The 7 Greatest Football Videogames

FIFA President Sepp Blatter once said “Every game should have a winner. When you play cards or any other game, there's always a winner and a loser”. Clearly then, Mr Blatter has never suffered through the sheer agony of the later levels on Baggio’s Magical Kicks.

We've never been lacking in the football game department. Nowadays, we're treated to a minimum of two different games a year released across all platforms, which is more than enough to sate our desire for righting a few wrongs on the virtual pitch. And yet for every great football game released, there are more than a few awful ones to compliment them. Here, I take the more placid route of looking at seven of the best that I have ever played, bowing at the alter of digitized football perfection. So be you a seasoned PES veteran, FIFA weekender or Sensible Soccer devout, I hope this list shows you just how far that the football simulation genre has progressed, whilst at the same time helps stir up some great memories of games gone by.

Remember Kleberson? That’s the spirit.

7.) This Is Football 2003 - London Studio, PlayStation 2

The only game included here based solely on its charm, This Is Football 2003 arrived at a time when both PES and FIFA were struggling for identity, striving to announce itself as a genuine contender to the much sought after football simulation throne. And yet despite bearing the crux of having Kieron Dyer on its cover, the game was an unassuming success that earned fair praise for its steady evolution and enjoyable take on the rather unknowing genre.

You see, by 2003 the relatively short-lived This Is Football franchise had already reached its peak. With only two more major releases plus a few other assorted portable titles in its future, the series would inevitably be beaten into submission by the gradually resurgent PES and FIFA. But if it was going down, then it was going down fighting. Or should that be, diving.

Picture the scene; having just purchased This Is Football 2003 from one of the many family-owned software shops on the high street (RIP), you promptly insert the game into the PlayStation 2 console for the first time. You fire it up, marveling at the pristine graphics during the opening animations before then beginning an introductory exhibition match. However, as the game progresses and your natural desire to win escalates to the borderline frantic, you begin to panic, your fingers now clumsily digging into the shoulder buttons of the controller. It's then, that it happens. The defining moment of your This Is Football tenure. Your player...performs a deliberate dive on command.

What promptly follows is a career riddled with controversy. “How does he keep getting away with it?” you hear them say, but it doesn’t matter, for you’re a god. A diving god. And you’re going to belly-flop your way to the European Cup final even if you have to break several ribs in trying. A story told before its time, This Is Football 2003 lived its life as a villain, yet ultimately died a hero.

6.) Super Web Soccer - Radical Play, Flash

The bane of my high school workload, Super Web Soccer is a flash title for the PC that took simple digitized sprites, one-dimensional colouring and rudimentary physics to concoct a game that I can directly attribute to the ‘U’ I received in GCSE Law.

There’s just something overtly enamouring about Super Web Soccer. Whether it’s the awfully catchy synth rhythm that accompanies its loading or the shoddily looped crowd audio that follows a goal, the game is modest, undiluted fun that despite its simplicity remains remarkably impressive.

As of writing this, Super Web Soccer continues to exist on RadicalPlay.com, completely free to play and having been updated as recently as two years ago. It may have aged poorly, its mechanics now having shifted from ‘retro’ to ‘reprehensible’, but despite an inevitable degradation, it remains the definitive Flash football title, perhaps only ever to be challenged by TeaGames.com’s iconic ‘5-A-Side’Football’ or the equally enjoyable ‘Free-Kick Mania’.

5.) Actua Soccer - Gremlin Interactive, PlayStation

If there was a single sound-bite I could use to define my time with this genre, it would likely be Barry Davis MBE screaming ‘Beardsley!’ atop his lungs as I unleashed an airborne drive from 30 yards out.

The voice of the Actua Soccer series, Barry Davis was your guide through the perils of international tournament football, and as you cursed your luck following another defeat at the hands of the mighty Cameroon, you know you could at least rely on his revered words to nurse your pride back to full health in no time at all.

With little-to-no licencing and only a trio of Sheffield Wednesday players to rely on for motion capture, Actua Soccer instead became a bestseller in the UK partly due to the games British roots, and partly due to its rather appealing difficulty. But this was hardly the ‘Dark Souls’ of the virtual football world, rather it was a typically British game that saw an unbreakable focus on raw functionality lead to a wholly unique brand of gameplay. The games success even paved way for a second title, affording Gremlin Studios the chance to refine their efforts, as well as trading in the motion-capture talents of Graham ‘Journeyman’ Hyde for the much more assured style of Michael ‘Tight Hamstring’ Owen.

A third title, endorsed by Alan Shearer, would then spell curtains for the franchise, Shearer having done to the Actua franchise what he once tried to do when at the managerial helm of Newcastle United. When will it end, Alan?

4.) Sensible World of Soccer - Codemasters, Xbox 360

The most recent iteration of one of the most iconic football game series’ ever made, Sensible World of Soccer on the Xbox 360 represents the pinnacle of the Sensible Soccer series.

Having made its name on the Amiga during a period when then developers Sensible Software shipped out nine versions of the game in roughly six years, the brand has since transitioned to the PlayStation, PlayStation 2 and PC before finally reaching the Xbox 360 via the Xbox Live Arcade.

The Sensible Soccer brand on the whole is seen as one of the single most important in videogame history, with earlier games acting as catalysts for football simulation genre. Earlier versions of the game, which introduced several genre-defining features such as international tournaments, on-screen referees, the law of the game and original soundtracks are widely viewed as the most influential games in the series, with the Xbox 360 version finally providing a modern twist on the already established formula.

Having aged more gracefully than Andrea Pirlo and yet still exuding all of the class and inimitable sense of style that has helped define the series, Sensible World of Soccer is an unbreakable 4-4-2 in a world of diamond midfields and trequartista’s.

3.) FIFA 09 - EA, Xbox 360

My first FIFA title was FIFA 99. Back then, I considered it to be one of the finest games I had ever played, as the beautiful game was masterfully played-out against a backdrop of Fatboy Slim’s ‘Rockafella Skank’. But for as much as FIFA 99 was a credit to the series, the games that followed on the Xbox and PlayStation 2 painted a much different picture.

Disappointingly, they were uninspired, lacking and generally worse than their Konami counterparts. Full licencing and relatively impressive graphics were not enough to stop the game circling the drain, and as the Xbox gave way to the Xbox 360, the chance of starting anew and creating a game truly befitting of the FIFA moniker was an encouraging prospect. Unfortunately, what we got was FIFA 08, a game that was more ‘Ali Dia’ than it was ‘Gabriel Batistuta’.

So, colour me impressed when FIFA 09 arrived, bringing with it the single greatest FIFA experience I have sampled to date. Everything felt much tighter, much more responsive. Improvements to ball physics, player jostling and off-the-ball running breathed new life into the awfully tired series, whilst the introduction of the ‘collision detection’ mechanic allowed us to sample some truly mind-boggling acts of accidental homoeroticism. And although FIFA 09’s legacy has yet to completely eradicate the sporadic trend of less-than-stellar FIFA titles, the recent next-gen release of FIFA 14 has similarly revitalized the series, paving the way for a future filled with some truly spectacular FIFA games.

2.) International Superstar Soccer Pro - Konami, PlayStation

For many, Subbuteo was the first avenue for replicating the beautiful game from within the comfort of your own home. For others, it may have even been Adidas Championship Soccer on Alan Sugar’s fabled Amstrad. For me though, it was International Superstar Soccer Pro, the precursor to the entire Pro Evolution Soccer series and my introduction to the world of football videogames.

ISS was everything that you’d expect from a football game on the original PlayStation. For one thing, it was colourful. So colourful in fact that it looked as if you’d popped LSD whilst looking through a kaleidoscope, our realistic modern colour palette merely an afterthought. It was vibrant, too. An international tournament atmosphere during every match was met by embellished celebrations after every goal, be it last-gasp winner or consolation. Most of all though, it was fluid football in its earliest form. Sure, the ball stuck to the foot of your player like it was an extension of your body, but next to a level of depth that was completely absent in any other football game as well as player form and an accurate depiction of the rules, ISS quickly became the biggest football title of its time.

Unlike modern PES iterations, ISS could even boast full kit licences and team crests, however every player in the game was unlicensed, leading a very young and impressionable me to assume that these were actually the real players. “That Fenwick lad is pretty good” I’d tell my schoolmates, only to receive many, many looks of confusion.

1.) Pro Evolution Soccer 6 - Konami, PlayStation 2

John Terry and Adriano were on the cover of this one. No, I don’t get it either. Regardless, PES 6 was and still is the greatest football game I have ever played, combining the delicately honed Pro Evolution gameplay that has been a staple of the series since ISS with updated graphics and a whole host of modes to lose yourself in.

At the forefront of PES 6’s success was its ‘Master League’ mode, a game type that allowed you to create a completely custom team full of generic players and build a successful club around them. An inadvertent replication of the modern day MLS expansion process, Master League provided a level of versatility completely foreign to many of its current counterparts, seamlessly merging impressive customization features with in-depth football management.

Who could forget names like Castolo, Stremer and Miranda, a trio of PES stalwarts that helped characterize a game built on the philosophy of complete player freedom, and a group of players synonymous with everything that made PlayStation era PES great.

Things haven’t gone as smoothly for the PES series since PES 6, with its greater emphasis on keeping up with FIFA ironically only helping it fall further and further behind. What once was a series that sought to innovate rather than imitate is now a shadow of its former self, gradually dying a slow and painful death despite its fledgling attempts at self-preservation.

But although the clouds ahead are unlikely to part anytime soon, the extended Pro Evolution Soccer series from ISS to PES 6 remains a thing of beauty. Whereas Sensible Soccer laid the groundwork, PES built upon it, creating a wealth of games that maintained an impressive consistency over the course of more than a decade in the sun.