ECTS 2003: Konami talks PES3

Although Konami's stand was only 'one of the best' at this year's ECTS, our trips in that direction were by far the most memorable. On day one, we blagged our way past the front desk and basked in front of the air-conditioning unit, pilfering pastries from the private coffee bar area and watching the awesome juicing machine extrapolate our OJs. Then we went outside and watched the MGS3 trailer. It was good.

On day two, we managed to squirm our way onto the Pro Evo 3 setup, of which (obviously) a bit more in a minute. We then proceeded to get our arses handed back to us (us!) by a series of unknowns. After losing two successive games and then narrowly avoiding a third defeat thanks to some surging runs by Ronaldo in stoppage time, we gave up and watched some kids playing Dancing Stage - with the same sort of flawless authority we usually see from traffic wardens taping death sentences to our cars.

The third day was probably the best for sheer acquisition of knowledge, however. Having made it inside once more at about 3pm to chat with Konami's resident PR handler, we were busy settling down in the corner when I happened to put a name to a face. "That's Hideo Kojima!" I said to Kristan as we sat down not five feet away from a Japanese man fiddling with a rucksack.

"We should nick his bag," Kristan replied. Cheeky sod. "That's his son's bag, actually," our PR contact smoothly intervened, and as if on cue the little tyke raced through the doors followed by Kojima-san's long-serving translator. Junior sat down and started playing something we couldn't identify on a blue GBA SP, so we thought it best to leave them all to it. We couldn't be arsed to talk to many people on Friday afternoon, so it hardly seemed fair to impose ourselves on the father of Solid Snake and the grumbly-voiced anti-hero's proverbial sibling.

Naturally, the main thing we wanted to know from our PR contact was what sort of state the Pro Evo 3 code was in. "It's just Anglicised Winning Eleven 7," he told us to our mutual disappointment. Certainly that seemed to be the case. Although the pitch appeared less bobbly, it was otherwise very difficult to pick apart from the Japanese release. There were some obvious changes - like Beckham at Real Madrid, but a lot of things were still undecided. Seaman was still keeping goal for Arsenal, for example, and while some Dutch players (most notably Bergkamp) were in, Hasselbaink's name was spelt wrong and according to Konami, the licensing issue is still unresolved. Oranges may yet return.

However there was some good news for us. As we were told last week, Konami is trying to license various teams - including a few English ones - for the European release of Pro Evo 3, and with the release of this version we can finally say goodbye to "Loss Time". KCET has finally relented and changed it to "Stoppage Time," which makes infinitely more sense.

In our opinion, even if Konami just nailed down this version and shipped it to fans, few would be disappointed. Although KCET has still yet to extricate the troublesome code responsible for the "stutter bug", which causes the game to seize up for a frame or two at regular intervals, Pro Evo 3/WE7 is a mammoth improvement over Pro Evolution Soccer 2 and perhaps even Winning Eleven 6: Final Evolution. There will be those that dispute this for a while to come, but given time we're pretty confident that this version's superior animation, specialist individual skills and reliance on passing and possession will endure.

Pro Evolution Soccer 3 is due out on PS2 in November, with a PC version to follow.