#10: The Virtua Striker 3 International Cup

Virtua Striker 3 Ver. 2002 (GameCube, Sega, 2002)
Trophy: International Cup (Scotland)

As you may remember, I won the European Cup with Scotland a few weeks back, but that only occurs halfway through the Road To International Cup mode. The other half, as you'd imagine, involves winning the International Cup which seems very much like the World Cup but I'll let them off with it because I'm sure it's a coincidence.

Anyway, I've already explained this game in detail below so here's a video showing off a rather sneaky tap-in from a free kick, and the celebration:



And here are the required screenshots:




I'm pretty much done with this game now in terms of trophies, but there's one final (and bizarre) update still to come involving a couple of secret teams...

Change to YouTube

I've decided to change from uploading my videos to Blogger, to uploading them to YouTube instead. This is because I found some sneaky code which lets me embed YouTube videos in their new high quality setting, allowing you to actually see what's going on in the games where the camera is zoomed out quite far. It also means that you can view videos in full-screen.

See, I'm nice that way.

#8 and #9: My First Captaincy

UEFA Euro 2008 (Xbox 360, EA, 2008)
Trophy: European Championship (Scotland)
Trophy: European Championship: "Captain Your Country" mode (Scotland)

Much like in 2002 FIFA World Cup, UEFA Euro 2008 lets you play in the tournament as a team that didn't qualify for the tournament in real life. It does this by letting you start from the beginning of the qualification stage, rather than the actual tournament itself.

There are two different ways of playing the tournament. The first is the usual way, where you play through each match as if it were a normal FIFA game. Here are my goals in the final and the final celebrations from that mode (note the dodgy controllable goal celebrations):





The other mode is called Captain Your Country, and lets you create a player then control that player only, in an attempt to be good enough to (as the title suggests) become the captain on the route to Euro 2008.

When you play in this mode the camera is in a sort of vertical position which zooms in behind your back as you approach the goal. You can see two of my goals from the final below as well as the extra clips that appear during the celebration whcih feature the created player:



Here are the pics, as usual, including final stat screens from the Captain Your Contry mode:

#7: Scotland's First World Cup

2002 FIFA World Cup (GameCube, EA, 2002)
Trophy: World Cup (Scotland)

Remember that time Scotland was in the 2002 World Cup? Remember? The one which took place in Japan and Korea? Remember how well we did? Oh, that's right. We didn't even qualify for it. So how did I managed to win the bloody thing with them in the video game version?

Well, not wishing to remind any Scottish fans that their team is rubbish (or, more importantly, not wishing to discourage Scottish gamers from buying the game), EA decided to make it so that, if you wish, you can enter the tournament as one of a handful of teams who failed to qualify, in this case the Scots. All the game does is kick out a low-ranked team who did qualify. In this tournament I was placed in Group H with Japan, Belgium and Russia, with actual qualifiers Tunisia politely asked to leave so I could make way.

The game itself isn't going to win any "best football game ever" awards, or even any "best World Cup game ever" ones (that accolade going to World Cup 98: more on that another day). It's slow, it's sloppy... it's FIFA at the turn of the millennium, basically.

Still, I managed to beat Brazil and Germany on my way to a final against Spain, who I beat 1-0 by scoring in the last minute. Here's a video of the winning goal:



And here are the celebrations, as described by the least enthusiastic sounding commentator of all time. Considering that a below-average team has just won the World Cup he doesn't seem that bothered by anything.



And, of course, the required images (including a ridiculous pink inflatable mascot in the background):