Super Football Champ PS1 Review

Super Football Champ was released for the PlayStation in 1996 and was developed by a taito and is an arcade styled soccer game and is somewhat considered as a spiritual successor to football champ that was released for personal computers years before primarily with the Amiga, Atari, Commodore 64 even on other consoles such as the NES, MS-DOS and other platforms as they were also developed by Taito back in the early days and during the early 90s with other iterations known as Euro football champ and hat-trick hero. 

So Super Football Champ would be considered as a successor to those games. 

This game will fully utilize 3D elements from graphics to all of the environments and aesthetics that has many features that you can utilize as well with the likes of being able to play with four players if you have a multi-tap accessory. 

It has unique arcade look and presence and feel being able choose from 30 different national teams to play in different tournaments from World Cup and different championships and tournaments and you can even play in various leagues and friendlies with commentary by known presenter Jonathan Pierce. 

But when you consider it from the game's heritage and what it originally started off as in the early days now that it has moved to 3D, In fairness it's not as well put together and this game was primarily seen in Japan firstly and it's a very different type of soccer game let's just get that out of the way. 

It's not as well put together and it's not as well refined compared to more mainstream soccer games. It's not easy to pick up and play by any means, it's very very clunky, it's very silly in terms of how everything works because it has elements that you would see in like later games on the PS2 such as likes of red card soccer and other types of arcade soccer games as you have to be quite aggressive to win the ball back off opponents. 

You actually have to physically push players off or literally do horrendous tackles on them just to win the ball and the problem is that the computer AI can also do the same with you and it's just you can definitely tell it's an early 3D soccer game as it's just very very clunky. 

It's very sluggish even in terms of how it controls it is very very hard to dribble the ball around any sort of players or even a group of players or even one player in particular because nine times out of ten they just surround you three or four players will surrender at any one time and all they literally do is just keep pushing you off the ball they literally will physically push you and very very hard for you to gain any sort of momentum. 

The only player that really has any sort of potential to even have any time on the ball would be your star player that you can pick at the start of each match. 

You can select one player from the team that you have that will be your standout player in the game and that's the one player that seems to be kind of like left alone or given any sort of preference that you can even use to control and all the rest of them are kind of just left out in the wilderness. 

You're just running around a lot of the time what it feels like headless chickens trying to figure out what's going on. 

For myself personally having spent time playing this game I don't want to come across of it as being negative and I don't want to say that it is a bad game but in terms of soccer games this easily is one of the most clunkiest and poor quality games that I've played on the PlayStation but if anything because of the clunky nature of the controls, the dynamics, the way the AI moves even the celebrations when they score goals, I spent more time laughing and just having a blast just playing it just due to its cheesy clunky and weird nature that I did have with any game that I've played for quite a while. 

Even with the commentary even though you have a professional commentator doing the commentary it's so bad that it's actually funny. I spent my whole time literally just in Fitz's laughing while playing the game. 

It gets to a point that because it's so clunky and so out there you can't really allow yourself to constantly be getting frustrated with the game you'd get to a point where you'll just laugh just in amazement at how bad it is when you compare it to other titles on the PlayStation. 

Its definitely nowhere near the comparison even the lower quality soccer games that you would see would play better than what's on over here but in saying that it does have elements that when you do get into the game in all honesty when you allow yourself to put some time into it funnily enough you will get the hang of certain aspects. 

You do have to give it that time though because once I found that I started to get into it mind you it ended up becoming a goal fest because it got to a point where I was losing, I was winning, it was drawing and then I was losing again and then they managed to get back into it and then the team equalized and then back and forth, then eventually i just started scoring goals, but the goals were so clunky like you were it's like a pinball machine a lot of the times where you're just hitting the ball randomly off everybody. 

I spent more time honestly just laughing at the game by just some of the quirky elements that's involved in it and for me that's what made it so much fun if I'm brutally honest which is kind of weird when you think about it but I suppose that's just the element of the PlayStation. 

It had so many games yes there was a lot of great games but there was also a lot of quirky games like this here that you know they were not great but for some reason they still put a smile on your face regardless and it's just because there's so many cheesy elements and silly things that happened in the game that you've no choice but to just go crazy with laughing but again it is an early soccer game. 

It's never going to be leaps and bounds beyond anything else that you can see on the PlayStation but if I was to recommend the game I would recommend that just to experience the clunky nature of it because if I was able to have a laugh with what was going on I'm sure that you'll be able to do the same. 

I know there are many out there that won't even acknowledge this or even entertain at all they just think no I'm not even gonna entertain at all but if you do want to play the selection of soccer games that you can see on the PS1 and if you want something that's a wee bit different that probably will drive you mad but at the same time you'll have a good giggle with it play this game and just see what you think for yourself. 

For what it does out for it does have for some really unique features for what it does try to do but it's just not executed well at all. 

In most cases it ends up just being a mess if I am being truthfully honest but at the same time I couldn't help but have a massive smile on my face when I was playing it because it was so clunky, it was so frustrating that I couldn't get angry with it so I couldn't and I just found myself just with everything that was going on between the silly commentary and just the things that were happening when you went to score goals and i just found it to be just absolutely hilarious. 

I was just in stitches laughing at it the whole time so for that experience alone it was worthwhile giving it a go at least. 

So if you're like me and you want to play something just for a bit of fun or just to kind of test it out and see what you think of it yourself then you can have a go at this and see what you think it won't be for everybody granted but I'm sure it will put a smile on a few faces so that alone is worth a try especially if you've had a bad day and you need something just to kind of give you a bit of a lift play this game and see what you think for yourself. 

And I would love to know your thoughts of super football champ for the PlayStation if you have played it yourself back in the day or did you even know that this game existed or did you find it as frustrating or as clunky as I managed to find it. 

I'd love to hear whatever stories you do have with this unusual game so be sure to share it in the comments below and be sure to keep watching to see more content on other games similar to Super Football Champ, you can check out the blog where we will be diving into the iconic elements of these classic video games and as always keep those gaming memories alive...