RealSports Soccer

Fortunately, Realsports Soccer plays pretty well. The controls make it easy to steal and pass, and it's definitely more exciting than Pele's Soccer. You still control three players, but now they're spread out across the field and the screen scrolls sideways. Still, this seems like a rather lukewarm effort.

This game gave me hundreds of hours of fun in the early to mid-eighties. I imagine it plays as well as or better than any other "classic" soccer cart; indeed, the two-player game is more fun than lots of soccer garbage that came out for the NES and SMS. Still, why bother when there are so many superior versions of soccer currently available for the 32-bit systems? Today it's just a nostalgia piece that holds very little play value but lots of fond memories.

Controlling each player is also problematic, since they never want to move out of their assigned zone. Like most "old school" sports games, you can run off one side of the screen and onto the other, but you have no control of the goalie, and the ball is constantly going out of bounds. The non-stop "galloping" sound effects would be more appropriate for a horse racing game. You can set the clock for any length, but I'd recommend the mercifully short five minute option.