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International Superstar Soccer 64 PAL release: 1st June 1997 NA release: 22nd August 1997 JP release: 18th September 1997 Developer: Konami Publisher: Konami N64 Magazine Score: 92% The international version of J.League Perfect Striker was a brand that has changed over time International Superstar Soccer later became Pro Evolution Soccer and its reputation has decreased over time. For the N64, though, ISS64 was lightyears ahead of FIFA 64. While the latter is clunky and broken, ISS64 is a joy to play. The biggest let-down with ISS64 is the teams. In this, you only have access to International squads, all with slightly odd names due to not having licensing (although FIFA 64 never told you who you were controlling anyway). You can still play matches, leagues and tournaments, along with a practice mode and 16 scenarios to play though, so there’s still a lot more to do. But it all comes down to the gameplay, and that’s where ISS64 shines. Passing feels spot on, especially the running pass where you kick the ball ahead of the next player, so they’re running forward to catch it. Basic moves are on the main buttons while more advanced ones are on the c-buttons, so everything works really well. The key thing about it is how it’s very tactics-based, you need to plan your lines of attack up the pitch, rather than trying to just run down the middle. While FIFA 64 has the appeal of playing as league teams, ISS 64 is just a much, much nicer game to play. Remake or Remaster? Konami definitely need to look back at this before proceeding with the mess that is “eFootball”. Official ways to get the game. There is no official way to get ISS64

I'm sat watching the Switch E3 2019 Direct and a Silksong trailer pops up with Coming Soon attached to it.

What do you mean? Breath of the Wild has an epic narrative! Set 100 years in the past and only visible in cutscenes, but still! (to be fair, I mean, it is an 11/10 trailer) I mean, they risked house fires and getting found out for daylight robbery by selling egregiously priced cardboard origami sets you could use to strap your multiple hundred £ console to your face with this thing: So, are we thinking paper airplanes next gen or..?

It really was/ is. Lofting and holding onto one-twos, having the receiving player make a run before releasing a through ball*, Z trigger + direction to apply curl, step overs and more. So much depth, a dream to play. The scenarios were a great inclusion, too. No mention of Tony Gubba's commentary? Big head mode made for a good laugh and all... to alleviate the tears when your controller pak data corrupted. Gameplay > licenses. Thanks to the smooth motion capture it looked realistic enough if you squinted slightly at the TV unlike Fifa 64 and/or 99 about which NMS said it looks like the players are running to the bog. * I'm possibly listing refinements to one-twos and through balls from ISS 98, not sure any more. Coq sportif.

Running around?

@Dcubed Embracer also own Asmodee, a board game company that owns the majority of the modern board game market. Edit: for a view of their size, they were purchased for over $3 billion.

What a fuck up of epic proportions. Insane just how much of the traditional video game industry is just getting destroyed as Embracer impodes on itself. The video game industry is so fucked. We're gonna be looking at the next great console market crash very soon. And not just that, but these idiots are also gonna end up taking down Middle Earth Enterprises and Dark Horse Comics along with them too. Crazy to think that both companies involved with the LOTR movies will end up getting killed by both Unity (Weta) and Embracer (Middle Earth Enterprises) both imploding at the same time!

Wonder if that includes the Switch exclusive stuff? Edit: It does.

Ah, that's not the series I was thinking about. I thought you were talking about X-Men 92.

Yeah, those games do err more extreme; but I like the balance that ISS has between arcade & realism. Mario Strikers Charged Football is the best as far as full-on cartoony football goes though I'm just not a fan of full-on simulation football, it's just all a bit dull to me. But sometimes you don't want full-on looney tunes, which is where ISS strikes that perfect balance for me. Edit: I guess a closer match to ISS would be Virtua Striker 2 & 3 for the Dreamcast and GCN respectively… but those games lack the elegance and control fluidity of the N64 ISS games.

Yeah they've had a long history with quite a few alternate realities thrown in there. There was a comic series though which was just a continuation of the animated series. It got an omnibus release a few months ago.

Still one of the most deceiving trailers I have ever seen from a game. I was expecting an epic narrative and what I got was....well...yeah. Problem is the cost of things now is so out of whack that if you do try to experiment and thigs go wrong it becomes a VERY costly affair. It's why most in the industry play it safe now, for better or worse.

That's a wonderful write-up @Dcubed. You certainly know these football games a lot more than I do. I already feel like your post about ISS 98 will absolutely dwarf what I have to say about it. You're also probably going to hate what I have to say about FIFA Road to World Cup 98 (I think it's down to the more arcade-like nature of that game for me, before FIFA went on to try and move closer to ISS, but not being as good at it). It seems like some of these sports games haven't so much as evolved, but rather changed completely over time. I do think it would be neat to see some games like this to get a "remaster" of sorts, an updated version running on modern hardware. We got NHL '94 Rewind in 2020 and then that was it.

Yeah, those additions do nothing for me either.

A legend within the genre. It's truly remarkable just how much Konami got it right on their first try. And really? This game was simply never bettered, even arguably by its own sequels. It's the perfect blend of realistic simulation and un-realistic arcade style footy fun. It's fast & snappy and its control mechanics both instantly accessible and surprisingly in-depth; with plenty of options available for both tactical gameplay (such as through-passing) and player expression (such as the functionally pointless keepy-upy moves). Anyone can pick up the controller and immediately understand how to play; the controls expertly mapped to the N64's buttons in a shockingly intuitive fashion (c-up? Through ball, makes perfect sense). Joe Casual could even get by just understanding that A passes and B shoots; with the more complex controls being mapped to the c-buttons for more seasoned players. The AI is also tuned so well. Each team feels distinct and like their real world counterparts (French players feigning fouls? Yup, that's here! Brazil being showoffs that taunt you with keepy upppies? Yup, here too). You can really tell that the developers understood and LOVED the sport. And though the game lacks any sort of licensing? It perfectly captures the spirit of football. From the general presentation & atmosphere, to the gameplay movement mechanics, to the super upbeat and catchy music, it just puts you in the mood for a kickabout... Admit it, you wanna play it right now And of course, we have to mention the commentator. Utterly ludicrous, massively entertaining and truly legendary. The ISS64 commentator is so well loved within retro gaming circles that he had his own Twitter account! And even till this day, people are still making videos where the ISS 64 commentator is dubbed over classic football matches (this one here is just brilliant ). It really can't be overstated just how ahead of its time this game was. When this game launched in 1997, it completely blew away every other football game. It was basically a full generational leap over the competition in terms of presentation, and played like an absolute dream by comparison. Even putting aside the disastrous Fifa 64 for a moment (a game so bad that you could literally win by letting the goalie hold onto the ball until the match timer ran out), its contemporary competition looked and felt positively ropey by comparison... Not (FIFA Road To World Cup 98 - PS1) Even (Sega Worldwide Soccer 97 - Saturn) Close (ISS Pro - PS1) It's also worth noting that the ISS games on the PS1 were made by a completely different team at KCE Tokyo (while the N64 games were made by Major A productions at KCE Osaka). The difference in quality between the ISS games for N64 and PS1 is staggering, and when people talk about how great ISS once was? They're specifically referring to the Major A games for the N64 here. The 3rd N64 game (ISS 2000) would end up being the last of its kind however, as the N64 series would end up morphing into what became known as Pro Evolution Soccer as we moved into the following generation; but while the Pro Evo games became well loved in their own right? They would end up going further down the simulation route and away from that blend of sim & arcade that defined the N64 titles. This means that the three N64 ISS titles (64, 98 and 2000) stand as still being unique and well loved within the sports genre as a whole. If there is any real flaw to hold against ISS 64 however? It comes down to that classic Konami cheapness we've come to expect from them as a publisher. Now, I'm not referring to the lack of licenses here (that actually gives the game a rather unique, kitschy charm), but rather the lack of on-cartridge saving. This is 1997, and Konami had the gall to require the player to purchase and use an N64 Memory Pak to save your game at all; these things are notoriously flaky and prone to failure, which unfortunately makes playing the longer seasons an exercise in frustration that really isn't the fault of the game itself. Like... come on. Konami were already being cheap by using a 64mbit/8MB N64 cart with this one (which was the cheapest cartridge size available around the console's launch), but to not even include on-cart flash for game saves is insulting. Just like with Castlevania Dracula X, Konami went for the cheapest and nastiest cartridge that they could get away with, and the game suffers for it. But luckily, football games like this don't really have a lot of unique art assets (it's essentially just a couple of stadium models, one set of repeated textures and a handful of character models with some pallette swaps); so the actual game itself doesn't really suffer for the small cartridge size. If anything, the majority of the cartridge space likely went to the audio presentation (cartridge space well spent); so thankfully it's not a repeat of what happened with Castlevania Dracula X here. Finally, I'd like to give a special shoutout to the Scenario Mode; which pits the player against a set of specific challenges that are meant to represent famous historical footy matches. They're pretty simple affairs, like being forced to play England when they're down 2-4 against Germany in the last 30 mins and you're tasked to somehow claw back victory following a free kick; but they add a nice single player diversion away from the main league mode and multiplayer. ISS 98 would go on to expand on this idea with its larger Scenario mode and its excellent Training mode; both of which are amongst the best things about that game, but more on that when @Cube eventually gets round to ISS 98 in a few months or so. Still, it's things like this that make ISS 64 stand out within the football and even sports genres as a whole. ISS 64 isn't just a game that was well ahead of its time, it's also a game that has stood the test of time. It's still one of the best footy games ever made, and while it's far from the most realistic take on the sport, few other football games have ever managed to capture the real magic of the beautiful game like ISS 64 did. It's Miyamoto approved for a damn good reason, what a howler of a game!

Rumours are flying around that a SoP will be shown this week. If true, nothing really interesting for me there.

Very Strong start for Tekken 8. I'll pick it up eventually. No way I'm paying £60 for it. I see some Argos stores were selling it for £35 over the weekend for some reason. If that was the regular price I may have shelled out for it.

I was looking for something to watch whilst grinding gold on Smash Bros and so sat and watched a few of the old Feb Directs (skipped the Animal Crossing one). Man, a lot of these were really strong showings. It makes me wonder just what will be shown if they do indeed drop a Feb Direct this year. I also sat and watched the Switch reveal conference. It was so well done and they perfectly explained the concept and how it worked, which was a huge departure from the confusing mess that was the Wii U reveal. I watched each of these events with EZA commentary. It's crazy looking back at how young they all look but then the Switch reveal was 7 years ago now.

Regardless of how you feel about Part II, the music

Nintendo eShop new releases (week 04) The fourth week of releases. A selection of new titles are now available on the Nintendo Switch eShop. Check the article for the full roundup. - - - - - Thanks to @Josh64 for the recently posted articles, which include... The Cub Launch Trailer Xenoblade Chronicles 3 Ver. 2.2.0 Princess Peach: Showtime! Transformation Trailer Pastel Pink Joy-Con Controllers Announced Fae Farm Demo Available Now Free Update Coming to Super Kiwi 64! Online Communication in Wii U and Nintendo 3DS Titles Ends April 8th New Spirits Arrive in Smash Bros. Ultimate! F-Zero 99 Update Splatoon 3: Expansion Pass Wave 2: Side Order launches February 22nd! The Pokémon Company Address Palworld Princess Peach Showtime Bonus Items See you next week!

Women...

Well Ross' Taken reboot didn't last long. I think he tried stirring too soon and I'm not sure what happened at the end of the Round Table, Harry mentions one thing (couldn't grasp it in his quick accent) and suddenly it's how Andrew wouldn't use a certain word. It's made Zack's ego go way up, as "he's always known!", but gets proven right on the one day he's actually correct. I think people are slowly starting to wise up to Harry though, I think once they consider that Ross wouldn't really murder his mum, things may start falling into place.

Looks good

I haven't played Tekkens 1-7, will I still be able to follow the plot of this one? Also, i don't plan on playing this one either.

The hits just keep on coming.

Another Embracer-owned studio doing layoffs: https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/5/23989128/new-world-interactive-layoffs-embracer-group-insurgency-sandstorm

Merry Christmas to Free Radical.