World Championship Soccer

We've had Kick Off, we've had Kick Off 2, and by golly if we haven't had Gazza 2, er, too. Well, now here comes World Championship Soccer, a Sega arcade conversion that's looking to beat them all into touch as the fastest, simplest, most playable overhead-view footy game ever. It's a 1/2-player game, and I may as well tackle each in alphabetical order, so it's, er, 1-player mode to kick off with first.

Assuming you know everything about the inflated bovine bladder and the Colin Moynihan Identikit, I will skip the rules of soccer and get on with what this game has to offer. World Championship Soccer offers a choice of one-off and one or two-player games (test matches) of football between international sides or a competition series not dissimilar from the World Cup itself. It is an elimination league split into six groups. Teams take part in three days worth of qualifying games. Extra time is never added on. In the event of a full-time tie, penalties decide the winner.

O esporte nacional número um volta a campo com este jogo recém-lançado. Mais uma chance pra você provar que é bom de bola, ou então ser considerado um perna de pau.

De fato, um super campeonato mundial, com as melhores seleções do planeta entrando em campo para tentar faturar a taça. Os movimentos são idênticos aos praticados nos campos de verdade: chute a gol, lateral, escanteio e o jogador pode até "mergulhar" para fazer um gol de cabeça. Cada time tem suas características e destaques em táticas diferentes.

Alors que la version Megadrive profitait de bien plus de fonctionnalités, World Cup Soccer sur Master System se révèle bien maigre en contenu même s’il propose un challenge assez relevé pour quiconque souhaite un jeu de foot arcade. A deux, il devient un jeu intéressant pour s’amuser entre amis.

World Cup Italia 90 looks good when you load it, since it features some excellent presentation screens. However, when you play the game itself, disappointment is the order of the day. The graphics are dreadful and the pitch is so tiny, you've got no room to manoeuvre. Control is very poor - you can plough through the opposition, shoot diagonally and stick it into the net easily! And that's not all. The graphics are all out of scale (the men are nearly as big as the goal!), the ball movement is utterly unrealistic and the sound is dreadful. In fact the only thing that's good is the penalty shoot out! If you haven't got a football game, get the vastly superior (and cheaper) World Cup Soccer. Otherwise wait for something better.

Sadly, World Championship Soccer is a horribly aged game that wasn't even that good to begin with. There are plenty of good soccer games available for the Genesis - Sensible Soccer, FIFA Soccer '95, and Konami's International Superstar Soccer especially spring to mind, so there is absolutely no reason anyone should bother to play this piece of garbage.

Das Spiel ist schon wieder so mies, das es zu zweit mächtig Spaß macht, solang man es nicht übertreibt und 10 Spiele hintereinander macht.

It's easy to believe this game came out in 1989, because it looks more like a Master System game than a Genesis title. The overhead view of the field makes the players look like black circles with shoulders. Your limited view of the action is supposedly compensated by a miniature "radar" field display on the right side of the screen. Even if you could make sense out of all those moving dots (forget about it), using it effectively is nearly impossible. I liked performing the bicycle kicks, but maintaining control of the ball is impossible. The upbeat background music is pleasant enough, but the "goal!" voice sample sounds more like someone screaming in agony! World Championship Soccer hasn't aged well at all.