The Ultimate 11: SNK Football Championship

The Ultimate 11: SNK Football Championship is a 1996 soccer arcade video game developed and published by SNK. Despite the international name, it is the fourth installment in the Super Sidekicks series, succeeding Super Sidekicks 3: The Next Glory (1995). Featuring an arcade-style approach to soccer much like its predecessors, the game allows players to choose any available game mode to compete with AI-controlled rivals or human players with their preferred team. Although first launched for Neo Geo MVS, the game was ported to Neo Geo AES, in addition of being re-released on download services for various consoles. The title received positive reception from critics but proved to be less popular than its previous iterations. It was followed by Neo Geo Cup '98: The Road to the Victory (1998), which is a remake of  Super Sidekicks 3 and served as the final entry in the Super Sidekicks saga.

Gameplay


Similar to its predecessor, The Ultimate 11: SNK Football Championship is a soccer game that is played from a top-down perspective in a two-dimensional environment with sprites. Though it follows the same gameplay as with other soccer titles at the time and most of the sport's rules are present, the game opts for a more arcade-styled approach of the sport instead of being full simulation.

The players scoring the goals are still named, but individual scores are no longer kept. The regional tournaments have been eliminated and replaced with alternate mode the SNK Football Championship, which is the game's namesake, an elimination tournament in which the player can select any one opponent from any region to play. The last region played is the deciding match.

Good player performance opens up a match against a hidden boss team called the SNK Superstars, which features characters from SNK's fighting games as players. Teams now have a charge bar (similar to the one in fighting games), which is charged depending on how long the player keeps the ball under their team's control. When the bar is fully charged and flashing, if a player is near the goal, they can take a shot that is virtually unblockable, depending on the opposing team. Teams are ranked to mirror their real-life counterparts.

Team
There are 80 teams available to choose from before the start of any game modes, each one divided into 8 geographical "regions" and representing their country:

Development and release
The Ultimate 11: SNK Football Championship was headed by Takashi Nishiyama. I.Etsuko and Y.Romario served as co-designers. Shinsekai Gakkyoku Zatsugidan members Yasuo "Tate-Norio" Yamate and MIKI handled both music and sound effects. The Ultimate 11 was first released by SNK for the Neo Geo MVS in Japan on October 16, 1996, and North America in November, and later for Neo Geo AES in December. The game was one of the few Neo Geo releases to feature a corporate sponsor: Akai. Both the Japanese and European AES releases have since become one of the more expensive titles on the platform, with copies of the port fetching over US$6,000 and $45,000 on the secondary video game collecting market respectively. After its launch, the title was showcased to attendees at the 1996 AM Show. D4 Enterprise re-released it on the Wii's Virtual Console in March 2013. Hamster Corporation also re-released it for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in February 2019 under their Arcade Archives series.

Reception
The Ultimate 11: SNK Football Championship received positive reception from critics but proved to be less popular than its predecessors. A reviewer of Brazilian magazine Super Game Power praised the fun factor, controls, graphics and sound. AllGame's Kyle Knight commended the improved visual presentation and fine-tuned gameplay but criticized the sound design and difficulty level of AI-controlled opponents.