Original Release: Coconuts Japan, 1999, Wonderswan
The first soccer release for Wonderswan (AFAIK) and really not a good one
Soccer Yarou (Wonderswan, Coconuts Japan, 1999)
Where to Buy: Play-Asia
How to Emulate: coming soon!
Review by: C. M0use
Soccer Yarou is one of those obscure Japan-only titles that generated little interest in its heyday and thus has extremely little English-language coverage, but as best I can gather it was banged out quickly to be the first soccer title on the then-new WonderSwan by a port specialist called Coconuts (who seem to have gone out of business right after this).
It’s super chintzy, to the point it would have been an embarrassing release on the NES. In fact, I think the original NES Soccer is the only worse soccer title I’ve played. All movement is slow and stiff, and the computer is constantly interrupting things by walking or throwing the ball out of play unprompted. Players can sprint in short bursts, but seemingly only when they possess the ball. This ultimately doesn’t matter as the CPU gets random bursts of super speed to catch up with you, seemingly in an attempt to counterbalance the awful AI and provide some kind of challenge.
Battling the controls can be enough to hamstring you by itself though, like how the game doesn’t auto-switch to the player closest to the ball and pressing the button that’s supposed to do it is very often unresponsive. And I did enjoy how players will get slide tackled and then just lay there for awhile holding onto the ball while the computer makes no effort to capitalize. It’s almost like they tried to turn the Tecmo Bowl engine into a soccer game, although that probably would have been more fun.
I guess one point in its favor is that there are tons of nations to pick from for a basic black-and-white handheld title, if I have to say SOMETHING nice. They seem to have represented most of the World Cup field here if not all. That’s about it though, otherwise this game is deservedly forgotten.
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