Premier Eleven: A Closer Look at the Lost Atomiswave Football Game

Throughout history there are numerous examples of the story behind the creation of a particular piece of media being more interesting than the final product. Take for example, the 1996 movie The Island of Dr. Moreau. A movie which was based on the 1896 H. G. Wells novel of the same name and which teamed a star-studded cast (Marlon Brando, Val Kilmer, David Thewlis, Fairuza Balk) with a hotly tipped up-and-coming director (Richard Stanley). In what is now an infamous turn of events, the final movie turned out to be something of a box office bomb, but the story of what went on behind the cameras spawned such tall and bizarre tales that the production has become infamous amongst movie aficionados. If you’re not in the slightest bit familiar with what I’m blathering about, then I implore you to seek out the documentary Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Dr. Moreau and be amazed at just how wild movie making can become.

Credit: Posteritati

With this in mind then, let us turn our attention to something much more Dreamcast-centric: Dimps Corporation’s ‘lost’ Atomiswave football (soccer) title Premier Eleven. We’ve covered the storied history of Premier Eleven here at the Junkyard in past, indeed I almost transformed into the aforementioned Dr. Moreau myself while researching it - at one point even visiting an arcade where a cabinet had been trialled back in the early 2000s, hoping and praying that there may be some remnant of it still in situ. Spoiler: there wasn’t. If you’d like to know more than is healthy about my recalcitrant obsession with this previously lesser-spotted arcade kickabout, please do check out our previous articles on Premier Eleven here and here; and you can read about the history of the Atomiswave arcade system (and its fascinating link to the Dreamcast) here.

A photo of the Premier Eleven arcade cabinet installed
at Clarence Pier, Southsea (UK) - Credit: John Baseley.

The long and short of it though, is that Premier Eleven was a football game in development by Dimps Corporation, which was planned for release on Sammy’s Atomiswave arcade system. After some testing in a few select locations, release plans for the game were scrapped, cabinets were unceremoniously slung into the fires of Orodruin, and the few remaining copies of the original arcade board ended up in the hands of private collectors. 

When the Atomiswave library was ported to the Dreamcast back in 2020, it was truly a marvel to behold and many a Dreamcast enjoyer was - quite rightly - overjoyed to finally be given the opportunity to sample such delights as Faster Than Speed, KenJu, Dolphin Blue, Maximum Speed et al. Only, there was a small hole in the collection of games being unleashed onto the Dreamcast - the Atomiswave library was not complete. Several games were missing from the catalogue, mainly due to being unreleased back during the Atomiswave’s heyday, and among them was (you guessed it) Premier Eleven.

Original Premier Eleven promotional flyer.

Now (well, in June 2026), thanks to a Dreamcast-Talk forum user who goes by the monicker ‘dimps’ (I see what you did there, dimps) Premier Eleven has finally been dumped and ported to the Dreamcast. Not only that, but this dump apparently came direct - and with permission to release - from a private collector who had in their possession a genuine Premier Eleven PCB. Even better, is that dimps managed to delve into the game’s code and release versions of the ROM which increase the default game time from a paltry 4-minute game length to both 12-minute and 20-minute game lengths - something which may not sound like much, but actually turns Premier Eleven into so much more than it could ever have been if left in its default state.

A Premier Eleven board went up for sale for $15,000 back in 2022.

The mystique around Premier Eleven, and that it promised so much from the promotional materials released back in the early 2000s, is possibly what led me to obsess over it so much in the past. The Dreamcast’s stable of football (soccer) titles is somewhat lacking when it comes to quality, with releases such as Virtua Striker 2 Ver 2000.1 and UEFA Dream Soccer generally being regarded as the cream of the crop (and cream always rises to the top, right?); but with Premier Eleven’s release, we finally get a chance to experience what could have been another option for Dreamcast-owning football fans. Well, if the Atomiswave games had been officially ported. And Premier Eleven had been fully released. And the Dreamcast hadn't had its life support yanked in 2001. You get what I mean, don’t be pedantic.

So then, what do we actually get with Premier Eleven? Not a great deal in truth. The game was always intended as an arcade experience and as such if you’re expecting something like Pro Evolution Soccer then you’ll be disappointed. No, this is squarely in the Virtua Striker mould (and in some ways it has more in common with the Super Sidekicks games), but hold that thought about PES because there are some similarities to Konami’s title if you look beyond the somewhat basic gameplay and impressive visuals and animation. Firstly, remember that this was an unreleased game that was never intended to be played on a Dreamcast. For that reason, it can be forgiven for featuring only a single play mode: a sort of cut-down World Cup where you choose a team from the 32 international squads available and then enter the tournament at the last 16 stage. You pick a team, get randomly matched against an opponent in the tournament tree, and then it’s game on.

32 international teams are included.

You'll start every run through at the Round of 16.

He's got a foot like a traction engine.

Hitting the post from 25 yards.
As Ally McCoist would say: shenshashional!

There are no options, no other play modes. There are no player names (although there are likenesses) and there is no way to change the camera angle. There is no play-by-play commentary other than a rudimentary International Superstar Soccer Deluxe style announcement whenever the ball leaves the field of play for a throw in or a goal kick. You can choose your team’s formation from a choice of two…but that’s about as deep as the technicalities get. No subs, no messing with player positions…you can’t even pause the action once a game starts. No, this is a totally barebones arcade football experience. But you know what? Premier Eleven plays a bit of a blinder when it eventually clicks into place.

Upon firing up Premier Eleven you are presented with a nice attract mode showing chunky polygonal footballers scoring spectacular goals. While not on the same level of visual splendour as Virtua Striker 2 (buckle up, there’ll be a lot of references to that game in the following paragraphs), the one thing that is apparent is the quality of the animation. It all moves really nicely and the way the players kick the ball and the way goalies flail just looks…right. Pressing the Start button takes you to the team select screen where you pick your country, and then you get to see who you’re paired up with in the tournament’s final stages. Then you’re asked to choose your team formation from a choice of two, and then it’s out onto the pitch via a rather nice intro where the players run out through the tunnel. The camera pans around showing off the the impressive stadium graphics (complete with crudely animated crowds), and then it’s down to business with the kick-off. Once the game gets going, you’ll quickly start to settle into what Premier Eleven is all about: it’s basically Virtua Striker 2 with inferior visuals, vastly diluted hand holding, a better camera and no horrible swooshing noise every time you try to dispossess the opposition.

The goalies smother the ball well at close range.

Set pieces show the simplicity of the control system.

The camera is fixed but offers a better view than Virtua Striker 2.

Some of the celebrations are excellent - here the manager
shares his jubilation with his players.

Controls are limited to three buttons and the D-pad or analogue stick, with the Dreamcast’s X, A and B buttons being substitutes for the arcade cab’s 1, 2 and 3 respectively. X is shoot, A is pass and tackle, B is long pass/cross and change player. That’s it. As far as I could discern, there is no sprint button, and there’s no through ball. Control of players is via either the D-pad or the analogue stick, but there’s no true analogue control - the players have two speeds: stationary or sprinting. With all this in mind then, you’d be forgiven for thinking Premier Eleven wasn’t really up to much. I’ve mainly focussed on what it doesn’t have, rather than what it does have. But that’s about to change, because what it does have in spades - at least as far as I’m concerned - is something that few other football games on the Dreamcast possess: excitement.

While it’s certainly true that Premier Eleven is quite a basic experience when push comes to shove, once you get the hang of how the game wants you to approach it, it can become very, very fun to play. Granted, I have only played this game against the CPU and the difficulty level varies wildly depending on the opposition which you are presented with, but again, once the game clicks it becomes a whole ton of fun. Frantic goal mouth scrambles, screaming shots from outside the box (with judicious use of the shooting power meter), crosses into the box to be met with either a thundering header or a spectacular bicycle kick - it’s all here in Premier Eleven if you give it the time to allow the somewhat basic mechanics to sink in.

Another shot of the set piece controls.

That was liquid football.

You'll be seeing penalties a lot if you stick with the
default 4-minute game length.

An excellent parry from the 'keeper.

Tackles, similarly to Virtua Striker 2 are automatic, meaning you only have to run into an opposing player to get the ball (and likewise they can do the same to you), but you also have the ability to initiate standing tackles and slide tackles, which are context sensitive. Sometimes you’ll win the ball cleanly and come away with it to mount a counter attack; others you end up absolutely smashing someone before being issued with a warning from the ref. To this point, I haven’t seen any injuries yet…but due to the lack of substitutions I doubt they exist in this footballing universe. Aerial play is a bit hit and miss - generally holding either the pass or shoot button before the ball gets to your player will initiate a defensive or attacking response; and while it is somewhat imprecise, it can lead to some very special goals and is by no means anywhere as bad as that awful system employed by FIFA Football 2003. Clearly showing my age there.

One area in which Premier Eleven really shines - and in my opinion bests even the hallowed Virtua Striker 2 - is in the animation of the goalkeepers. The saves they make are absolutely brilliant at times, but even when they have no chance of stopping a 20-yard barnstormer from hitting the back of the net in the top left hand corner, they’ll still acrobatically go for it and it just adds to the spectacle. Premier Eleven is by no means perfect - it is stilted and cumbersome at times, and games can become a stodgy game of midfield possession constantly changing hands as the timer runs down and penalties beckon. But when it shines, when the perfect breakaway presents itself or the most beautiful of searching crosses is met by the head of the big man up front…it plays an absolute blinder. Get in, back of the net, jumpers for goalposts, etc. 

The camera does give a good view of the pitch in midfield.

Strong goatee action from the ref.

The rudimentary 'tactics' screen before every match.

Another great save from a goalie...

As alluded to earlier, the sort of stilted, stop-start, back and forth, rudimentary directional movement of Premier Eleven does really remind me of the early PES games on the PlayStation, and that’s no bad thing. It’s not anywhere near those titles in terms of gameplay, don’t get me wrong, but it’s a tantalising glimpse at what could have been. 

Visually, it’s not really going to win any awards but it looks very respectable: there is a good variety in terms of pitch textures, nice lighting effects (with differing times of day), a good variation in the types of stadiums on offer (sadly you can’t choose which venue you play at) and the players all look and move nicely. That it also plays a very decent game, helped no end by the extended match lengths provided by dimps’ edited ROMS, is a nice bonus. By all accounts (including from my esteemed colleague Brian Vines on a recent football-themed edition of the DreamPod) the default game length of 4-minutes almost always results in a goalless stalemate with nobody getting an opportunity to score due to the brevity of the matches, so having some extra time in which to create some chances is a welcome addition. Weirdly though, in Premier Eleven if you manage to draw in the penalty shootout (there’s only a finite number of kicks), then that's registered as a loss and you have to use a continue. Is FIFA involved in this bastardisation of the beautiful game too?! (for the purposes of not being sued, I’m going to say no, no they are not).

...but this goalie has football pie all over his shirt.

Match intros are really quite good at building atmosphere.

The groundsman needs a raise, to be honest.

Goal replays come from a range of cool angles, such
as this one from in the back of the net.

So, Premier Eleven then. A game I certainly never thought would see the light of day, let alone be fully playable on a Dreamcast in my own house. It is real, it’s available, and while clearly incomplete I would urge anyone with even a passing interest in Virtua Striker 2 Ver 2000.1 or Super Sidekicks to give Premier Eleven a blast. Just briefly returning to the notion posited in the opening paragraph of this piece, is the story of Premier Eleven’s history more interesting than the final product? Probably. But in its wake, a new question arises: is it one of the best football games on Dreamcast? It’s certainly up there, in my humble opinion.

Huge thanks and respect go out to dimps over at Dreamcast-Talk, where you can grab the various versions of the Premier Eleven ROM to pop on your GDEMU or optical drive emulator/emulator of choice. For the record, all of the screens reproduced here were captured using a GDEMU and ThunderDream-equipped Dreamcast console, connected to an OSSC via a Retro Gaming Cables Retrotink RGB SCART cable, and played with a Retro Fighters StrikerDC Wireless. All of which were purchased with my own coin, I hasten to add.

Why must I live like this?

Thanks also go to the mysterious benefactor who provided dimps and the wider Dreamcast community with the opportunity to sample this lost artifact of Atomiswave lore. I for one never thought I would experience this game, so thank you, whoever you are.

Football won.

Have you played Premier Eleven on your Dreamcast? Do you agree with my thoughts? Disagree? Let us know in the comments.