International Superstar Soccer Deluxe PS1 Review

International Superstar Soccer Deluxe is a unique arcade style of soccer game that originally started off life on the Super Nintendo or SNES and the mega drive back in 1995 and in early 1996 and was later ported to the PlayStation in early 1997. 

And this game is a sequel of the original international superstar soccer that again was developed for the Super Nintendo in the early 90s. 

Now if you're very familiar with playing the likes of the very early FIFA games on the likes of the Sega mega drive and those systems, you will notice a lot of similarities as these games would have been the upcoming competitor to the FIFA series at that time which as we all know would later go on to become the ever popular pro evolution or pes series on modern consoles and as we all know as well with the likes of the international superstar soccer games, unlike the FIFA series they didn't have licensing for the actual real-life names of each of the football players at the time so they had to use made-up names. 

But that didn't matter because these games were quite fun to play. 

This game originally was considered to be the best or if not one of the best soccer games on the original Super Nintendo and mega drive systems back at that time so by the time it got to the PlayStation, there were already a number of football games already starting to appear.

You already had the likes of the FIFA games you had actua soccer and you also had other adaptions of football games from Konami with the likes of goal storm.

The game itself did get decent reviews on the PlayStation and it also consists of six different game modes, so you have likes of open game or exhibition where you can play friendlies against the computer or against your friends. 

You've also got like international or world cup mode where you can play like in a world cup style event and you also have a unique feature in this game which you don't see in many other football games which was called scenario mode. 

So you had 12 different scenarios that recreated different historical matches throughout the years of pretty much the history of football and it would put you at a certain point in the game where a team could be winning or losing depending on the situation and your goal was to try and overcome the situation or to try and win the game so you could be put in the game for example in one of the scenarios you'll be playing as Italy versus Croatia and you're literally put into the game at the very last minute or minute and a half as Italy when they're losing 2-1 against Croatia and Italy is about to take a free kick so it's up to you to try and either score the free kick or maintain possession and try to at least equalize before the game ends. So that in itself is quite a unique idea and it's pretty fun it definitely has a different take on what football games were back then and you genuinely did not see that in a lot of modern football games even today. 

Now even though this game would never have been on the same level as fifa as we all know FIFA had a lot of more marketing budgets that had access to all player names, even from the early games. 

But this still had a very unique look and feel, now it played very differently to the FIFA games but it also did kind of resemble it in terms of its graphical abilities in terms of its visuals and they're generally quite fun games to play. 

Even in later adaptions when it went on to the likes of ISS pro 98 and the like, i have done a previous video on ISS pro-98 and i consider that to be my all-time favourite soccer game ever on any system, i absolutely love playing that game it was, to be honest, it was probably the only football game i was actually good at which is why i love it so much but still it was just genuinely a really fun experience but the games after it were definitely or equally as good even on likes of the PlayStation 2, ps3 and even the modern systems so it is really cool to go back and revisit a lot of these older type of games. 

Now I will say with these types of old-school games you will find it difficult to play even as a modern gamer like say if you're a young kid today trying to play something like this you'd probably lose interest and very very quickly but if you grew up in this era like i did it will still take a while because you've become adapted to play in more modern style of games, to go back and play something like this definitely takes a while to really get a feel and to get to grips with how it plays all over again as it definitely is very different. 

It really is old-school it's not as fluent to play as a lot of other types of more modern games where you do have more control over the characters and your abilities, but this game, not so much. 

You had to rely heavily on skill and knowing the controls but you did have to rely on a lot of luck because these types of games were very very hard to dribble around players because if a player was in the vicinity towards you or even close to you there was a very high chance you would lose the ball and more often not they would go in the other round and they would score a goal so then you'd be just chasing the whole game with your tail between your legs pretty much trying to catch up so it definitely offered a very tough challenge. 

But these games are old-school there's no safety net with these games, you either are good at them or you're not and if you're willing to persist with them and get good at them and put in a wee bit of time and you will have quite an enjoyable experience. 

I remember going back to playing a lot of these types of games when we were younger, we used to play them on the likes of the Super Nintendo and before we played the PlayStation you would spend your weekends just sitting with your group of mates just sitting and playing these games, you would be playing in tournaments or just playing exhibitions against each other and used to have a lot of fun but what was really cool about these games and even going back to playing this the one thing it hasn't lost is its sense of atmosphere. 

It really captures that whole presence of football games from the 90s as there's just always something really unique about the atmosphere of football games back then because again it was a totally different era of football when you consider it compared to today, it's very very different, you can notice that when you're playing the game because the passion the drive the anticipation it was all there and it's still there even when you go back to play these games. 

It's quite incredible that it still manages to capture that imagination even today and it is worthwhile having a look if you want to revisit these old-school types of games. Now they will test your patience, it is very hard to play, it's very difficult to score goals and it probably will drive you mad but if you are into these types of games and you want to revisit some of these old classics, you definitely should have a look at this one even just for a quick kick around with your mates. 

And I'd love to know your thoughts on international superstar soccer deluxe for the ps1?

What did you think of it back in the day? 

Did you play it on the PlayStation one or did you even play it on earlier consoles with the likes of the Super Nintendo or mega drive and if so what did you think of it? 

I'd love to hear the stories you have in this game so be sure to share them in the comments below and be sure to keep watching to see more content on other games similar to International Superstar Soccer Deluxe, 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...