Cheap as chips... SWWS 97 Review

Well another cold dank day in rainy Manchester... After the festive highs of last night's Coolrom.com discovery, I felt a bit of a downward spiral when I realised I would probably never be able to download the wonderful 'Dragon's Lair' (flagged up by Gnome on his Lair spin off site, Gnome's Gaming On The Go) onto my DS without some sort of USB lead which I didn't own... Bah!

And so I set off for the wonderful Gamestation in the hopes of procuring one. It soon became apparent that even the wisened uber-geeks behind the counter didn't even know of such a device, let alone be able to regail me with one...

Heres my all singing all dancing festive Homer, modelling my new accquistion...

So, off to the retro section to see if there was any Dreamcast, Saturn or Game Gear surprise bargains available. At first scan, although there were a few good titles available, I had most of them already. And then I saw it... laying there silently, modestly, belying its own brilliance...
'Sega Worldwide Soccer 97'. For 20p!!! That's right, twenty-motherfucking-pence... HOORAY!!!

Here's the blurry proof!

This was the first soccer game I ever got into, back in my heady Saturn days. Of course I've played Pro evo and Fifa on the PS1 and PS2 since then, but they never excited me much. This was mainly because my surly, showboating ginger progeny would usually spank my arse, using their goalkeepers to dribble round all my players, before thumping a convincing four, five, six or seven into the back of my goal... Bastards!

But I could hold my own on SWWS. I just played the middle ginger at it, and for a ten year old game, it holds up rather well! The opening titles are very graphically impressive for the day... all in glorious slow motion, to a MOR rock score. (Ahem!)

The commentary is hilarious, bearing little relevence to what's happening on the pitch. Oft repeated and frankly fucking obvious phrases, such as "The goalkeeper is going to want to get it to a player up-field..." or "He wants to get it towards the goal" are repeated on a loop. But this is an endearing quality which adds to the fun of the game.

I can't tell you much about the controls other than 'B' is pass and 'A' is shoot. The back buttons allow you to select the player you want to control and can give you a little flourish of speed.
Having taken a shot you can put a lovely curl on it by using the direction pad. And you can thump it into the back of the net from the half way line if you're lucky! Awlright!!

There's loads of options to allow you to work on your tactical game, formation, squad selection (they're all made up names, not real players) and so on. You can also decide on the time of day you play, (night or day) and adjust the weather, to change the conditions of the gameplay... balls will skid to a halt and players will slide around on greasy pitches...

The referee, as in all of the football games I play, is very unforgiving of my slide tackles from behind and hacking challenges. What's that all about?

But what about the game I just played against the middle ginger? He was Brazil, whereas I chose underdogs Wales, for an exhibition match. Going 1-0 down early on in the match, and being reduced to ten men after a harsh sending off, plucky Wales came back to score an equaliser with only 15 minutes to go... The Welsh faithful wept, as their national heroes were beaten 4-3 on penalties, after the Brazilian keeper pulled off a couple of blinding saves.

Oh well, a narrow defeat after a hard fought match... honour maintained.

Here are a few factoids about the game, gleaned from a frankly better review, on 'Rotten Tomatoes' which you can read here:

Features: 48 International teams
Revolutionary (for it's time) animation
4 camera views
Context sensitive play by play
Players injuries and suspension (and don't I bloody know it!!)
Stat tracking in more than 25 categories

Overall Score? (Purely on a personal enjoyment basis...) 9/10! "The best 20p I've spent in a long time!"

Oh and for a rview of SWWS 'Euro Edition' on the Dreamcast visit the Dreamcast Junkyard (here) and look in the October archives!
And talking of football excellence, how about a very cheap plug for MCFC... "The best team in the land and all the world!"