he will himself.

Minister Mariano Gago considered that top competition is not exclusive to football, but that it also applies to science, and was pleased with the fact that Cristiano Ronaldo "has given his face to this game", calling attention to the importance of science. "Before we came in, he told me that he wasn't so bad at science. However, after seeing what he has done, I would add that he must have been pretty good, because he is an example to children. You have to study to make a success of your life, and this game is the result of a lot of work".

A winning team. That was how Luís Correia, of Gestifute, referred to the association between the technological capacity of YDreams, the knowledge of Gestifute and PolarisSports and the popularity and notoriety of Cristiano Ronaldo.

The game, as explained by Eduardo Dias, of YDreams, was developed around the figure of Cristiano Ronaldo and combines fantasy with the fantastic. It comes as a game of five-a-side football in which the team of humans, led by Cristiano Ronaldo, will face, at different levels, four fantasy teams, each one of them with super powers. Cristiano Ronaldo has to eliminate each one of them to acquire these special powers. The objective is to save the world of football.

A journalist observed that he hadn't seen, in the pictures of the game's launch, the captain's armband, and asked the Portuguese international if that had been overlooked. Cristiano Ronaldo burst out laughing. "The team is mine, and I control it - but it's still early. What will be, will be. In the game, of course". The room, which was lit so that it looked like the set of a mobile phone game, shook and applauded.

The download of the game – which costs four euros – is now accessible at the www.cristianoronaldogame.com website, which can also be directly accessed from the respective link on the home page of the Gestifute site – and on the network of Vodafone, the operator that has exclusive distribution rights until the 31st of December. From January onwards, the game will be available from the three operators in the Portuguese market. Throughout next year, the game will be distributed around the World.

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