You know, i've been thinking about the state of football gaming lately, so i've decided to play some older games recently, a couple of 8bit ones, some 16bit ones... Eventually the PS1 Winning Eleven games were next on my list.
Just got done playing some Winning Eleven 3 Final Ver. after not touching it for a few months, it's just as perfect as it's always been. The first thing that strikes me is the OST in the menus, it's so iconic and feels epic, which is appropriate, since this is a World Cup game, you don't get a much more epic event that this one, it's the most important thing in the sport by far. Then there's the fact that this specific game legit had the licenses right, it's a genuine World Cup game by Konami, the kits are all accurate, which is wonderful since the 1998 World Cup kits were phenomenal, and the player names are right, it's so nice hearing the iconic Jon Kabira say the names of the legends that played in this tournament. The improvements that this version did to the standard Winning Eleven 3 are also what makes it the definitive PS1 footy game to me, most specifically the camera angles, they have a much better field of view, my favorite is the TV camera, i love these lower and more straight cameras, which is why i like the Pitch Side one the most in modern PES, tho they need to have a good visibility, and this one does, can't get enough of it.
However, while all of the things i've mentioned earlier definitely do help make this game an absolute masterpiece, the gameplay is what truly defines it's place in the franchise's history. It's just perfect, it's the gameplay that defined PES for the longest time, that made it the definitive football series over all of it's competitors for the longest time, easy to learn, hard to master, basic fundamentals, but filled with nuance, stats that are clearly visible (Ronaldo's pace is simply phenomenal here, just like it was in real life at that very tournament), basic settings whose adjustments make a huge difference, and most important of all, a perfect mix of arcade and simulation.
That last part is what really got me thinking, cuz you see, in the last few years i've considered myself more of a simulation fan, which seems to be the standard in this forum, however when playing some older games, starting with the 8bit and 16bit ones, it struck me how much joy they were giving me, even tho they were very arcade, and this made me realise that my problem with modern football games isn't that they're too arcade, it's something else.
So this made me do some soul searching, as to why these older games were so much more fun to me than the modern ones, it couldn't be because they are more realistic, because overall they're not (Although in a few aspects they kind of were, which is legit pretty funny), and it finally clicked.
I'm not sure how many here are familiar with racing games, personally i'm not a fanatic or anything like that, but i've always loved Gran Turismo, a game that called itself "The Real Driving Simulator", and it always seemed fair to me, however it surprised me to see that among racing game enthusiasts this was not a real simulation, because it lacked a ton of stuff that is important to real life racing, they generally divide games in Arcade, Sim, and SimCade, the latter is something i've never heard of in any other community, however to me it's legit an important concept when discussing games.
There has never been a single football game in history which aimed at being a true simulation, for that they'd have to make 90 minutes the standard time for a match, they'd have to make the pace exactly the same as a real life match, and the market for that is just too small, so all of the PES and FIFA games we've played have all been SimCades from the start, most football games have actually, afterall, they have to fit all of the action in around 10 minutes instead of 90.
Now, here's where i'm getting at: A SimCade is always gonna feature a mix of Simulation elements and Arcade elements, therefore what makes a football game good isn't how realistic or arcade it is, a good football game is the one that makes the best choice of elements from each side, in a way that in the final product every factor chosen works in harmony with one another, cohesion is the name of the game here. Another important aspect of this cohesion argument i'm trying to make is that the game needs to have clear rules on how it works, and it needs to follow those rules, this was much easier to achieve in the past when games were more simple, and that aspect naturally makes them have an edge over their modern iterations, however just because technology has advanced it doesn't mean EA and Konami can't pull it off, but for some reason they just seem to refuse.
All of the things i've listed earlier in this post are what makes the classic PES games so dear to most people, at least in my eyes, for the PS1 and PS2 titles, you'll see arcade fans loving them, and sim fans loving them, in a game like Winning Eleven 3 Final Ver. if the game isn't arcade enough for you, all you have to do is increase the speed, while if it's not sim enough for you, decreasing the speed does more than enough, because the core and fundamentals of the game are so polished and cohesive, you don't need to adjust anything drastically to see a real effect and enjoy it more, while nowadays you need to adjust a billion sliders just to make things servicable, since the fundamentals are so broken.
The problem with modern footy games, with EA and Konami, is that the choices they make when deciding if an aspect of the game needs to be more arcade or sim are just wrong and don't work in harmony with one another, so what you get is a game that always feels off no matter what your taste is, instead of being easy to learn and hard to master, they're hard to learn, especially to people who aren't very into football games, but easy to master, afterall, all you have to do is learn this year's new exploit and take advantage of it, it's what the pro players do, and more power to them, their objective is winning, and this is how you win now.
I'm just rambling at this point tbh, maybe this sounds pretty whiny overall, but these are just some things that have been going through my head after playing some legit fantastic retro games and getting so much more satisfaction out of them than the modern ones, as good as those can be in many aspects.
P.S. Winning Eleven 3 Final Ver. might be the best football game ever made, at least to me, so there goes my recommendation to everyone reading it, give this beauty a shot if you haven't already, it's worth it.
After Spain's second goal McTominay took the game by the scruff of the neck and dragged his country back into the match with a fantastic team goal. I have to say that they have been one of the best teams in the tournament when it comes to passing and build up play. And they really battled well. Spain also showed character as they battled through to the next round. 
there was even an own goal too. Sorry Flipper I really tried in that game. It was so tense but when Scotland brought it back to 2-2 I really thought the winner was coming. There was one point (you may have seen it) when, at 2-2, McTominay had a shot that just went over the bar when he could have played in his team mate. I think i panicked 
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