#3: Going For 2006 In Real Football

2006 Real Football (Mobile, Gameloft, 2006)
Trophy: International Cup ("Go For 2006" mode)

I recently got a new mobile phone because my old one was so old that I'd charge it in the morning and the battery would be dead before I went to bed. Of course, as a gamer the important thing to me wasn't the quality of the camera or much standby time the thing had, but how many games it could play.

When I got it I downloaded a basic Java football game, just for fun. The game's called 2006 Real Football and it's not that bad, actually. It has a "Go For 2006" mode in it which is basically a World Cup knock-off. So, during a couple of Tube journeys I won six of the seven matches I needed to get to the final, then came home andused my phone's video output settings to show footage from the last match.

Here's a goal from the final:



And here's what happens when you win the cup. Bizarrely, one of your players does a little Riverdance-type spasm shuffle thing, then you see the cup while a rubbish MIDI version of "Atomic" by Blondie plays. Fair enough.



And here's the required image:

#2: The PES 08 Wii International Cup

Pro Evolution Soccer 2008 (Wii, Konami, 2008)
Trophy: International Cup

The natural progression from one of the earliest football games I played is to take on one of the most recent: in this case, the Wii version of Pro Evolution Soccer 2008, the last football game I reviewed for ONM. I decided that the first trophy I should go for would be the International Cup, the long-running Konami trophy that "isn't the World Cup, honestly mate", despite being a 32-team International tournament.

Anyway, said cup was claimed without too much trouble, thanks to the game's excellent control system which sees you pointing at players and directing them around like some sort of weird real-time strategy football game. Think Command & Conquer + Camoranesi and you've got the right idea.

Anyway, here are two of the goals I scored along the way to Scotland's first (virtual) trophy win, and a couple of celebration photos of them with the cup:

#1: The "Soccer" Friendly

Soccer (NES, Nintendo, 1985)
Trophy: Won an exhibition match

I decided that the best place to start would be near the beginning. My first proper console (that I owned, not my dad) was my NES, which I loved to pieces and still do. One of the early NES titles was Soccer, a really basic game with a cheery music track.

As the NES controller only has two buttons, there are only two things you can do with the ball: chip it or shoot it. Not quite Pro Evo.

As it's really basic, there are no Tournament or League modes in Soccer, so as the rules suggest I simply played and won an exhibition game, beating a generic, nationless "CPU" team 2-0 as GBR (who I'd assume are Great Britain... I chose them since Italy weren't in it).

Beating them was easy enough, though they did have a ruthless offside trap. As you can see in the video below, they caught me with it twice in a row before I unleashed a devastating shot from the edge of the box.



As the rules state, here is proof of the victory:



Not a bad wee start, if I do say so myself.