Genre Spotlight: Soccer-Rama

[Melf]

The Super Bowl is practically upon us, so we've decided to celebrate this great American sports tradition with a new Genre Spotlight article covering all the football games available on the Genesis. Wait...excuse me... (takes note handed from offscreen)... Sorry ladies and gentlemen. It seems our article is on the sport the rest of the world calls football, that which we Americans know as soccer. Not a problem! A great sport deserves all the same coverage, so we've rounded up all of them for you in a comprehensive piece. Read the full article and lace up those cleats!

[McTom]

Wow Ken, that is posted quickly! It looks great, thanks a lot! but it is no RR as the front says

[Dirt Ball Gamer]

Wow good article. Ive recently been playing lots of genesis sports games and was wondering about the best soccer game to get. I never used to like old 8-16bitsport games, but im really getting into them now. The world cup rugby game is excellent IMO having played and followed rugby for a long time. The gameplay is spot on. NHL games on genesis are supprisingly good, and I just got Madden 97 today and it seems to be good quality. I have a fifa soccer game which is pretty good, but I think im going to track down sensible soccer now.

[Ruudos]

Pelé was released in Europe, since I own a copy of that game. Don't know about the sequel though.

[starphaser]

sensible soccer is terrific, everyone should play it at least once. international superstar soccer deluxe is a classic and eventually it evolved into the famous winning eleven series.

great article

[Mr Smith]

Fantastic read. It's great to see the true majesty of Mega Drive football laid bare.

[megabomberman]

I concur, that was a very nice section, although it does dissappoint me as unfortunately bar a few exceptions most the megadrive soccer titles are quite similar, the isometric view of fifa offered something different and iss was just awesome, the original italia 90 is a classic for all the wrong reasons and is just plain fun... But other than that I would say European club soccer is the only genuine title I want from that lot!

Great feature though....

Anyone played Super Soccer on the snes... Its as shitty as they come but like italia 90 a barrel of laughs...

[AEther]

Pele and Pele World Tournament Soccer were released in Europe since I have both.

[CRV]

There was never a Tecmo World Cup '93. There's a ROM out that's named that, but the title screen simply says "Tecmo World Cup." And Tecmo had nothing to do with it.

[playgen]

I believe Tecmo did make "Tecmo World Cup" (that plays more like an FMV game than Tecmo World Cup 92), its just an unreleased title, like Ninja Gaiden.

[108 Stars]

ISS Deluxe is the no.1 football game on MD for me.

[Zebbe]

... simply because it was ported by Factor 5, a German amateur game developer who have brought us nothing more note-worthy than a Contra-clone.

[Elusive]

AWS Pro Moves Soccer: The 'AWS' stands for ASCIIware World Sports. It's in the logo!

I didn't know World Cup Italia '90 was a licensed title; it's in the European Mega Games 1, is it in the American counterpart three-in-one?

[108 Stars]

Zebbe, now you are insulting me. First of all, I do not love a developer because he´s from Germany. But I am proud of Factor 5, they were one of the very best 68000 developers out there, not some amateur game developer. And if you ever played Turrican games you should have noticed that the gameplay is very different from Contra.
ISS is technically very noteworthy as well, an improved version of the best looking and playing soccer games on SNES. Indiana Jones Greatest Adventures which sadly remained unreleased featured all the Mode-7-effects from the SNES-version.
If you had any idea about talented coders you´d know that Factor 5 stands on top with very few others who can compare.

[Zebbe]

And if you ever played Turrican games you should have noticed that the gameplay is very different from Contra.

Yes, they have stolen some of Metroid too.

ISS is technically very noteworthy as well, an improved version of the best looking and playing soccer games on SNES.

Not according to this site:

To sum up, the SNES version gives a 5-0 result to the MegaDrive version of the game, in what concerns longevity of the fun you are supposed to have with the game.

Indiana Jones Greatest Adventures which sadly remained unreleased featured all the Mode-7-effects from the SNES-version.
If you had any idea about talented coders you´d know that Factor 5 stands on top with very few others who can compare.

I'd take other small teams such as TecnoSoft, Treasure and Masaya and their games before Factor 5 any day. One movie-license and a run 'n' gun franchise aren't enough to call them among the best 68k developers.