i experienced a couple of ugly soccer (football!) games: gazza's super soccer on c64 and italy 90 on amiga. I fortunately avoided all the ones in this video!
Super Soccer by Imagine (I think) on the Speccy was a turgid bag of awfulness. If I remember right, it had a crap ton of controls, like a specific button for diving header! Not sure if you've covered it before but definitely worth checking out
My favorite RU-vid channel by far. I can watch your videos over and over, they're so full of interesting content and always told in a really compelling fashion. You have an amazing talent. ^_^
Apparently when Sculptured Software made Tony Meola's Sidekicks Soccer, none of them ever heard the phrase, "just because you can doesn't mean you should." Using Mode 7 to render the field at that angle I think maybe was done to just have something that looked impressive at a passing glance whether it played well or not. If anything, there definitely weren't any other football/soccer games at the time that looked like that so it would have stood out from the rest.
There's a long history of games being designed to make good screenshots even though they're terrible to play. (and in some cases even LOOK terrible in motion, in spite of the amazing screenshots.) It's easy to convince someone to buy something if the packaging looks nice it seems... Other, much more important factors are often neglected. This even continues to this day, with console games running at 20-30 fps... Why? Because getting them to run at 60 fps would require graphical compromises that makes them look less impressive in static screenshots... Even though they'd probably be way more playable if they toned down some of the effects and boosted the framerates... But... No. Why bother, right? XD
There were basketball and baseball and American football games that also tried the mode 7 gimmick. Mode 7 was a good idea to include and had some cool applications, but far too many devs used it as a visual gimmick that completely ruined the gameplay
Konami managed to do a decent enough job of it with Soccer Superstars and VS. Net Soccer for the arcades, although even then you could argue it makes the games less playable than if they'd gone for a more traditional approch.
It may not be the worst soccer game on the SNES but I think Megaman Soccer might be worth a mention. If anything I love that a soccer game filled with Megaman characters exists. There's also Battle Soccer: Field no Hasha which has characters from the Ultraman, Kamen Raider, Gundam, and Godzilla franchises.
I had this god awful FIFA International Soccer for the Gameboy. Dribbling was impossible, passing was impossible and tacklings were also impossible. But as a kid I was patient enough to find some cheap tricks to score goals.
I always remember a Codemasters compilation of footy games on the Speccy. In one of them, you played a kids game of football on a street, where they'd sometimes have an argument in the middle of the game and just go home without finishing the game... weird one that!
Awesome video as usual! I'd seen images of Vector Soccer before and it already didn't look great from those, but actually seeing how wretched the game is was absolutely hilarious; the fact that it was an actual released product is amazing. As for City Soccer Challenge, one interesting tidbit is that it was only published by Phoenix; the game itself was developed by another particularly infamous mid-2000s shovelware company: Data Design, they of such masterpieces as Ninjabread Man (and all its reskinned variants) and other low-budget PS2/Wii garbage. The fact that two infamous shovelware peddlers managed to come together for a game is extremely hilarious. lol As for other interesting footy games, one that comes to mind is Mia Hamm Soccer on N64, one of the first games based on women's football that I know of, and one that had a bit of an odd origin, as it's a localization of one of the Michael Owen World League Soccer games. It's one that could warrant a look mainly for that, though AFAIK it's one of those N64 games that has a fair amount of issues in emulation (for many years it straight up wasn't emulatable)
I'd rather get a root canal than watch a football match, but oddly I found this interesting and even entertaining. Afraid to put a like on it though, fearing for what RU-vid'd do to my suggestions list for the coming months 😅
Olympic Soccer on ps1 was a favourite of ours, especially the glitch which let you do an eternal header flying across the pitch, that and the 'fun' ball physics always made for an entertaining match.
I love these old footie game videos! Great work as always Kim! I remember World Cup USA 94 really disappointing me! Oh and I recently picked up Pele on the megadrive from a local retro shop, £3 complete in box... I was robbed!
Is the Kim Justice opening theme lifted from 80s educational TV programming made for schools? Heavily reminds me of it and fills me with both nostalgia and dread. Nostalgia for obvious reasons; dread because you never knew what subject you were about to have to sit through.
Check out World Champions for the c64. It's more of a management game but one that would be interesting to hear your opinions on, Kim. Great video as always. :)
Can't remember what you have covered in the past but was sort of expecting Mega Man Soccer to be here just because it is a weird spin off. World Cup Soccer on NES is really entertaining.
Kim, I hate the football games where you had to do certain keys in a certain way for something to occur.. So whilst my nephew and me played FIFA, he would do all bizarre skills and absolutely slaughter me at it! Grrr
I remember for ages I wanted subbuteo on the Amiga as a kid, my parents never got me it and instead I got it from eBay in around 2003, needless to say I thanked my parents and it’s sat on a shelf since🤮
As a kid who grew up in America loving and playing soccer (sorry), you better believe I knew who Tony Meola was. I remember seeing a mention of this game in Nintendo Power magazine and wanted it because I liked the dude.
Gazza's Super Soccer on the Amiga still ranks as the worst footie game I've ever played, but Vector Soccer (which I hadn't heard of) might well top it. I mean, interesting idea, but wow. Sidekicks actually looks quite nice, and I like the way they've used the SNES's mode 7 to bring an element of 3D to it - just a shame they didn't invest a bit more time making the camera (a lot) better. Could have been awesome for the time if they had. Fun video!
WORLD SOCCER! Yeah, my cousin had it on the MS. The music from it transports me right back to being 6 years old and fighting over who gets to be England. It never occurred to me that it was a bad footy game. It was the first one I ever played because we didn't have any consoles until I was a couple of years older. His Dad worked on the oil rigs, so he always had cooler toys. Edit: I dunno why All-Star Soccer doesn't fit in here. Maybe it's just not quite bad enough and also not quite weird enough..
You've underplayed David O'Leary massively. He's many steps above Tony Meola, and while the timing of a game named after him may be strange, he was a successful manager at the time
Graeme Souness Vector Soccer doesn't look any worse in the playability stakes than Match Day 2 on the C64...bet it played like a dream on FPU equipped Amigas, not to mention clearly the polygons were an inspiration for modelling Edward Carnby in Infogrames Alone In The Dark ;)
Tony Meola's Sidekick Soccer was going to be released in PAL regions as "World Soccer". It was critically panned by magazines and the reviewers on Channel 4's GamesMaster (I've included the quotes from the reviewers below, including your friend and someone I admire - Mr. Biffo, though GM gave it a puzzling score of 69%). The game's PAL release was cancelled as a result. Steve Merret of Mean Machines: "Oh dear. Another duffer to join the football ranks. This is the real Barnet of football games. Compared to Virtual Soccer [a SNES football game developed by Probe and released by Hudson Soft], there is nothing to recommend in this." Paul Rose (Mr. Biffo) of Digitiser: "World Soccer pretends to be different by using a constantly rotating Mode 7 pitch. Sadly, it doesn't work." Mark Holmes of Megatech: "This sad effort is only fit for relegation to the Sunday league."
Oooh, my favourite topic. On Pele Soccer: For some reason, FIFA (at least 96) also had a way to make controls work like here, I think pressing A on the controller selection before a match. Another game that also did this mess with controls was IIRC Total Football. Utterly unplayable, although from memory it was fairly decent everywhere else. Going to disagree with Fever Pitch Soccer - although it was a too light on game modes, it had some good features, such as surface affecting ball bounce a lot and player special moves allowed a more gameplay variety than FIFA, for instance. Puma Street Soccer isn't that bad, although the pc version felt smoother and more playable, at least in the demo. Trecision did far worse: Football Generation, a game so good after a short commercial run it was given away on CD cakes. Kinda surprised Saturn's Euro 96 didn't make the list - that game is a mess - gameplay is completely broken (I'm no big Actua fan, but with CE on PC, my suckage is from not liking the gameplay, not being unable to do anything), and graphically is completely bugged up AND incredibly slow if you used any camera that displayed more than four players, too. Now imagine that was one of the games the official Sega distributor pushed for early to mid 96 because we qualified for something the first time in 10 years and even had localised play by play. Imagine putting THAT in front of whatever the PlayStation had running on demo booths. Euro and World Cup years always had publishers buying and releasing any shite they could get their hands on.
I hated the Net Yaroze Total Soccer, my friend compared it to Sensible Soccer which he loved. We played 3 matches in which he beat me 15-0, 25-0 & 30-0!
I had Table Football on the C=64 There was also a variant on the very early International Soccer called Wheelchair Soccer or Football which you can find on RU-vid i'm sure
Lovely video. Weirdest soccer game I remember was a wheelchair soccer game on c64 - Not 100% sure but I think it was just a International Soccer clone. Merely a novelty but funny for me as a kid . (The goalie would use crutches instead of being in a chair)
If my memory is right, you can change the formation of the teams in Graeme Souness, and the computer uses it, so just put all the players on a corner flag.
Oh man, I was totally expecting to see Microsoft Football/Soccer. It came with my first PC. I think I played it for an afternoon before begging my parents to buy me Fifa instead. Also remember a football management game called "Giant Killers" which looked and played like a spreadsheet, and not even a glorified one.
Ryan Giggs Champions World Class Soccer on the Snes was quite bad. If I recall, you could only seem to score by lobbing the keeper. You could even lob the keeper when taking a penalty!
Four words for you: World Class Fussball/Soccer. On the Atari Lynx. Worst football game imaginable - the players stroll around the pitch, very poor graphics and sound, the programmers don't know the rules of soccer - there's no offside, fouls come more or less at random, and a foul anywhere on the pitch results in a penalty kick. Speaking of penalties, there is no way to aim your kick. It'll either go straight to the keeper, or completely miss if you push a direction while kicking. World Class Fussball/Soccer gets nothing right. Not the control, not the speed, not the AI, not even the rules of the game.
Firstly, for really weird attempts at a footy game, try Capcom's pinball machine Flipper Football. It's frankly deranged but then it was masterminded by Python Angelo who had been dropping a bit too many E's by then. Secondly, Impact is only the third worst font. Papyrus is surely worse than all of them.
Not made by the same people, alas. It would have been better if it had been -- the 4D games are odd-looking but quite fun and kinda groundbreaking, whereas this is the biggest load of shit to ever grace a floppy disc.
I definitely recommend Soccer Champion for the Watara Supervision if you want a rubbish handheld football game; makes the David O'Leary game look like Sensi by comparison ;p
Worst football game of all time is "Super Soccer" from Imagine. It was released in the excellent game collection "Game set and match" on my beloved C64 and it was unbelievably bad. I wonder what imagine was thinking before publishing this piece of shit !!. Nevertheless excellent video as always Kim. Keep up the good work !
Just found your channel mate but you could have had Offside Soccer on the game wow that terrible. It did have a manager mode and 5 a side too but it played so badly have a look for it it's a ps1 game.
You should try super soccer by imagine on the c64. The worst footy game I have played slow, appalling graphics ,unresponsive and crashes. It was only ever released on game, set and match compilation.
These are bad, but not as bad as 'I-Play: 3D Soccer', Amiga Soccer, or Gazza's Super Soccer on the Amiga, but then this vid is meant for entertainment, not utter ridiculous boredom.
In marketing when a product gets an adjective in the name the product itself has the opposite quality. Smart phones make you dumber, social media makes you lonely and great soccer is just shite
While the games arent anything alike Pelé's carrer (even couting his cameos as a bonus player on Fifa and others) it does make sense if you think they are based on his personal life. Its a trainwreck to the point of people saying they love the football player but hate the man.
Some of these games should have come with a warning for the young kids of the time, "your not shit at this game, we are just shit at making football games"
I knew Mega Drive could do mode 7. That blocky 3D pitch looks a bit higher res than mode 7 too. A shame all the billboards are presented flat with varying amount of space in-between them and the pitch. I used to play World Soccer. Not too bad... Not really all that great either though. I haven't finished watching yet but there is a Sega game on PS2 which you could have missed which is pure craziness. Sega Slam Soccer. It's monsters playing 5 a side, with special moves.
The SNES does Mode 7, not the Mega Drive. Anything comparable to it in a Mega Drive game, such a Zero Tolerance, had to be programmed entirely in software.
So Animal Soccer basically came from the Phoenix lads watching Bedknobs & Broomsticks ? And they did a shit job on top of it, man somebody give that team the Call of Duty franchise hahaha
Actua Soccer. It looked pretty good for its time but gameplay was awful, not least being the AIs penchant for dribbling up to the goal line near the edge of the penalty box and scoring from this highly unlikely angle with great regularity. Seriously, it was the A Is go to method of scoring. Unplayable.
So Great Soccer the game in your video isn't part of the original 'Great' sports line up on the SMS. It's in fact an early 1985 Sega Card Mark 3 game which then was later released in Australia, Italy & Germany as a Master System card game. Great Soccer (which you used the box art for) is the later game known as World Soccer in Europe. Most SMS games can use the sports pad as it has 2 modes, one for sports pad only games and one for regular games. Plug in a sports pad in either version of the later game and it becomes Sports Pad Soccer! The only difference is you get 3 different worded title screens the actual game is identical! Very confusing. Also the footage of Great Golf is a Japanese only release which is a fun little game. The Japanese game Masters Golf was what US/European Master System owners received as Great Golf! Thank you and good night!!!
