Sega Genesis
Released in 1994 by Sega
Grade: C+
This game is utterly stupid, but it’s also pretty exciting.
Where it falls in series
It came out a whopping five years after the original, which was made by a different developer and uses a bird’s eye view of the action instead of this game’s side view.
Praises and gripes
Like most soccer video games that were released before, say, 2003, this is so high-speed and so high-scoring that it seems very little like actual soccer. The players are big, the field is small, and everything moves fast.
The controls are simple. When you’ve got the ball, you can shoot, pass, or “kick.” Does that make sense? No, no it doesn’t. Passing and shooting are kicks, aren’t they? Let’s start this paragraph over.
The controls are simple. When you’ve got the ball, you can kick the ball toward the goal, kick the ball along the grass to a teammate, or kick the ball in the air in whatever direction you’re facing. Whew.
On defense, the only control is a slide tackle. The game switches players for you, which would work fine, except the game moves so damn fast it’s usually hard to see who you’re controlling and do something about it before you’re controlling someone else. The saving grace is that players take the ball away automatically anytime they make contact, so the ball changes possession quite often.
You’ve got to keep the ball moving, and sometimes the best strategy is to just boot the ball as far as possible and try to steal it back.
The result of this is unmitigated chaos. You can be on the verge of scoring a goal, and suddenly you’re desperately trying to stop a goal on the other side of the field. You can also experience a maddening series of steals and giveaways in the middle of the field that make you question what you’re doing with your life.
You put it all together, and well, it’s not terrible. It’s kind of fun. I liked this game as a kid, and I can appreciate it now.
There are a bunch of international teams (with made-up players) whose strengths vary, and a bunch of formations, which you can change during the game. And there are three difficulty levels. On hard, it feels impossible to beat, but I actually won on my first try with reasonably matched teams. And it was fun, I tell you.
And yet, it’s stupid. It’s so stupid. The view is close in, so you can’t always see where your teammates are. Passes regularly go to nobody, but it hardly matters because you’ll probably get the ball right back anyway. When throwing in, you can’t aim the pass. When defending throw-ins, you can’t move until the ball’s in play. The same applies to goal kicks and passes from the goalie. Corner kicks are rare, and although the controls allow for headers, they rarely happen. The score isn’t displayed on the screen, and you can’t even see it when you pause the game.
But hey, if you want something smart that makes sense, go read a science book. If you want to get excited about a digital ball flying into a digital net, this game isn’t so bad.