SEATTLE (Reuters) - If you missed out on the tear gas, rubber-pellet fire and window-smashing fun of Seattle's 1999 anti-World Trade Organization (news - web sites) riots, cheer up, you can still play the video game.
Thanks to Rockstar Games, a unit of New York-based Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. (NasdaqNM:TTWO - news), would-be hooligans can vent their anti-corporate venom by punching out riot cops and looting storefronts from the comfort of their own sofas.
Rockstar's Web site, http://www.rockstargames.com, urges players of the game ``State of Emergency'' to ``smash up everything and everyone in order to destabilize the ATO,'' the oppressive American Trade Organization and its riot troop henchmen.
Using any item available -- ``pipes, bricks and benches, even dismembered body parts'' -- players are exhorted to keep the riot going as long as possible.
Preview images show one rioter cowering on the pavement as helmeted cops pummel him, buildings in flames and leggy, skimpily dressed young women striking martial arts poses.
Dick Lilly, a spokesman for Seattle Mayor Paul Schell, said such a game sends a bad message to children and distorts the message of peaceful protesters.
``It demeans the valid concerns of the people, almost all of whom demonstrated peacefully during the WTO event, and it glorifies the violence of those who behaved unlawfully,'' Lilly said. ``Free speech should not be equated with law breaking. A game like this may wrongfully make that connection.''
A spokesman for Rockstar denied the forthcoming game was in any way linked to Seattle or the WTO.
``As with any fictional work, any similarity to real world events is purely coincidental and unintentional. In fact, the game has been in development since September 1998, so it predates the demonstrations against the World Trade Organization,'' the statement said.
Seattle police arrested more than 500 people after thousands of protesters, claiming free trade hurts workers and the environment, shut down WTO meetings in the fall of 1999 by blocking city streets.
On the fringes of the protests, vandals wrecked cars and windows, lit bonfires and threw rocks and bottles back at the hundreds of heavily armored police officers who responded by spraying noxious gas and rubber pellets into the crowds.