Captain Tsubasa PS1 Review

Captain Tsubasa if I pronounce that correctly is an unusual type of soccer game that was released for the PlayStation in Japan only back in the year 2000 and was published by Konami. And this game follows an iconic type of cartoon or comic book series that would have been popular in Japan during that time that follows the role of a popular soccer team where you go through the story of different events where they travel the world getting involved in different tournaments and trying to win games and so forth. 

So it acts kind of like a visual novel but yet at the same time more of a strategy game like this game itself isn't an out and out soccer game that you would be familiar with with the likes of FIFA, ISS Pro and among other types of soccer games. 

This is a very different style of affair while it does focus on football it kind of more focuses on more comic book aesthetics. 

It tells a story but then at different intervals later into the game it goes into like a gameplay dynamic but it's more of a strategy or kind of like simulation style game where you have to take turns at moving the ball across the interface with the intention to try and score a goal. 

So when you get into a point where you can get the ball close enough to the goal through different movements then the player will automatically shoot and then you can determine whether they have a chance to scoring or not or whether the keeper is going to save it or someone makes a tackle and so forth. 

You don't have the same control features like you would with a typical soccer game where you can control each individual player and move them around and dribble the ball, there's none of that here at all. This is definitely more of a strategy game rather than a full-on soccer game. 

Having spent time into it one thing I found now again because of the language barrier I am aware of this series because I have seen information floating around online and it seemed to be a quite popular series in Japan at the time but when you're playing the game because it focuses on more of a comic book. 

It acts like more like an interactive movie or a visual novel where you have to listen to dialogue and see screenshots of the various characters and what they're saying and how they're developing as the course of the game progresses and then obviously you interact with characters from other teams where you create almost like a competitive rivalry against other teams so then you go to play them and then its your goal to try and win against them and that's when the game then gradually changes into the more strategic gameplay style where you have to try and overcome each of the teams through various character movements or turn-based mechanics. 

But to get to that point because it's not like any other soccer game where you can literally pick it up and play it and go into a quick game mode and literally just start playing it won't happen here, you will literally have to play through the game literally for about 20 minutes and listen to all the dialogue and it will just keep going and going and going until you get into the first game. 

Now in most cases it will put a lot of players off. 

If you're looking for more quick fix affair, this isn't it at all, it's totally different than that but if you want something that is a bit more kind of story focused and heavy and if you can understand the Japanese language or even if you're familiar with this series it might be something worth looking into as it does Focus around football but just has a different take on it. 

But for most other gamers out there, you probably will get annoyed or quickly get frustrated with the amount of dialogue that you have to go through just to actually get into a game so it will probably put a lot of players off. 

If you're a fan of the series and you want to try something a little bit different that's more strategy focused or even like turn based and has more kind of like an RPG style element to soccer games, you can try this out and see what you think of it. 

Just note that it does take a while to get to that point, I found that myself because as I was literally sitting here recording this video and I was recording all the gameplay footage, I was sitting there and was just like click and click and click and click and click and clicking and clicking some more to try and get into a game and at that point I was nearly going to give up because they didn't think that it was even possible and then it got into a game and then they quickly realized that it's a different type of style of the way it plays compared to your typical soccer game.

But at least by watching this hopefully you will get an idea of what the game's about if you haven't played it. Some of you may not even know anything about this series or games so hopefully it'll bring that to light. 

And I would love to know your thoughts on this game if you have even played it yourself or even are you even aware of the series or even how aware of how popular it was in Japan be sure to share it in the comments below and be sure to keep watching to see more content on other games similar to Captain Tsubasa, you can check out the blog where we will be diving into the iconic elements of these classic video games and as always keep those gaming memories alive...