Sega Worldwide Soccer '97

aka: Sega Worldwide Soccer 97, Sega Worldwide Soccer PC, Victory Goal Worldwide Edition, WWS 97
Moby ID: 14380
Windows Specs
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Description official description

Well, it's a soccer game made by Sega but with an arcade-like style of gameplay. So the handling is kept pretty straight-forward: one button for a shot towards the enemy goal (from any position on the field), one for passing to teammates and one for lobbing. But simple doesn't mean limited since a couple of things are not explained in the manual and you'll have to figure them out yourself, which can take some time. You can choose between dozens of national teams from all over the world. Player names are made up since there's no Fifa license or anything but they're editable if you feel like correcting that. Game modes include Exhibition, Tournament, League or World Cup. You can play either versus the CPU, vs. up to 2 human players or even coop (2 humans vs. the CPU or other 2 humans).

Spellings

  • ビクトリーゴール ワールドワイド エディション - Japanese spelling

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Screenshots

Promos

Credits (Windows version)

66 People (44 developers, 22 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 86% (based on 28 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.8 out of 5 (based on 6 ratings with 1 reviews)

In a few words, the best football arcade of its time

The Good
WWS PC was one of the first PC games I bought, it was just two weeks later after it got released in Spain (I don't recall buying games this earlier, since I usually waited for the price to go down), so maybe you already realized that it was a really expected game for me, and certainly it was (I already played the earlier Saturn version before, so I knew what these guys from Sega were able to do), but it wasn't until I became sickeningly addicted for two weeks to the 2 minutes match PC demo that I matured the idea to buy wherever I found it.

And the day arrived, it costed 8.990 of the now-defunct pesetas (54,03€), and from the very introduction sequence I knew these were well inverted, it was exactly the same of the original 32 bits game, very good sensation for a start. Later, observing the main menu, I saw the same game modes, competitions and options, but with a new incorporation, it was the Golden Goal option, which mission was to give you the opportunity to choose to save the goals (just yours, not computer's) you liked the most, something very useful to share your well-doing with your friends (I still have some goals in some old CD).

That's for sure an interesting option, but it would be totally useless if the game was boring and unplayable, concepts that are totally opposite to the reality of WWS, a football game in which all the plays you can imagine are possible to execute. Dribblings, chileans, volleys, short and long passings, baselines, all kind of headings, tackles and varied jugglings, these are just some of the movements you can adorn your plays with, well... "adorn" in a way, since sometimes they will be definitive in order to score a goal (specially in the hardest difficulty levels). But speaking of adorns, the game also let you choose between some vitalic rock melodies for the ambient of the match, on the other hand there is always the possibility to listen to the match commentaries in English or German, or just the cheerings of the crowd.

Referring to graphics, they were maybe the weakest (although not bad) point in comparison to the Saturn version, I presume it was due to the will of the programmers to make the game faster than WWS 97 (a quite strong point here), so if it was for a good cause I really have no objections. Luckily, some months later I got on my hands the official (if I remember correctly) WWS D3D patch (impossible to find on the Internet nowadays) thanks to a monthly publication CD, and after installing it, even though it still didn't looked like in Saturn, I really appreciated the improvement. Maybe it's just that PC games weren't ready to beat consoles' (graphically) at that time.

The Bad
Just to name a few things, I missed the possibility to play with clubs (but how many games of that time had more than just national teams?), also missed player licenses, that although it was possible to solve it though the Player Edit option, it was based on the console game, so you weren't able to type the names with the keyboard keys, instead, you had to select them from a virtual keyboard.

Regarding gameplay, I think that curved balls were sometimes "too much" curved, but hell, what's a football arcade after all? And well, the goalkeeper AI could have been better, since there were a couple of shots from distant positions that were totally impossible to save for him (even in the hardest difficulty level), but I won't reveal where here, maybe in the "Tips & Tricks" section. ;-)

The Bottom Line
If you are looking for a football arcade, forget the last editions of FIFA, 9 years before there was a game which had nothing to envy them, not to say that it was better for what a football game is all about, perhaps it's 3D motor is poorer, but in addiction, diversion and playability there's no comparison possible. Uh, and I almost forgot, with WWS you can also play on-line through TCP/IP!

Windows · by Kohler 86 (7870) · 2009

Trivia

Awards

  • Electronic Gaming Monthly
    • November 1997 (Issue 100) - ranked #74 (Best 100 Games of All Time) (Saturn version)

Analytics

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Related Games

Sega Worldwide Soccer '98
Released 1997 on SEGA Saturn, Windows
UEFA Dream Soccer
Released 2000 on Dreamcast
J.League Victory Goal '97
Released 1997 on SEGA Saturn
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Released 1996 on DOS, 2013 on Windows, 2015 on Linux...
FIFA Soccer 97
Released 1996 on DOS, Windows, PlayStation...
Football Masters 96/97
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Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 14380
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Kohler 86.

SEGA Saturn added by Hazuki.

Additional contributors: Alaka, Hazuki, ケヴィン.

Game added August 18, 2004. Last modified February 12, 2024.