#52: World League Soccer

League is like Cup, right?

World League Soccer is a game by Mindscape, which surprised me. I remember Mindscape from way back in my Commodore 64 days, and I liked their games, but I didn't think they made SNES games. I mean, they did put out The Chessmaster that I've played already, but that game felt like something a high school student wrote for a class project. How would they fare in the sports game world?

FOUL!

Well, not very well. The graphics are something I would have expected from the Commodore 64, not from the Super Nintendo. The gameplay too, since although at least 4 of the buttons seemed to do things they all seemed to do the exact same thing. Diving tackle without the ball, kick the ball with the ball. So exactly what I'd expect from a single button joystick setup!

GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAL!

I played as Japan vs Ireland, and the names seemed very Japanese and very British. Did they have the actual teams from those countries from 1993? I don't know. It would be cool if they did. The game had a 'World Match' mode which looked like it emulated the World Cup format. It had other game modes too, which I like to see.

However, just like The Chessmaster, this game really suffers from terrible controls and bad graphics. I don't think Mindscape shifted into SNES development very well. They did put out 14 more games on the SNES... I hope they got better!

That said, despite the bad controls I do think I could have rented this game as a kid, played with my brother, and had some amount of fun. We sure played a bunch of C64 sports games and enjoyed it, so I suspect we would have done the same on the SNES.

Rating: D-