Pro Soccer review - Super Nintendo

I'm a big fan of Kick Off, so I was really looking forward to this. But it looks as though my anticipation was wasted. Pro Soccer is a sad sham of a game. The big downfall is the unconvincing collision detection and dodgy control method. At certain points during the game, the ball actually passes through my player, and at others, the ball spanged off in the opposite direction to the one in which it should have gone! Needless to say, this made passing and shooting a real hit-or-miss affair, and resulted in me getting bored very quickly. After what US Gold have done with Kick Off on the Master System, Imagineer should feel ashamed. The MS version even has better graphics! If you really need a sports sim on your Famicom, get Super Tennis and wait around for a better footy game, this one's very poor.

The world's finest soccer game finally arrives on the Super Famicom… and it's an utter disappointment. For a start, the graphics are very poor - the Master System version is miles better! Not only are they not particularly well drawn, the sprites are flickery and the scrolling is jerky - a travesty when you consider the Super Famicom's custom hardware. The sound is also dire. An appallingly inept “tune” plays throughout the game and does nothing but annoy - what a waste of the Super Famicom's excellent sound chip! All this could be forgiven if the gameplay was up to scratch, but unfortunately it's not. The logic and playability that make the 16-bit computer and Master System versions so brilliant have been lost in the translation to Super Famicom, and as a result it's completely lost its sparkle and addiction. Apart from the control method being poor, the collision detection is dodgy, the after touch doesn't work properly and the player select system isn't very good. Kick Off fans will most certainly be very, very disappointed, and even those who've not had the pleasure of playing the original versions will find this a strictly average soccer game.

Argh! What went wrong here?

I recall Mean Yob getting rather excited by the news of Kick Off on the SNES, but any expectations are dashed as soon as the game loads. This really is a terrible conversion, and lacks any of the magic that made the original so much fun to play. The visuals are dire, the music is painful and the silky-smooth gameplay that made Kick Off famous is sadly missing. Avoid.