Tecmo Cup Soccer Game (NES) Playthrough - NintendoComplete

A playthrough of Tecmo's 1992 soccer game for the NES, Tecmo Cup Soccer Game.

Tecmo Cup Soccer Game (or Tecmo Cup Football Game, if you're in Europe) isn't your typical soccer game. It's nothing like Goal! or Nintendo World Cup. In fact, the subject matter itself is the only part of the game that resembles a traditional sports game - it's more of a soccer-themed visual novel with RPG trimmings.

The reason for this is that Tecmo Cup Soccer Game is a localized "reinterpretation" of Captain Tsubasa, a 1987 Famicom game based on the popular manga of the same name. The English version, sans license, does away with any references to the comic and replaces Tsubasa with "Robin," an up-and-coming teen superstar chasing his father's legacy.

The game, presented as a faux TV broadcast, is driven by cinematic cutscenes closely resembling the ones that made Ninja Gaiden so famous (   • Ninja Gaiden (NES) Playthrough - NintendoC...   ). You control whoever is in possession, in real time from a top-down map of the pitch, and you can pause the action at any time to pull up a context-sensitive menu that gives you access to things like passing and shooting. These actions play out through short animated skits that, despite the limited tech, make the game legitimately feel like an interactive comic. It's more than a bit strange, but the heavy lifting done by Tecmo's cutscene engine works the same magic here as it did for the Ninja Gaiden and Tecmo Bowl games.

Your team members gain experience with each match, and the skills of each level up based on how much action they see on the field, giving progress a very RPG-like feel. The higher their level, the more likely they are to successfully pull off whatever you might command them to do.

The game has its annoyances - the need to constantly refresh the passing menu being chief among them, and Anne's face terrifies me - but Tecmo Cup is an impressive piece of work, especially for a game that was already five years old at the time of its American release.

The novelty of the presentation, the lengthy campaign, and the stats-based depth of the gameplay made it feel pretty special. It's just too bad that it would be a couple of decades before we'd see another official English release in the series, considering how prolific a series the Captain Tsubasa series had become in Japan.

But even still, if a mash-up of Ninja Gaiden, Princess Tomato in Salad Kingdom, and Soccer sounds in the least bit intriguing to you, I'd recommend giving it a shot. The hours will melt away in a blink.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.

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