International Superstar Soccer (video game)

International Superstar Soccer ("Live World Soccer Perfect Eleven" in Japan) is a football video game developed by Konami for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. It is known as the best soccer game available for any 16-bit systems, mostly due to its lifelike approach, innovative for the time, that showed diversified players in the same team, with an adult look and back numbers on their respective jerseys, corresponding to real-life players of the time.

Game modes

 * Open Game: A simple friendly match, that can be played against the CPU, another player, or just watched as the CPU controls both teams.
 * International Cup: A mode that emulates the FIFA World Cup, where teams are distributed in six groups of four teams each. The best 16 in this stage qualify to the knockout stage until the champion is known.
 * World Series: A league competition where all teams play against each other in a round-robin system.
 * Training: A series of challenges in different respects (dribbling, passing, shooting to the goal, defending and corner kick taking, in order), where the player must complete these challenges successfully under the established time, with the goal to sharpening the player's abilities.
 * Scenario: Enables the player to select one among nine matches running their courses, in order to achieve victory before time runs out (all matches start during the second half, and the player's team may be losing or tied). A draw results in failure.
 * Penalty Kick: A simple penalty kick match. Each team takes five shots alternately and, if there is no winner after these shots, they go into a sudden death round.

The game uses a password system in order to save and load International Cup and World Series matches.

Teams
The game features 27 national teams, all of which based on their real-life counterparts as of the 1994 FIFA World Cup, even in the case of non-entrants Austria, Denmark, France, Wales, Scotland and England, which are represented by their line-ups from the qualifiers. Of these teams, 20 made it into the real FIFA World Cup. Bolivia, Saudi Arabia, Greece and Morocco do not appear in the game, despite having qualified for the tournament. The Japanese version only 24 teams which included 5 Asian: Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Japan. Poland and Portugal, England participated with the flag of Great Britain.

Reception
On release, Famicom Tsūshin scored the game a 29 out of 40. GamePro commented that though it fails to dethrone FIFA International Soccer as the best soccer simulator for the SNES because of its less precise controls and weaker sounds, International Superstar Soccer is a solid game due to its detailed and "lifelike" graphics, numerous options, and particularly its training mode. The two sports reviewers of Electronic Gaming Monthly both gave it a 7 out of 10 rating. Similar to GamePro, they remarked that the controls are imperfect but praised the graphics and play options. One of the reviewers complained that the enjoyable play-by-play feature of the Japanese version was taken out of the North American release. Game Players gave it an overall rating of 79%.

Allejo
Due to lack of licenses of FIFA, Konami created fictional names to represent real players. One of them is Allejo, portrayed as Bebeto. Seen by some as a Brazilian meme, Allejo gained popularity as a skilled player capable of impossible moves and goals. He was pointed as national phenomenon and he's been actually considered one of the best Brazilian footballers of all times.

Alternate games
There are two identical versions of the game, a translation to Spanish called FUTBOL EXCITANTE the translation was for the Japanese version and included Peru team, in Brazil was called Super Campeonato Brasileiro which only involved local clubs including the Brazil team.