With the business end of the season looming large and a World Cup around the corner, what better time is there to revel in the glory that is football, or SoccerTM – if you insist on being that person.
As we’ve delivered judgement on the superb FIFA 10 already – and with Pro Evo stuck in the eternal rut of adequacy – here’s a rundown of five influential Footy favourites from yesteryear:
Tecmo World Cup ’90 – Arcade
If you were old enough to crawl into an Arcade in the early-nineties then you’ll likely reminisce uncontrollably over the footage below.
Tecmo took the arcade essentials – licensed IP, simple controls, mad difficulty spikes, frenetic multiplayer, colourful visuals – and married them with a European public desperately short on quality coin-op footy titles. The resulting cabinet – whilst riddled with sure-fire scoring methods and glitches – was released just in time to coincide with a sporting tournament that many football fans recall as the greatest ever.
Riding high on that wave of nostalgia and enthusiasm, Tecmo ruled our suburban dens of iniquity until SNK – and specifically Super Sidekicks – rose to power many years later.
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ISS 64 – N64
Most Pro Evo junkies will cite International Superstar Soccer on the Playstation as being the root of Konami’s design ethos that carries through to 2009, but in truth it started well before that – on the humble N64.
Many of the facets that later bolstered the series are on display, albeit in embryonic form. Tactical nuances could be fiddled with in depth, reams of player animation provided an organic feel, and – most crucially of all – ball movement was finally separated from pre-scripted deflections, leading to a revolution in what could be expected – and eventually demanded – from football titles.
Although the team eventually let themselves down with a desperately bad PS2 launch title, enough of the ISS DNA found a home in Pro Evo to justly label it as an under-appreciated classic.
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Virtua Striker 2 – Arcade/Dreamcast
“Today’s best goal… Rainbow!” – if you’re unsure as to the emotional weight or origins of that phrase, then chances are you never happened across a Virtua Striker 2 arcade cabinet in the late 90’s.
Those of you that did, however, were treated to a game of such bewildering highs and lows that it rarely failed to make an impression. In classic Sega of yore fashion, VS2 was incredibly addictive, sinking its enthusiastic rainbow-coloured hooks into players with satisfying shooting, crossing and set pieces; along with what remains – to this day – the best penalty-taking mechanic ever created.
Midfield and defensive play were another matter entirely though, often devolving into pinball football played at an acute zoomed-in camera angle. Despite those flaws, the Dreamcast version still gets dusted off from time to time, and it’s still utterly brilliant in multiplayer.
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Libero Grande – PS1
Those of you with an affinity towards ‘Be a Pro’ in FIFA or ‘Become a Legend’ in Pro Evo might want to have a look at the footage below – if only to find out just how far ahead of its time Namco actually was.
Released back in 1997 to muted acclaim, Libero Grande took the core concept of a football game and moulded it around controlling an individual player instead of the team. A third-person over-the-shoulder camera heightened the connection to your chosen avatar, whilst the restricted viewpoint did a good job of forcing you to concentrate on every step. And boy was it tough as a result.
As divisive as they came, Libero Grande eventually bombed at retail, but will be remembered with reverence by everybody that succumbed to its novel charms. With the wholesale copying of the concept in recent times, it’s a much more palatable prospect these days, and worth checking out.
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FIFA 2000 – PC
EA’s beleaguered gameplay engine reached its peak in 1999, with FIFA 2000 perhaps the most fondly-remembered before the eventual decline and resurrection of the series.
Featuring a pre-Arsenal Sol Campbell on the cover and Robbie Williams wailing on the soundtrack, it was hard not to get carried away with FIFA’s confidence in its own evolution – and with game speed ratcheted up and spectacular goals to create from any given situation, it was as entertaining as it was shallow.
A definite must on the PC, the console versions were plagued by poor frame rate and muddy texturing.
Professional enthusiast, videogame "journalist" and all-round spectacular sofa dweller. "
