It absolutely shocks me to see how many younger players have landed on this forum over the past few years. I can't wrap my head around it.
To me, PES can only make people fall in love with it if you played it back in the time where it was 10x better than the technical specs of a PSX/PS2 should have allowed it to be, and when FIFA was a joke of a game (it's not great at the moment but it's 100x better than it was back then).
For someone to play the modern games and become an ardent fan, especially when FIFA has all the licenses... It amazes me.
22 year old here, joined the forum as a 19 year old, but to be fair I did become a PES fan due to the classics. Some of my earliest gaming memories are going to my grandma's house for some nice family meetings, a lot of family members would go there every sunday, including two cousins of mine, who had a PS2 and Pro Evolution Soccer 6, or as we called it then, Winning Eleven 10, my cousins would play with me and my dad a lot, we always went for coop though, never played against one another, which is how I prefer it to this day really.
We didn't have a PS2 at home, only a Mega Drive/Genesis with no football games, but after it broke my dad got us a used PS1, and with it came Winning Eleven 2002, so every sunday I'd experience the last main PS2 title at the time, and then at home I'd experience the last main PS1 title, I was constantly playing these very polished games, which by itself was already fun, and I was doing it with family most of the time, which made it more special, so even before becoming a 10 year old I was already a PES addict. Eventually we got a PS2 and the game I'd always play with my cousins at sundays was finally mine to play everyday, I got PES2010 for PS2 aswell, which was my first experience with BAL, the PS2 era is where I'd also start playing around with editing for the first time. I recall also having FIFA09 for my PS2, but me and my dad didn't really enjoy it much, so my first impression of FIFA was underwhelming.
PS1, then PS2, naturally the next would be a PS3, and I got it in late 2010, and PES2010 for PS3 was at a discount price so my dad bought it, and even though I see now why it's not well regarded, 11 year old me was blown away by the HD graphics, and the gameplay was similar enough to the PS1 and PS2 games so I ate it up. I'll admit that while I see now that FIFA was probably the better game at this point, I was a dumb teenager so naturally I was a fanboy of what I knew best, and PES had already won me over with it's amazing editor, the Creation Centre looked ok, but it was on the browser, I knew that one day it'd get shut down and that'd be it, so FIFA was no competition in that regard. Also, I had grown to like the fake teams on D2 for some odd reason, after truly experiencing ML for the first time. I wanted to keep things familiar, those D2 teams, that editor, everything really, so next up I got PES2012 and just stayed with the series ever since, getting the PS3 version of PES2015 next, and most recently PES2018 on my PS4.
I did try FIFA out at many points, after growing up and seeing that being a fanboy is dumb and would only lead to me potentially missing out on good stuff, but I just never enjoyed the gameplay, everytime I tried out a demo or rented a new title in the series I just didn't get why everyone loved it so much and why it was seen as being so superior to PES, I wanted to love FIFA because it had so much to offer, but on the pitch it never did it for me, even when I finally got my first full FIFA after FIFA09 on the PS2, in that case FIFA19 which came bundled in with my PS4, I hated it so much that I panic bought a cheap copy of PES2018 even though I disliked that game at first.
Damn, I ended up writing a lot, I really need to lose my habit of writing an essay everytime I start typing, but well, I guess this is a story to show how a zoomer like me can end up a PES fan even without experiencing every PS2 PES game besides PES6, and growing up with the PS3 games that many regard as the downfall of the series. Now that I've mentioned it, I need to get around to playing PES3 and PES5 at some point, I feel like I've missed out on something pretty special.
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