International Superstar Soccer (video game)

International Superstar Soccer (実況ワールドサッカーパーフェクトイレブン Jikkyō Wārudo Sakkā Pāfekuto Irebun, "Live World Soccer Perfect Eleven" in Japan) is a football video game developed by Konami for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. It is known as the best soccer game available for any 16-bit systems, mostly due to its lifelike approach, innovative for the time, that showed diversified players in the same team, with an adult look and back numbers on their respective jerseys, corresponding to real-life players of the time.

Content

Game modes

• Open Game: A simple friendly match, that can be played against the CPU, another player, or just watched as the CPU controls both teams.
• International Cup: A mode that emulates the FIFA World Cup, where teams are distributed in six groups of four teams each. The best 16 in this stage qualify to the knockout stage until the champion is known.
• World Series: A league competition where all teams play against each other in a round-robin system.
• Training: A series of challenges in different respects (dribbling, passing, shooting to the goal, defending and corner kick taking, in order), where the player must complete these challenges successfully under the established time, with the goal to sharpening the player's abilities.
• Scenario: Enables the player to select one among nine matches running their courses, in order to achieve victory before time runs out (all matches start during the second half, and the player's team may be losing or tied). A draw results in failure.
• Penalty Kick: A simple penalty kick match. Each team takes five shots alternately and, if there is no winner after these shots, they go into a sudden death round.

The game uses a password system in order to save and load International Cup and World Series matches.

Teams

The game features 26 national teams, all of which based on their real-life counterparts as of the 1994 FIFA World Cup, even in the case of non-entrants Austria, Denmark, France, Wales, Scotland and England, which are represented by their line-ups from the qualifiers. Of these teams, 20 made it into the real FIFA World Cup. Bolivia, Saudi Arabia, Greece and Morocco do not appear in the game, despite having qualified for the tournament.

References