Tecmo World Cup review - Sega Megadrive

Tecmo World Cup was quite popular in arcade form, mostly due to its arcade-style approach to the game. Technical aspects of the sport are lost in place of fast action and hundreds of goal attempts in the limited playing time.

The ball is passed with superb accuracy at the touch of a button, and shooting is done with another. When you're off the ball, the shoot button does a slide tackle which if timed correctly wins the ball from the opponent.

What the Mean Machines staff thought

The Tecmo World Cup coin-op wasn't exactly inspiring (although it was quite fun for twenty pence), and this conversion fails to improve on its faults. The graphics are exceedingly bland in their two-dimensional jerkiness. The sound is limited to one effect and a Chesney-esque warble of a tune. What really puts the boot in is, of course, poor gameplay. The loose collision detection makes it impossible to run around opposing players and tackles are ridiculously easy to perform. This means the only way to score goals is to boot it right down the field with a succession of long passes. The World Cup is also badly run. The first few rounds are far too easy and the computer activates its "telepathy" mode, anticipating all your moves before your computer-operated players have a chance to react. Even in two-player mode Tecmo has lost all of it's appeal. Looks like it's still a case of hanging on for Super Kick Off.

For three years the Megadrive had but one football game in its cartridge range, and that was the rubbish World Cup Soccer. Now there's a new one - the rubbish Tecmo World Cup. Yes indeed, it's big disappointment day for football fans as once again we're forced to wait for a decent game of the sport to appear on this machine. What's wrong with this one? Well, the graphics and sound are average, but it's the playability where the game falls flat on its face. For a start it's ridiculously easy to beat - I slaughtered it on the lowest level, then cranked it up to its highest difficulty setting and still stuffed it 2-0. Another problem is that it simply doesn't play like football. The best way to get the ball up the pitch is to continually press the fire button - the players pass to one another like magic - and when you're in the 18-yard area simply run at the keeper on a diagonal line and hoof it into the net. Tecmo World Cup is simply a very dull game which fails to provide football fun even with two players. Soccer fans should sit on the bench and wait for Super Kick Off.