Football, like everything else important in life, is about stories. People implant themselves into the narrative: where they were when they saw Maradona’s handball, the strangers they hugged when Ole Gunnar Solskjær scored that historic last-minute winner at the 1999 Champions League final. No doubt new tales are already being conjured around Jude Bellingham’s scissor kick against Slovakia in the dying seconds of Sunday’s Euro 24 match. Sport is a nostalgia machine – and this is as true for video game simulations as it is for the real thing. Every gamer has their favourite footie sim, but for me, and many other players of my … ahem, vintage … it was Pro Evolution Soccer, numbers 3 to 6.
This was the early 2000s, the age of the PlayStation 2. I was a writer for hire at Future Publishing, basically hanging out at its office in Bath, working mostly on the Official PlayStation magazine. But every lunch time, all the magazines would get together and play PES – especially during major tournaments, where we’d organise our own versions. Fifa? Forget it. Konami had already proved its ability with footie games through the excellent International Superstar Soccer series on the Mega Drive, Nintendo 64 and PlayStation, but the introduction of PES in 2001 brought a new level of dynamism and detail. Pace was fluid, player abilities were defined by 45 different stats, adding depth and variety, controls were intuitive yet expansive. “These games felt like authentic football,” says Ben Wilson who was editor of Official PlayStation at the time. “There was genuine joy to be had in grinding out a 1-0 win. Modern football games have as much in common with basketball as football – you shoot, I shoot, you shoot, I shoot, final score 6-4.”
