Sony PSP News
Pro Evo 2008: Details released for PSP and DS versions
By Stevie Smith
Dec 13, 2007, 13:27 GMT

Japanese gaming titan Konami has today revealed details relating to the upcoming handheld versions of its uber-popular Pro Evolution (Winning Eleven) football series.

According to Konami, Pro Evolution 2008 is scheduled to arrive on the Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable in the New Year and will see both iterations crammed to the rafters with "all the realism and intuitive controls associated with the series." However, those qualities will exist within bespoke software versions specially tailored for Nintendo’s and Sony’s respective platforms.

More pointedly, the PlayStation Portable version of PES 2008 will hit retail stores closely aligned with the current PlayStation 2 edition, delivering a wide selection of tournaments and leagues to complement the arrival of a progressive challenge-based World Tour mode.

The PSP edition will also sport full Edit modes while data sharing has been "totally reworked" so that players will be able to continue building their team while they are away from their home-based game system. This will see important PES 2008 information (including the Master League, World Tour, and Cup Mode) open for transfer and expansion between the PSP and its PS2 counterpart.

The Nintendo DS version will offer up Exhibition, Penalty Shoot-Outs, and Konami Cup events along with a "a variant on the World Tour system," which will see the player facing pitch-bound battles against some of the world’s best league teams.

The wireless functionality of the DS has been applied to PES 2008 via a Network Mode that allows up to four players (equipped with their own copy of the game) to engage in multiplayer action – while two players can face off against each other with just a single copy. In-game players can also be swapped wirelessly, and a coin-based monetary collection system can be used to bring some of the world’s very best football stars to the player’s team.

Here’s hoping that the handheld versions of Pro Evolution 2008 don’t also come equipped with the same glitchy frame rate issues that reared their ugly heads on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of the game.