Adidas Power Soccer PS1 Review

Adidas Power Soccer is a football game that was developed by Psygnosis and released for the PlayStation early in 1996 and primarily this game even though it comes from a long line of soccer titles that were released on the PS1 but also was used as an advertisement product as part of a campaign used to promote many of the Adidas or Adidas products that were being heavily promoted during that time period with different types of sports personalities and other companies especially with the latest soccer players and so forth. 

So creating a game around those type of ideas and aesthetics proved to be a good selling point because the one thing you'll know straight away is that when you're playing the game during different points you will often see and hear of various advertisements and videos being played to promote at the time the Adidas Predator series of football boots which in itself is a cool concept and that was the one thing I even loved about the PlayStation. 

When you look back at even previous games even actua soccer and even racing games and other types of games even from the likes of Namco with Ridge Racer and so forth. 

When you're playing the games you would often see advertisement banners to promote other games that they'd been created or some of their sponsors that had sponsored the games at the time. 

Even in actua soccer especially with the first game if you look at that you see banners where there are promoting Cadburys chocolate bars like timeouts and boost and crunchy. 

So it was a pretty cool idea of what they were trying to do and the one thing that I think is cool about it is that aside from the gameplay visuals and sounds and aesthetics by having those advertisements there gave a sense of realism that it felt like that you're genuinely part of something that you would have been used to seeing on TV or if you were actually at a football game say in a stadium if you're going to a Premier League game in the 90s and so forth. So that in itself was a pretty cool idea. 

Now when we look at the gameplay from let's say a typical gameplay standpoint as it was an early soccer game it comes from a long line of different types of games where they were going through a very experimental period because again a lot of these games were coming off the back of moving from both 2D visuals from likes of the Sega Mega Drive and the Super Nintendo coming onto the PlayStation and Sega Saturn trying to utilize 3D visuals and gameplay mechanics. 

So for many of these early adoptions and iterations they played quite well but wouldn't have been well executed because they were trying out different ideas and they're trying to figure out what actually works. 

But the games still were heavily praised and it did sell quite well even though considering the types of reviews the games got in magazines considering it to me maybe not be as wild polished compared to some other soccer games that were currently out at the time but they're still a nostalgic element about these type of soccer games that you really won't get anywhere else. 

And soccer games only really started to come into their own really in the late 97 and early 1998 with the likes of FIFA 98 Road to World Cup and then later with the ISS Pro Series from Konami. 

That's when soccer games really started to become more simulation and even more professionally developed if you will it but it still doesn't take away from the nostalgic elements of the Adidas Power Soccer series even the actua soccer series that was also seen on the PlayStation. 

There is some pretty cool elements and fun to be had with these type of games although I will admit they're not going to be considered as well put together or as widely polished but for early games they definitely offer something that you don't get anywhere else. 

Yes they can be frustrating and they can be down right annoying at times but it's like anything else if you put a bit of time into it you will have a bit of fun once you get to figure out the control systems and you understand what works. 

With the likes of these games here especially with this game and its later adoption Adidas Power Soccer International 97 which I first played on a demo way back years ago and even though it was a struggle but I actually really enjoyed it. 

I thought it was a lot of fun, now it was tricky and it was frustrating but when you got the hang of it I find myself playing that demo for ages just really getting into it because one good thing that these early games really done really well aside from the gameplay was the atmosphere because it had all the crowd sounds even the commentary and It had a lot of cool effects and features that at the time just felt realistic in a lot of ways but the the gameplay would be questionable but for early type of games you can't really complain.

Because for many of us to get the chance to play these type of games back and the day was just phenomenal anyway because we were just still new to the concept of 3D gaming so having the opportunity to play something like this was always going to be a bit of fun and I know myself that even when I was in secondary school at the time when the PlayStation was out and there were many people in the classroom speaking of different types of games have to be playing and Adidas Power Soccer would come up in the conversation quite a bit.

As quite a few guys that I knew had the game and they played it quite a bit and they would talk about it quite often and thinking that they thought it was quite good and the latest although they did admit that it was tricky. 

But there's just something about it I think it's even though it's not really considered to be realistic it's become more of like a cartoony style element I think that's what kind of makes it more fun aside from whatever else it's trying to do. 

Now it is tough because the computer AI can be quite clunky and a bit lackluster in some cases even with the likes of the keepers. 

The keeper can almost save every everything that you throw at it which can lead to the frustration but I did find a good trick and I'm sure a few people know about it at this stage that when you're playing the game if you're within the halfway mark or just over the halfway line if you hold back on the whatever side you're on if you hold the back button on the direction pad if you're say if you're shooting right hold the left button while you're hitting the shoot button and the player will automatically lob the ball and there's a very good chance because I used to do this all the time and that's Adidas power sock or demo we are used to be able to lob the ball and chances are nine times out of ten you would stick the ball in the back of the net. 

Whereas it was easier to score goals that way than it would be trying to do as normally, you'd always lose nearly all the time and that was the fun of it. 

You were always trying to see if you could just lob the keeper, to do it that way was just so much fun that was for me was the best thing of it when you've seen the ball going up in the air it sounded like or felt like it was going in slow motion and when you're seeing it and then eventually you can then you hear the crowd screaming when you score you just if you're all ecstatic you'd be like oh i scored, so it'd be just so much fun and like even to play it with mates, like truthfully if you were to do it in terms of a technical standpoint if you're trying to play like with skills, you may as well throw that out the window with this game. 

Because even though you can perform tricks and do various nice little abilities and stuff you're never going to beat people hands down by dribbling the ball around them or trying to run past them. 

That's not what this game really is about, you're never going to do that. 

Literally a lot of the time all you're going to do is just hit the ball run after it and hope for the best and a lot of times the only way you can really take the ball off them is to literally take the legs of them and just slide tackle or do a two foot tackle into them to get the ball off them. 

It's the only way that you nine times out of ten you're gonna get the ball off them and even we're playing this game here as I was recording this video I was actually having a blast playing it like I ended up was losing the whole time and then they gradually started to get back into it once they figured out to do the trick because it's one of those things when you're doing trying to lob the ball it doesn't always work first off. 

You have to keep trying it and eventually when I got myself back into it and they eventually started winning only to realize then I was like oh no what did I just do I ended up scoring and getting back and winning three two and then they go to try and get greedy and do the same thing again but this is the problem with it because it's all for finickity when you're trying to lob the ball that if you're trying to do it too many times there's a chance what the player will do is they turn around and kick the ball in the opposite direction. 

And that's exactly what happened and what ends up happening they end up scoring an own-goal. 

He stuck it in the back of his own net so literally from the look and the reaction of the crowd as you can see here on the screen that's exactly the way I was feeling I was like of course then I just started going bananas I was like giving out. 

I was like if I wanted to do that it wouldn't do it so I suppose a work man should never blame his tools but yeah it just oh when I think about it at the time I was kind of like nearly pulling my hair out. 

I was just like I can't believe this is happening again I even this used to happen to me years ago when I used to play the game as well and the fact is that it's happening now and I'm just like oh my god here we go again but I suppose that's just the fun of it. 

That's what I love about these old type of games it's just if you wanted to take them seriously these aren't the games for that. 

These games are really just based around fun because they're never going to be the likes of FIFA and ISS Pro in terms of their technicality or playability features because they're more simulation focused. 

Now they are fantastic games in their own right but these older games didn't aspire to that because they were trying out new ideas and trying out different things. So it is what it is at the end of the day and really it's up to the player whether they're going to get something out of it or not and for me personally I love these types of games. 

I just love the quirky nature of them, yes they're difficult to control and they can be frustrating but when you get into them and you get used to the mechanics and the ideas behind the games you will actually have a lot of fun. 

They're just genuinely fun old school games to play. 

So I'd love to know what your thoughts are of Adidas Power Soccer if you have played it yourself and if so what do you think of it. 

Do you enjoy these old type of soccer games on the PlayStation or do you find them sometimes frustrating as well? 

I would love to hear whatever toys you have in this game so be sure to share it down in the comments below and be sure to keep watching to see more content on other games similar to Adidas Power Soccer, 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...