11. Sega Virtua Striker 2002 (2002) - Sega - Gamecube
This is a kind of honorable mention because in those years for me in the middle of the console generation leap there was a void in the genre. This game didn´t fill that void, but I found an interesting proposal. It had excellent graphics for its time and it had a sort of story mode (PES master league type) as the coach of a team looking for friendly matches and planning trips with the national team. Unfortunately, the gameplay was poor compared with games such as International Superstar Soccer years ago, there was not even a button to do sprints.
10. FIFA International Soccer (1994) - EA Sports - Sega CD
Here I kill two birds with one stone, the important was definitely the FIFA International Soccer for Sega Genesis which was a decent game and introduced EA Sports to the soccer video game business. But the game I remember most was one that came a little later for the Sega CD, which was very similar to the Genesis one, but with sounds and songs with Dolby Surround CD quality. It was really impressing because it had cheers and chants from actual recordings in digital quality, to hear that in a game in 1994 was unprecedented and also the game quality was not bad. This was the introduction to the game, more than impressive in those years when the multimedia revolution was just beginning:
9. Nintendo World Cup (1990) - Nintendo - NES
Another honorable mention for the first soccer game apart from being very well done, it included the Mexican National soccer teamr. It was not a very serious game type (there was no referee if I remember correctly), but the graphics and gameplay were something never seen before in soccer games.
8. Pro Evolution Soccer (Winning Eleven) 2009 (2008) - Konami - PlayStation 3
With this game I thought that after the series got lost with the console generation leap, this was the first game that really seemed like belonging to this generation, it also regained the lost balance from Winning Eleven 8 (PES 4) from my point of view. The inclusion of Christian Martinoli and Luis Garcia as commentators in the North American version was great. Luis Garcia's comments seem to me the best performance of any video game sports commentator to date. Apart from that it was the first PES to include the license for the UEFA Champions League and thereby it allowed Konami to also compete in licenses to the EA Sports FIFA series.
7. Super Soccer (1992) - Nintendo - Super NES
In years of scarcity of good soccer videogames, Super Soccer was a very fresh proposal, the gameplay was not bad even though you still moved some of the defensive players together in a row, the graphics were very respectable and is one of the few games I remember playing that you viewed from behind the goal.
6. International Superstar Soccer Deluxe (1996) - Konami - Super NES
In times of economic crisis in Mexico, these games were an oasis in the desert. ISS Deluxe improved what seemed unbeatable, it´s one of those improvements that you don´t notice when you begin playing the game, but after a while you go back to the original and don´t understand how you had fun with that. ISS Deluxe has an improved engine of feints, it also introduced the concept of giving effect to shots on goal without forgetting the famous movement "incredible control" in which you lob the ball over the goalkeeper.
5. International Superstar Soccer 98 (1998) - Konami - Nintendo 64
The level of detail in this game was great, it also introduced a very powerful concept and rarely seen before on consoles, the ability to edit player names and store them in your memory pack. With the advent of the internet era I remember that I gave myself the task of editing almost all teams to include real player names. The graphics were stunning and the gameplay was superb, you could even make up fantasy plays. I have a video out there of a goal I did with Ronaldo in YouTube.
4. Winning Eleven 8 (Pro Evolution Soccer 4) (2005) - Konami - PC
This game came a few years after the death of ISS, in which Konami promised to unite the best of both franchises into one, but that unity did not seem to arrive until this game. It was definitely a game with more depth of gameplay and simulation-type elements unlike ISS which was more arcade style. However it did manage to stay funny. Items such as the Master League and the inclusion of Spanish and Italian league gave an interesting feeling that this was the next step in the evolution of soccer games. Patches for the PC version that included all uniforms, names, etc were simply superb.
3. International Superstar Soccer (1995) - Konami - Super NES
International Superstar Soccer changed the way we see soccer video games forever. I think it was the one of the videogames I liked the most in my life. The level of detail was something that soccer videogamers did not know until then, to see Hugo Sanchez avatar playing with the Mexican national team provoked immediate orgasm, you could even see the number of the shirt during the game, that was not something you saw everyday. The photographers falled when a shot fell near their location. Accompanied by these sublime graphics and level of detail was a superb gameplay: Sprints, short passes, lob passes, shots. The game was a masterpiece for soccer and videogames fans.
2. International Superstar Soccer 64 (1997) - Konami - Nintendo 64
With stunning graphics of the Nintendo 64 came ISS 64. Seeing these superb graphics in magazines and the internet I thought it was impossible that the gameplay could be maintained. And indeed it did not maintain, it was better! It introduced the concept of through pass that even today no respectable soccer game misses that feature. Before that no one had done it. The graphics were a poem maintaining that level of gameplay we loved in the Super NES games, but with 3D graphics. You could see goal replays from any angle. You could select which camera you wanted to play. Things that are so common today, but completely new before the era of polygonal graphics. A funny thing about this game is that my grandfather went through the TV and thought it was a real soccer game on TV and not a video game. He asked us who was playing. The graphics were that good.
1. FIFA World Cup South Africa 2010 (2010) - EA Sports - PlayStation 3
For me the best soccer game to date. Obviously if someone says is FIFA 10 or FIFA 11 the best, we're definitely talking about essentially the same game. I picked this one maybe because of the love I have for the World Cup. The gameplay since FIFA 08 evolved into the simulation type to compete on equal terms against the Pro Evolution Soccer series. In this game you can play the world cup in South Africa or play from the qualifying round to the finals. It has 199 countries to choose from. The level of detail was spectacular and was updated as the World Cup progressed. In the quarterfinal round it was the last update. As an example, Javier Hernandez's jersey in the first update before the World Cup had Chicharito on the back, in the last update they put J. Hernandez which was how he used the jersey during the world cup. At that level of detail I mean. Scenarios of the World Cup is something taken from the ISS games and is a great feature. They were updated daily adding 2 scenarios for each game in the real world cup. Apart from hundreds of scenarios that come from real games during qualifying for the World Cup. All this coupled with a robust game engine as the FIFA 10 engine created for me the best soccer game to date.
