{"id":119506,"date":"2020-10-18T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-10-18T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/news\/2020\/10\/poll_box_art_brawl_64_-_international_superstar_soccer_98"},"modified":"2020-10-18T11:00:00","modified_gmt":"2020-10-18T11:00:00","slug":"poll-box-art-brawl-64-international-superstar-soccer-98","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2020\/10\/18\/poll-box-art-brawl-64-international-superstar-soccer-98\/","title":{"rendered":"Poll: Box Art Brawl #64 &#8211; International Superstar Soccer 98"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"media_block\"><a href=\"https:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/6af1432ccc472\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/6af1432ccc472\/small.jpg\" class=\"media_thumbnail\"><\/a><\/div>\n<figure class=\"picture strip\"><a title=\"Main\" href=\"https:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/6af1432ccc472\/main.original.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/6af1432ccc472\/main.900x.jpg\" width=\"900\" height=\"506\" alt=\"Main\"><\/a><\/figure>\n<p>Welcome back to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/tags\/box-art-brawl\">Box Art Brawl<\/a>, the series where we throw two or more regional box art variants into a ring and watch them kick seven shades out of each other in a fight for your vote.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/news\/2020\/10\/poll_box_art_brawl_duel_63_-_advance_wars_dual_strike\">Last time<\/a> we watched <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/ds\/advance_wars_dual_strike\">Advance Wars: Dual Strike<\/a><\/strong> give itself fifteen birthday bumps in a two-way bout between East and West. It appears that the overwhelming majority of you didn&#8217;t appreciate the toy town warfare the models on the Japanese cover conveyed, so North America and Europe sailed to a convincing victory with over 85% of the vote.<\/p>\n<p>This week, we thought Switch-owning football fans could do with a pick-me-up following the release of the thoroughly depressing &#8216;Legacy&#8217; edition of <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/nintendo-switch\/fifa_21\">FIFA 21<\/a><\/strong>. Yes, for Brawl #64 we&#8217;re journeying back to an appropriately 64-bit era when football games on Nintendo consoles weren&#8217;t simply &#8216;good enough&#8217;, or even &#8216;great&#8217; \u2014 no, <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/n64\/iss_98\">ISS 98<\/a><\/strong> was <em>bloody fantastic<\/em>. We watched its predecessor in a classic exhibition match back in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/news\/2020\/02\/poll_box_art_brawl_29_-_international_superstar_soccer_64\">Brawl #29<\/a>, but it&#8217;s time for the sequel.<\/p>\n<p>Grab your jumpers for goalposts, and let&#8217;s kick things off in this highly irregular three-way match.<\/p>\n<h2>Europe<\/h2>\n<aside class=\"gallery\">\n<div class=\"col\"><a title=\"EU\" href=\"https:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/7447de51330d3\/eu.original.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/static.nintendolife.com\/blank.gif\" data-original=\"https:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/7447de51330d3\/eu.original.jpg\" alt=\"EU\"><\/a><\/div>\n<div class=\"col\"><a title=\"EU2\" href=\"https:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/69710ec8da8a9\/eu2.original.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/static.nintendolife.com\/blank.gif\" data-original=\"https:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/69710ec8da8a9\/eu2.original.jpg\" alt=\"EU2\"><\/a><\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<p>As you can see above, European countries got one of two covers. In the UK, for example, we had Italian striker Fabrizio Ravanelli having a stare out against Paul Ince. Alternatively, elsewhere German goalie Andy K\u00f6pke replaced the Englishman, although instead of eyeballing the Italian he&#8217;s looking into the camera with a face that seems to say <em>&#8220;Why is it always me?&#8221;<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>We like the simplicity here \u2014 the black and white photo given a splash of colour from the logo at the bottom and the Konami logo running down the left side. It&#8217;s subtle and striking all-at-once. Not bad.<\/p>\n<h2>North America<\/h2>\n<figure class=\"picture strip\"><a title=\"NA\" href=\"https:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/b5e73b877c72e\/na.original.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg' viewBox='0 0 900 657'%3E%3C\/svg%3E\" width=\"900\" height=\"657\" data-original=\"https:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/b5e73b877c72e\/na.900x.jpg\" alt=\"NA\"><\/a><\/figure>\n<p>The North American cover isn&#8217;t short on colour, that&#8217;s for sure, although it&#8217;s not much more dynamic than the previous game&#8217;s NA cover. Konami went with the flamboyant stylings of Colombian star Carlos Valderrama here, and as one of the most recognisable footballers in history, it&#8217;s nice to see him, we guess. At 37 by the time the game came out, though, he wasn&#8217;t at the top of his game and his presence feels a bit odd.<\/p>\n<p>Our main quibble is that they&#8217;ve managed to make a cover featuring <em>Carlos Valderrama<\/em> (&#8216;International Superstar&#8217;, if you weren&#8217;t aware) so spectacularly static and boring. It&#8217;s quite a feat.<\/p>\n<h2>Japan<\/h2>\n<figure class=\"picture strip\"><a title=\"JP\" href=\"https:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/2b92bf88a2c43\/jp.original.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg' viewBox='0 0 900 1256'%3E%3C\/svg%3E\" width=\"900\" height=\"1256\" data-original=\"https:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/2b92bf88a2c43\/jp.900x.jpg\" alt=\"JP\"><\/a><\/figure>\n<p>The Japanese version of the game came out earlier and boasted the World Cup France 98 licence. Therefore, in Japan the game featured off-brand Woody Woodpecker &#8216;Footix&#8217;, the competition mascot that year.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s not much else to say about this generic cover really \u2014 as a licenced product, having the brand and logo front-and-centre must have done the job on store shelves. There&#8217;s an awful lot of white here, and you could easily slap this image on any piece of merch. Uninspiring, but functional.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>So, you&#8217;ve seen the three (well, four) options, but which is best? Pick your favourite and hit &#8216;Vote&#8217; to let us know:<\/p>\n<p><em>And the whistle has been blown. We&#8217;ll be back for another game next week \u2014 until then, have a wonderful one.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Welcome back to Box Art Brawl, the series where we throw two or more regional box art variants into a ring and watch them kick seven shades out of each other in a fight for your vote. Last time we watched Advance Wars: Dual Strike give itself fifteen birthday bumps in a two-way bout between [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-119506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nintendo-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119506\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}