While We’re Winners: A Virtual Soccer Guide

Good to see that every Stranger writer has been won over by the 2-0 Sounders FC. Me, I typically can’t keep up with soccer unless we’re talking about the peak intensity of World Cup games. But I do have a soft spot for soccer video games, because the scores are higher, the game lengths are shorter, and slide tackles happen every four seconds. As if 7th grade Pee-Wee soccer went on forever.

So I used the Sounders as an excuse to dig through all my old soccer games for your consideration—because once a week is too long to wait for another goaaaaaaaaaal. Broken down by three genres.

Old-school: Lots of titles came out in the ’80s and early ’90s, but Americans didn’t see many of ’em—might’ve been different if Bo Jackson played soccer, but alas. The best European footie hits of the era included Kick Off, with the “innovation” that the soccer ball wasn’t stuck to the carrier’s feet, and Sensible World of Soccer, a game as dinky and polite as its title implies. The latter recently saw re-release on Xbox Live, complete with misnamed MLS teams—uh, weird. Both of those were solid for the era, if a little super-speedy.

Of course, Japan saw weird, Engrish-titled games like Tecmo Cup Soccer Game. It was a soccer RPG, so you didn’t control the action directlly, but rather picked moves (pass! dribble! flop!) from a menu mid-game like Final Fantasy. No super-anime headbutt attacks against Frenchmen, sadly.

Before EA Sports really took off with its FIFA series, Americans’ best option was Nintendo World Cup (above), a slow, glitchy, and cartoony game that happened to let you knock opponents on their ass by aiming kicked balls into their chests. Also, every other shot was a bicycle kick, which meant every player in the game was like the guy who practices his sweet moves at Roosevelt High School on weekends.

Modern sim: The FIFA series and its niche offshoots (Australian Rules Football, Rugby, Drunken Darts+Curling) has been dominant around the world for over 15 years, and it’s fine. Had a good transition from 2D to 3D, has excitable British narrators, has real player names, controls smoothly. But it has spent a long time splitting the difference between quick, arcadey play and realistic, slow soccer. I figure, if you care enough for the semi-sim style of FIFA, you should go all in with Pro Evolution Soccer. I won’t lie; its training mode takes an hour. There are better ways to spend an hour (like going outside with a soccer ball). But learning PES’s juggles, jukes, pass-aheads and other terms I don’t understand is worth the time, because they make it possible to emulate soccer’s real pace—slow builds to goals, patient waits to strike. Two-player games of this are so insane, they almost make 2-1 scores tolerable.

For true self-loathers, there’s the Wii version of PES—on top of the complex move system, you have to point at the screen for precise passes, lobs, and redirections for your teammates. Brutal.

Modern arcade: Soccer never had a quick-paced, “extreme” version in arcades like NFL Blitz or NBA Jam—surely “Pele’s Red Card Rampage” would’ve done well? Sega got close with its Virtua Striker series, which is the UK’s equivalent to Golden Tee in terms of being found in any hooligan pub. It’s a snappy, quick game of soccer, but really, the only draw was its 3D style back in the ancient days of 1994. And that it was easily playable while shnockered.

I could go on with the arcade-soccer history lesson, but we may as well fast forward to Mario Strikers Charged for the Wii. Not much funny about this one; it’s fast, high-scoring, full of cartoony critters beating the stuffing out of each other, and loaded with just enough maneuvers to keep the gameplay fresh, not cumbersome. The super-shot mechanic is particularly interesting, in which a successful try turns the game into a shooting gallery where one player aims shots at the screen, and the other aims “hands” to block them.

MLS teams in video games: Always sucky compared to Manchester U. Dunno why they even bother putting those teams side-by-side.