Summary
One ofAstro Bot’s many,manycameos surprisingly seems to be referencing Konami’sPro Evolution Soccerinstead ofFIFAor even EA Sports FC.
I may not be the biggest football fan in the world, but I do know one thing for sure - FIFA is unarguably the biggest football gaming series of all time. Sure,that’s changed a little in recent years with EA losing the licenseand having to come up with EA Sports FC,but until the rumoured 2K FIFA game releases, we all just callEA Sports FCby its original name anyway.
That wasn’t always the case, though. Back in the ye olde days of the PS2, FIFA had a very strong competitor in the form of Pro Evolution Soccer, better known as PES so we’re not calling football the wrong name. PES isn’t really in the mix nowadays,especially since it changed to eFootball, but it seems that Astro Bot has a favourite out of the two.
Astro Bot Seemingly Prefers PES To FIFA
As you’ve surely heard by now,Astro Bot has a ton of different cameos from PlayStation games and beyond, which includes some third-party picks. While most of the cameos are relatively easy to figure out, none of them are specifically named, which means that a few are up for interpretation.
One such cameo is the “Star Striker” Bot,which can be found in Crumble Rumble 3. At first glance, the Bot appears to just be a reference to football in general, but since most of the other Bots in the game are either generic Bots or PlayStation characters, it’s clearly meant to be nodding to a series - but which one?
While the obvious answer is FIFA, Star Striker actually appears to be a reference to PES instead. The Star Striker’s description reads, “In a master league of his own”, which gives the (beautiful) game away a bit. Master League is one of the most well-known modes from Pro Evolution Soccer and something that has never appeared in FIFA, which suggests that Astro Bot is directly referencing Konami’s series.
It’s not really clear why Team Asobi has gone for PES and not FIFA, but we do have some theories. For one, the rights situation with FIFA is very messy at the moment and technically not active in gaming since EA changed to EA Sports FC. Secondly, no EA franchises or characters appear in Astro Bot at all, which would make a random football player from FIFA a bit of an outlier.
Finally, there’s the simple fact that, even if it’s not as relevant now, PES was a massive deal in the PS1 and PS2 days. It might seem wild to think that FIFA ever had competition, omeone who’s not much of a football fan, I knew thatpicking between the two was like the sports equivalent of Call of Duty and Battlefield. Astro Bot has a lot of reverence for the good old days, so it makes sense to pick the underdog.
