The story behind Winning Eleven

Have you ever wondered what on earth Winning Eleven is and why Konami feel the need to produce a carbon copy of Pro Evolution Soccer? If you’re interested in finding out potential answers to these two burning questions and for those of you that don’t even know what I’m talking about when I refer to Winning Eleven then I urge you to read on.

Some may say that Pro Evolution Soccer exists in two forms and they wouldn’t be too far off the mark with that assumption. PES is, infact, pretty much a reincarnation of Winning Eleven albeit with a few slight adjustments. Back in the days of the PS2 version’s of Winning Eleven, those lucky enough to reside in Japan were treated to the earlier release of Winning Eleven while Europeans, like myself, were forced to wait in anticipation for Pro Evolution Soccer to eventually hit the shelves. Although these days the two titles tend to coincide with eachother in terms of release date and if anything, Winning Eleven is held back a tad longer than PES.

To put it in Lehman’s terms, Winning Eleven is basically Pro Evolution Soccer with a few minor alterations available exclusively to the Japanese/Asian market.

Winning Eleven could be spotted in Playstation disc drives as early as 1995 and has developed through the years (and through the platforms) to today’s Winning Eleven 2009 version. And you can pick up the latest Winning Eleven across a variety of next generation consoles including the Wii, PS3, PSP and Xbox 360 while Konami do still produce a PC version and also a Winning Eleven for the PS2 for those of you still living in the 90’s!

So what exactly are the fundamental differences between PES and Winning Eleven? Well other than slightly different release dates and the obvious language variations (although I do believe you can switch Winning Eleven to English) I’m not aware that there is a great deal to be honest. In the past it has been argued that Winning Eleven has been far more responsive and the gameplay more fluid than PES but whether this is still the case now is certainly a question for debate.

Before I close on this piece, let’s try and shed some further light on this rather shaded issue. For those of you that have had the pleasure of playing Winning Eleven 2009 and PES 2009 have you personally noticed any major differences between the two? On a final note, as football is a global game, I really can’t comprehend why we don’t just have one generic PES/Winning Eleven can you?