Konami has been busy trying to improve its Pro Evolution Soccer series for the Nintendo DS over the past year after its first portable outing was only slightly above average and certainly nowhere near the high quality associated with the home console versions. Now more details of the Japanese edition have been uncovered.

Following the first general details of the latest edition of Pro Evolution Soccer right here on Nintendic, Konami has unleashed details specific to the Nintendo DS version that will be hitting Japan very soon, on 25th October to be precise. Going under the working name of ‘World Soccer Winning Eleven DS Goal X Goal’ over in the Land of the Rising Sun, the game is now set to have the wonderful feature of game sharing, meaning that gamers will only need the one Nintendo DS cartridge in order to enjoy multiplayer exploits whenever they feel like it. In addition to this fantastic piece of news, though, is the fact that you can even have four players can get in on the worldwide Wi-Fi match action, with two-versus-two games now possible. With any luck the online connection will have been substantially stabilised as it was atrocious in the first version, plagued with horrid slowdown and continuous connection dropping. In fact, the online side has been fleshed out beyond simple football shenanigans as registered team players can be transferred using Friend Codes.

In terms of main mode, there is the World Tour, which is reminiscent of the old Master League, where players create a team from scratch, with no recognisable names, and then work their way through eleven group stages to achieve the mantel of ‘best team in the world’. Groups A through to Group K are organised in order of difficulty, and each time a stage is cleared there is a choice of all the players you have faced to include in your own squad.

To extend the game’s lifespan, Konami is including twenty new mini games in this 2008 edition of Winning Eleven. They will appear at random between games and are all based on learning special techniques whilst still having fun at the same time. Proving successful in these mini games presents the gamer with coins to spend in the ‘Winning Eleven Shop’, with around twenty-three items available for selection, including the likes of ‘Spike’ and ‘No Spinning Shot’.

Whether or not any of this will be improved upon even further for the European release is unknown, but already the Japanese edition sounds a far more robust package than Winning Eleven DS that hit last year.

Be sure to keep your eyes locked on the pages of Nintendic for further news updates…