Your first football game (or earliest memories)

[FC Bayern]

As the title suggests, where did you football game journey start (or if you got into football/soccer games later, what were your first games).

For me, I got a Sega Mega Drive on my 7th birthday, so my earliest games were Fifa International Soccer up to Fifa 97, the terrible World Cup 94, European Club Soccer, which I found impossible to play, even now, and one of my favourites, Ultimate Soccer. After that, it was the PS1 with Fifa RTWC 98 & ISS Pro Evo (and eventually developing a love for This Is Football). So now you guys. What were your first five years of football (or other) gaming?

(Apologies if a similar thread has already been made, but I'd a quick search and couldn't find anything)

 

[Tom]

Either MicroProse Soccer (fun fact: to this day it’s the first thing I think of whenever I read or hear anything related to Oman) or Emlyn Hughes International Soccer, both on the Commodore 64.

 

[shumway]

Either MicroProse Soccer (fun fact: to this day it’s the first thing I think of whenever I read or hear anything related to Oman) or Emlyn Hughes International Soccer, both on the Commodore 64.

I played MicroPose Soccer as well at a friend's house who had a C64 back then. When I read the thread title I immediately thought of Oman, no kidding,
And we played Peter Shilton's Soccer, where you could only controll the keeper.

Later some other friend had an Amiga 500, where we played Kick off all night long,

My very first football game that I owned was Konami Hyper Soccer on the NES.

 

[*aLe]

The first football game my parents bought me was ‘FIFA International Soccer’ for the GameBoy.
I used to absolutely love that game, and let’s be honest, for a 1993 game it was pretty groundbreaking in some aspects (even if the GameBoy version wasn’t obviously the best version of the game out there).

Then, it’s been only FIFA (including the abysmal version released for the Nintendo 64) until 1999 (apart from some Super Nintendo ‘ISS Deluxe’ at a friend’s place), year in which I got my first Konami game, ‘ISS 98’ for the Nintendo 64.
I didn’t have a PlayStation so I missed out on all the ‘ISS Pro Evolution’ and early PES games unfortunately.

 

[FC Bayern]

The first football game my parents bought me was ‘FIFA International Soccer’ for the GameBoy.
I used to absolutely love that game, and let’s be honest, for a 1993 game it was pretty groundbreaking in some aspects (even if the GameBoy version wasn’t obviously the best version of the game out there).

Then, it’s been only FIFA (including the abysmal version released for the Nintendo 64) until 1999 (apart from some Super Nintendo ‘ISS Deluxe’ at a friend’s place), year in which I got my first Konami game, ‘ISS 98’ for the Nintendo 64.
I didn’t have a PlayStation so I missed out on all the ‘ISS Pro Evolution’ and early PES games unfortunately.

I feel some of they N64 games were better than what the PS1 had tbh, even if just graphically.

 

[*aLe]

I feel some of they N64 games were better than what the PS1 had tbh, even if just graphically.

Graphically, I believe it's true.
In terms of gameplay, I think that the PS games played better than their Nintendo 64 counterparts.
So, for example: ISS Pro > ISS 64 in terms of gameplay, ISS 64 > ISS Pro in terms of graphics

 

[Carles P.]

Since I'm not sure which football game I started with, I'll just name a few.

Those would be ISS Pro and Fifa 98. So that was my very first contact with virtual football.

In general, I probably started later than many others here at Evoweb.
I was born in 1984 in the GDR, and after the fall of the Berlin Wall, modern stuff like that didn't exist yet, at least not as late as elsewhere. I think we didn't get the ‘internet’ until the early 2000s. So sometime after 2000.

My first football games were Fifa99, ISS Pro and some UCL game whose name I no longer remember. I bought them with my first pocket money. All on the very first Playstation.

I played Fifa 98 at a mate's house back then and immediately got hooked!

So mods didn't start for me until around 2010 or later. It was also a bit of a pain to download mods with a few GB using a 256K modem + data volume.

Ah, those were the days! School in the morning, playing real-life football in the fresh air in the afternoon, and then home to the PS.

Unfortunately, I'm not at all sure if I'm putting all this in the right chronological order.

 

[simogto90]

My dad given away to me,at Christmas 1996, a couple of used SNES games: F-zero and Super Soccer which was my first football game ever.
My second one was in 2000, a cracked fifa99 for PS1 given away to me by my sister's First boyfriend.
Anyways My love for football games start with pes4 in 2004

 

[Chris Davies]

Sensible Soccer on my trusty Amiga 600 is the first that I remember, when it was released in 1994.

There was a demo disk that had a "special edition" on - featuring Norwich vs Man United (the team that Jon Hare of Sensible Software supported, vs everyone's favourite/despised team), but also, Apples vs Oranges (based on the old English phrase "like comparing apples and oranges", because the developers were silly sausages).

I absolutely loved it, and when playing with friends it was even better - so I had to buy it (and each special edition that followed, e.g. "European Championships Edition", which included updates to the real rules, such as the Backpass Rule).

I loved the gameplay, and loved playing tournaments with friends, but when Sensible World of Soccer launched with a "Manager Mode" (and even player ratings / special attributes that made a real difference), I was absolutely hooked. It took over my life.

I played other games around the time - my friends had PCs and games like Actual Soccer, which was magical graphics-wise. But even 3D graphics couldn't tear me away from SWOS*.

...until my brother-in-law got a PlayStation and invited me over to play ISS Pro Evolution. At that point, my life changed forever.

PES became a religious experience - a much more "serious" game, slower, more grounded, and every input you made translating absolutely perfectly to what happened on-screen.

(Including what would happen if you tried to make an audacious pass with a donkey of a defender.)

It upset me that there were no lower leagues, no Tranmere Rovers - the database was a fraction of the size of SWOS - but there was no going back after ISS Pro Evo.

(He also had FIFA 98: Road to World Cup, and it just cemented my opinion that FIFA - which I'd tried on a friend's Mega Drive years before - was a "silly" attempt at a football game, but lovely to look at.)

After that, my family bought a PC and I bought FIFA 99, purely because of a rumour at school that if you had a 3DFX Voodoo card, you could play snowy matches. It turned out to be a lie.

(The PC was deemed a better purchase than a PS1 due to having homework applications and more power anyway - so I made the most of it.)

Either way, I went to my local internet café to download some editing tools for FIFA 99 (to add my beloved Tranmere) and discovered a community (Soccer Gaming) that was incredibly warm and helpful. I still remember Chau Le, who made a lot of those tools and taught me how they worked (so much hexadecimal work).

After many, many months of work (and hundreds of floppy disks being trawled back and forth from my house to the internet café and back), I ended up making and publishing the "English Super Patch (E.S.P.)" for FIFA 99 (after getting dogs' abuse for not releasing it on the date I'd planned to), with kits/graphics by a guy called Kristian Borten.

I was told at the time it was the first ever patch released for a football game, in terms of a massive license-adding graphics-changing package. How true that is I have no idea.

But I've never really stopped being a massive game-modding dweeb since.

* In-fact, the only other game that felt "magic" at the time was Championship Manager, which didn't even use "graphics" beyond text.

 

[FC Bayern]

Sensible Soccer on my trusty Amiga 600 is the first that I remember, when it was released in 1994.

There was a demo disk that had a "special edition" on - featuring Norwich vs Man United (the team that Jon Hare of Sensible Software supported, vs everyone's favourite/despised team), but also, Apples vs Oranges (based on the old English phrase "like comparing apples and oranges", because the developers were silly sausages).

I absolutely loved it, and when playing with friends it was even better - so I had to buy it (and each special edition that followed, e.g. "European Championships Edition", which included updates to the real rules, such as the Backpass Rule).

I loved the gameplay, and loved playing tournaments with friends, but when Sensible World of Soccer launched with a "Manager Mode" (and even player ratings / special attributes that made a real difference), I was absolutely hooked. It took over my life.

I played other games around the time - my friends had PCs and games like Actual Soccer, which was magical graphics-wise. But even 3D graphics couldn't tear me away from SWOS*.

...until my brother-in-law got a PlayStation and invited me over to play ISS Pro Evolution. At that point, my life changed forever.

PES became a religious experience - a much more "serious" game, slower, more grounded, and every input you made translating absolutely perfectly to what happened on-screen.

(Including what would happen if you tried to make an audacious pass with a donkey of a defender.)

It upset me that there were no lower leagues, no Tranmere Rovers - the database was a fraction of the size of SWOS - but there was no going back after ISS Pro Evo.

(He also had FIFA 98: Road to World Cup, and it just cemented my opinion that FIFA - which I'd tried on a friend's Mega Drive years before - was a "silly" attempt at a football game, but lovely to look at.)

After that, my family bought a PC and I bought FIFA 99, purely because of a rumour at school that if you had a 3DFX Voodoo card, you could play snowy matches. It turned out to be a lie.

(The PC was deemed a better purchase than a PS1 due to having homework applications and more power anyway - so I made the most of it.)

Either way, I went to my local internet café to download some editing tools for FIFA 99 (to add my beloved Tranmere) and discovered a community (Soccer Gaming) that was incredibly warm and helpful. I still remember Chau Le, who made a lot of those tools and taught me how they worked (so much hexadecimal work).

After many, many months of work (and hundreds of floppy disks being trawled back and forth from my house to the internet café and back), I ended up making and publishing the "English Super Patch (E.S.P.)" for FIFA 99 (after getting dogs' abuse for not releasing it on the date I'd planned to), with kits/graphics by a guy called Kristian Borten.

I was told at the time it was the first ever patch released for a football game, in terms of a massive license-adding graphics-changing package. How true that is I have no idea.

But I've never really stopped being a massive game-modding dweeb since.

* In-fact, the only other game that felt "magic" at the time was Championship Manager, which didn't even use "graphics" beyond text.

Your mention of Sensi reminded me I had that on Mega Drive as well. I changed the French kit shorts to blue, as the child that I was preferred that look to their usual white shorts (they must have worn it during the World Cup 98, I believe against Croatia). But it's interesting that the long line of patching games stems from then. I wonder what your thoughts were when Fifa 2004 added the lower leagues for England, giving you Tranmere by proxy.

Since I'm not sure which football game I started with, I'll just name a few.

Those would be ISS Pro and Fifa 98. So that was my very first contact with virtual football.

In general, I probably started later than many others here at Evoweb.
I was born in 1984 in the GDR, and after the fall of the Berlin Wall, modern stuff like that didn't exist yet, at least not as late as elsewhere. I think we didn't get the ‘internet’ until the early 2000s. So sometime after 2000.

My first football games were Fifa99, ISS Pro and some UCL game whose name I no longer remember. I bought them with my first pocket money. All on the very first Playstation.

I played Fifa 98 at a mate's house back then and immediately got hooked!

So mods didn't start for me until around 2010 or later. It was also a bit of a pain to download mods with a few GB using a 256K modem + data volume.

Ah, those were the days! School in the morning, playing real-life football in the fresh air in the afternoon, and then home to the PS.

Unfortunately, I'm not at all sure if I'm putting all this in the right chronological order.

I'm guessing if it's around '99 or 2000, it's probably one if these two?

I'm sure I had the 99/00 one, and remember it being an interesting game. Still being around 10/11, the idea of a 'bad game' didn't exist, just it playing a certain way

 

[Paul-v]

My early memories are consumed with Sensible Soccer on an Amiga but there is a distant vague thought of a game that I think was called "Soccer" on the Commodore 64... was it MicroProse Soccer?

One of the Sensible Soccer games had a lot of leagues in it and a pretty good manager / career mode. My brother and I discovered that we could play in the Feroe Islands, win the league, enter what is now the Champions League and win that too, we were both pretty good at the game but I got the knack of nailing the hilarious swerve system.

Then the proper 3D games that shaped my general impression of what a football game should be are: This is Football 2 (2002), PES 4 & PES 5.

 

[Kopite1990]

This is a great thread @FC Bayern 👍🏻

I have really enjoyed reading through all of the posts.

I probably split my experience in to two parts. The very first football games that I played were FIFA98 RWC and FIFA99. My older brother managed to win a PS1 through a local competition and it came with a copy of FIFA98. As you can imagine, with an older brother, my access was mainly limited to when he wasn’t around but I loved jumping on and playing whenever I could.

I managed to get my own PS1 a year later and that is when everything changed - My uncle bought me a copy of International Superstar Soccer Pro and International Superstar Soccer.





I never looked back - I enjoyed FIFA because I was just a footy mad kid who loved diving in to anything football related. However, similar to what @Chris Davies mentioned, ISS was just another level. It seemed more realistic, there was more thought to what I had to do and in a weird way the eccentric commentary, random player names and unorthodox Master League drew me in even more.

I have dipped back in to FIFA throughout the years but that was where my love of PES started and I bought every single game religiously each year after. I often wish I could go back and be that 8/9 year old kid playing these games again for the first time - Maybe it’s nostalgia but it feels like the beauty of football games peaked a long time ago.

 

[*aLe]

I ended up making and publishing the "English Super Patch (E.S.P.)" for FIFA 99 (after getting dogs' abuse for not releasing it on the date I'd planned to

Wait, is that *THE* Tranmere Patch that I saw referenced here several times?
I've heard of it but I've always thought that it was a patch for PES 3 or PES 4. I never thought it was for FIFA!

 

[Chris Davies]

Wait, is that *THE* Tranmere Patch that I saw referenced here several times?
I've heard of it but I've always thought that it was a patch for PES 3 or PES 4. I never thought it was for FIFA!

The "Tranmere patch" was for PES 3, as you say - that was scheduled (but never released) years after the days of FIFA 99. College ate up my spare time, and there were other patches around the time that did a far better job than I had the time to do anyway (I remember "WE-UK" specifically - in-fact, I still have that on a burned CD-ROM, but it barely works 20 years later).

EDIT: Ah yeah, someone made this thread about it. Which reminds me, I threw together a patch for PES 2017 too. That was my last foray into the world of making patches (excluding a shared drive I threw together for FM 2024 mods).

 

[*aLe]

Thanks, now the mystery’s solved.

 

[Chris Davies]

My early memories are consumed with Sensible Soccer on an Amiga but there is a distant vague thought of a game that I think was called "Soccer" on the Commodore 64... was it MicroProse Soccer?

It likely was - and MicroProse Soccer was made by Jon Hare (head of the Sensible Soccer games) too, which I only learned recently! Click here for the Wiki.

Then the proper 3D games that shaped my general impression of what a football game should be are: This is Football 2 (2002), PES 4 & PES 5.

This is Football deserves a bit more credit than it gets, IMO.

It was never a PES beater but it was closer to PES than FIFA in terms of "feel" and the challenge of it, and it was obvious that the dev team really loved football (from the intro of the first game, which is more like a small independent film, to the unique touches that the other games didn't touch - diving, stadium atmosphere, recreating the lower leagues and most famously, starting as the manager of a school team where you play on the school playing fields, and trying to "graduate" to the big leagues).

If only Sony hadn't given up on it.

 

[Carles P.]

Your mention of Sensi reminded me I had that on Mega Drive as well. I changed the French kit shorts to blue, as the child that I was preferred that look to their usual white shorts (they must have worn it during the World Cup 98, I believe against Croatia). But it's interesting that the long line of patching games stems from then. I wonder what your thoughts were when Fifa 2004 added the lower leagues for England, giving you Tranmere by proxy.


I'm guessing if it's around '99 or 2000, it's probably one if these two?
View attachment 397741View attachment 397742
I'm sure I had the 99/00 one, and remember it being an interesting game. Still being around 10/11, the idea of a 'bad game' didn't exist, just it playing a certain way

Yes, could be one of both. But I Can't remember.

 

[Madmac79]

The first "general" football game I've ever played was probably Nintendo World Cup on the Nes when in elementary school, at a friend's house. I wasn't a football fan back then, but the super shots, the free fouls, the meteo, the general flow and the typical graphic style that made famous many other classics of other genres on those years stuck with me. Little gem.

The first "proper" football game I've ever played, instead, was Fifa 96 at my cousins home. I was like 9-10 years old and still not a football fan, so I have the memory of me looking at it like it was the most simulative thing ever... back in the days it was revered as a classic and I remember SO many people saying how better it was than Fifa 97 when the latter came out, but it seems the classic status didn't stick as in the years as I practically never hear this title in nostalgic conversations. Then there was another football game I used to play at my cousins pc, 2D but with the goal to goal visual, that was practically identical to Snes's Super gol, but since that was never released on personal computer I had no idea what game that was (I tried to search more than once and never found out).

Fifa 97 was the first football game I've ever owned instead, after we bought our first PC. In that period I was starting to very slowly becoming a football fan, so I had it as a gift. Well... game was plainly terrible. A rigid piece of wood with, I think, not a single fun fundamental. Only good thing I can remember was introducing the indoor mode (which Fifa 98 did better anyway), no surprise Fifa 64 (that was practically a direct port) bombed hard as well.

Then it came, indeed, Fifa 98... and, as football quickly became a second, unsheddable skin in real life, this was what I consider my true, first football videogame, as it was the first I played to death. In what was still an hard parody of the sport, scoring was fun, chaining actions was intuitive and satisfying, it all had a fluidity and harmony his precessor totally lacked. I remember doing the most absurd transfers, play every league there was. The mythic World Cup 98 and Fifa 99 were great sequels to it, that I played to death more or less with the same spirit.

In those years I played with enjoyment other football games on my pc (Worldwide soccer and Actua Soccer, mostly), but the true lightning was, as many others like Kopite... with Iss Pro, the very first one. Playing at my cousins home an afternoon, they brought out this game on the Playstation out of nothing... and man, it was where everything changed. Back in the days I did not thought in terms of fundamentals or whatnot, but the way it played... it simply was nothing like I played before. To tell it in a phrase, felt like my fantasy had to compensate way, waaay less to immerse myself, compared with everything that came before.

This was completed when, at a school friend's home, time later, we gathered all togheter to play Iss Pro 98 on the PSX. Players felt all different, stats mattered to the extreme, all the small, unique things like Roberto Carlos free kick style or Peruzzi (my avatar❤️) being as visibly rotund as he was in real life... that truly felt like real football on screen.

Without making it too long, as I already written too much, it came an N64 with Iss64 and Iss98, enjoyable games but not unforgettable, then, finally, my own PSX, with Winning Eleven 4/ISS PRO Evolution... played to death, master league after master league. Then Iss Pro Evolution 2, cannibalized like the precedessor.

From there it's PS2, and it's a story we probably all know very well

 

[Madmac79]

Graphically, I believe it's true.
In terms of gameplay, I think that the PS games played better than their Nintendo 64 counterparts.
So, for example: ISS Pro > ISS 64 in terms of gameplay, ISS 64 > ISS Pro in terms of graphics

I think KCEO game had greater fluidity and a lot of things SO ahead of their time (automatic shielding, weather conditions that impacted players, way less "on binaries" ball control, continuous play, loads of off the ball little scenes that helped in the immersion), but KCET games made a lot more... sense, I don't know how to say. They were more limited, but felt immensely more like real football.

I've always thought how wonderful would a fusion between the best features of them would have been.

 

[Bing Bing Wahoo]

 

[JamieH]

Either MicroProse Soccer (fun fact: to this day it’s the first thing I think of whenever I read or hear anything related to Oman) or Emlyn Hughes International Soccer, both on the Commodore 64.

I've got vague memories of playing Match Day on the zx spectrum but i put hours and hours into Emlyn Hughes International Soccer on my C64, I loved that game. I didn't realise Microprose was on the C64 too, I played it on my posh friend's Atari ST though along with Kick Off.

 

[*aLe]

My early memories are consumed with Sensible Soccer on an Amiga but there is a distant vague thought of a game that I think was called "Soccer" on the Commodore 64... was it MicroProse Soccer?

I don't know if it's the same, but a friend of mine had a game called 'Soccer' for the GameBoy:

I think KCEO game had greater fluidity and a lot of things SO ahead of their time [...] but KCET games made a lot more... sense

I get what you mean, and I agree. Games by KCEO for the Nintendo 64 were better to look at, games by KCET for the PlayStation were better (more "resembling" real football) to play.
Didn't they also have a studio in Nagoya? I believe it was the one that converted the first ISS for other Nintendo platforms that weren't the SNES (like GameBoy and GBC)?

I threw together a patch for PES 2017 too.

I remember it, the "BOE Patch"! My editing days are well over too, but I still (and always will) remember them with huge nostalgia.

 

[elloco]

I played this in 1990 on an Atari 520ST with a Datasette, I was 6 Years old

 

[bsmaff]

First game I remember was Footballer of the Year on Spectrum and another one called Striker.
Used to love Striker where you basically you just had the S key to shoot.

First massive love though was Emlyn Hughes Soccer, played that game for absolute hours.

 

[Chris Davies]

I had no idea there were SO MANY football games... It takes so long to get to the first game I'd heard of!

Some great games I'd practically forgotten - Liberogrande, for example.

 

[Topaz]

FIFA 97 on mega drive and sega genesis. I always use to play in door matches where they put you into the basketball court. I couldn't afford FIFA 2000(which was the release at the time) cause i was 4-5 years old and I believe it required PS1.

There is also Super Sidekicks in NEO-GEO that I would play alongside FIFA 97.

 

[fd1972uk]

First one was football manager, the original, Match of the Day 1 and 2, Emelyn Hughes, but the likes of sensible soccer and kick off (which I preferred to SS) where a step up graphically. Player Manager and 2nd were KO management games. Soccer 7s was great. Another was Mexico 86 which was fab and always loved FA Cup sure it was called I loved. There was also a game I think it was a Brian Clough game which was also a board type game which you played with monopoly type money

Then Champ Manager too up most of my teens and early 20s.

There was old Fifas and then ISS Pro which changed everything, then on here was introduced to Winning Eleven.

 

[Kopite1990]

I had no idea there were SO MANY football games... It takes so long to get to the first game I'd heard of!

Some great games I'd practically forgotten - Liberogrande, for example.

Liberogrande - I totally forgot about that one. I remember playing the split screen Co-op with my cousin. It was mental but way ahead of it’s time in that respect, the first attempt at something like Pro Clubs where you controlled an individual player.

It did used to feel like there was a new football game out every other week - I had so much fun with some of the one off/random titles like Adidas Football, Michael Owen’s Soccer, Viva Football and Ronaldo V Football (to name a few).

 

[naczelnik5]

The first games I remember were SWOS and Striker – probably around '92 or '93. Striker impressed me mainly because of the great visuals during penalty kicks at the time. Then, of course, classic FIFA, probably from '94 onwards, alternating with Actua Soccer. Back then, I think I played Actua more than FIFA

 

[Flipper the Priest]

Awesome thread. Right up my alley!

Can't remember which game I first put my hands on, but the one I first played with any regularity (and it may well have been the very first) was Nintendo World Cup on boy Game Boy and NES.

I was obsessed. I used to draw the players all the time too, or draw real life players in the style.

Might use this theme to get a convo going on socials @FC Bayern!