How kind of the Ed to let me, an ignorant girly, review this football program. After all, I'd never even realised that the World Cup is a five-a-side contest. Then again, maybe things were different in the 1984 World Cup - the copyright date you'll find on the packaging if you look very, very hard. The holes in this game are so wide you could drive an Artic through them.
    In fact this is an Artic game that wasn't even highly praised in its own day, enhanced and re-released. Load it up and you'll find that despite the practice mode, which has no practical link at all to the soccer simulation, at heart this is still the same mediocre game it always was, and that's still available, unenhanced, both at a budget price and as part of a compilation! Alternatively there's always Ocean's far superior Match Day.
    Practice consists of Taking and Saving Penalties and Ball Control. These are Daley Thompson type games with spartan graphics and slight control problems. Somehow it decided that I needed more practice and I was forced to reload because I couldn't break out of a purgatory of Penalty Kicks.
    Training allows a one or two player single game while World Cup commits you to becoming Bulgaria, Outer Mongolia or A.N. Other and playing the full competition. Either way you'll discover a peril that makes my blood run cold. One team wears white, with the player in possession turning pale blue. This means that against a green pitch they are almost invisible! How can our lads in Brazil stand up to these sneaky tactics? And it's infectious; as players come into contact they defect to the other team's colour!
    I suppose that the Ed thought I might like the wealth of posters, stickers and wallcharts and even a snazzy sew-on patch for my footballer-spotter's anorak... but I didn't! Maybe US Gold should go in for the souvenir market full time!

Ratings given by other magazines

2/10      2/10

Info supplied by the SPOT*ON database