After the death of Pele At 82 years of age, many stories come to mind that show the importance of his career and the legacy he left the world, because his talent led him to be a figure outside the courts until he reached the video game industry.
Pele’s Soccer It was the first video game that had a soccer player on its cover, using it as the face to move an interactive product. The relevance of O Rey in this sport made Atari bet on his figure so that the children of the time are interested in his game.
What was Pele’s Soccer like?
Edson Arantes do Nascimento reached the league of USA in 1975, already towards the end of his career after having won three World Cups. There he played only in new york cosmos until 1980. A fundamental context for its arrival in the video game.
Around that time Atari was the leading brand in the video game market, thanks to what it had done with pong and the launch of Atari 2600the first home console to become a bestseller.
By the beginning of the 1980s, the company made a marketing bid to increase the interest of buyers; For his line of sports games, he called upon several figures from the North American market: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, basketball player, mario andrettiracing driver, and Pele.
Initially, the soccer game was going to be called Championship Soccerbut after getting the image of the Brazilian star they changed the name to Pele’s Soccerincluding the player on the cover and in television commercials.
The title did well in the market, surpassing to soccerfrom the console Intellevision, in sales. Given the technical limitations of the time, the game did not include 11 players on the field, but only three who moved all together and had to take the ball to the opposite goal to overcome a goalkeeper who was moved by the game system.
This was not the only time Pele appeared as the cover of a video game, since his fame led him to be at stake with his name for SEGA Genesis and in Pele II: World Tournament Soccer for the same console.
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Other footballers who have been on the cover
The Pelé thing was the beginning of a marketing practice that was later standardized. Most of the following soccer games opted to hire a player to be the visible face and motivate minors to buy the title.
During the 90s the saga of FIFA had figures like David Platt, Ruud Gullit, Erik Thorstvedt, Ronald de Boer, Raúl and Dennis Bergkamp. While International Superstar Soccer bet on the PGoes Valderrama.
Already for this century the covers began to have two players, which greatly increased the list. Pro Evolution Soccer had stars like Totti, Henry, John Terry, Adriano, Ronaldo, Buffon, Messi, Fernando Torres, Falcao, Neymar, Luis Suárez.
by the side of FIFA there was an agreement so that in each region of the world there would be a figure from that part accompanied by a global reference such as Lionel Messi either Ronaldinho. In the case of Latin America, players like Guillermo Ochoa, Juan Guillermo Cuadrado, James Rodríguez, Omar Bravo, Oswaldo Sánchez, Rafael Márquez and Cuauhtémoc Blanco.
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