Originally released in March of 1991 Despite the 1990 in game copyright, Football Champ is a soccer game which up to 4 players can participate in. Football Champ runs on Taito's Taito F1 Hardware and it is also known as Hat Trick Hero. As the name implies, Football Champ is a soccer game where you choose one of 8 teams and engage in a soccer tournament in order to see who is the best team. The teams include: * United States * Italy * England * Japan * Holland * Brazil * Argentina * West Germany Controls consist of an 8 way joystick and two buttons. The first button lets you kick the ball in Offense mode and it performs a slide kick. In Defense Mode, while the 2nd button lets you pass in Offense and perform random attacks in Defense Mode. Each match lasts 2 minutes, and the obvious goal is to score more goals than your opponent team. During the game, you can pass the ball to your teammates and kick the ball to the goal. When you don't have the ball, you must defend your goal by "any means". This includes slide kicking the ball out of your opponent's possession, or you can take the "any means" literally by being rough to your opponent by punching them in the face, hitting them with a flying knee, or yanking them back by grabbing their jersey. Be warned however, that if you perform rough tactics and the referee catches you in his line of sight, you will be fouled, and if you get fouled a certain number of times, you will be ejected with a red card foul.
Played the crap out of this in the local arcade when it released, they had it on a sit down cab with a big screen. Had the game licked, best ever result was 17-0 i think. The better game if you're looking back was Seibu Cup Soccer, same format with smoother graphics, better animations with more features.
