Mega Man Soccer

Welcome to "Capcom Tries to Make a Quick Buck: The Game," also known as Mega Man Soccer. Mega Man Soccer is a piece of shit, and if you disagree, you're just plain wrong. This is such a pitiful excuse for the actual Mega Man's first appearance on the SNES. This game is so sloppy, so piss poor, and so conceptually stupid, that this game shouldn't exist.

I have a theory that Capcom was working on a soccer game first, realized it played terribly, then stuck Mega Man on it to push a few sales. Maybe it was always going to be Mega Man from the start, but somehow that sits even worse with me. Let's get in to why this game sucks though shall we?

Story
Yes, it has a story surprisingly. If you select Capcom Championship Mode, Wily's robots will attack a soccer stadium. Mega Man volunteers to stop them, and Dr. Light knows the only way he'll be able to do it by reprogramming him to play soccer, instead of shooting them or something?

You then get to face 8 teams of Robot Masters, a team of Proto Man's, Enker's, and finally Dr. Wily himself, in a Wily Soccer Machine. After you defeat him, the game restarts. There is no ending, so why bother with a beginning? Fuck if I know...

Aesthetics
The sprites look really strange and compact. The colors are dull too, just barely better than their NES counter parts, at least in the cutscenes. The characters themselves are better colored, but still squished looking. Some of the animation is really poorly done too. The two frames of animation in the opening cutscene for the characters speaking looks really bad, especially with Mega Man's weird pose. Overall though the game is offensively bad here.

Sound
Completely forgettable. The music is just bland. The only sound that I remember really is the crowd cheering when you score a goal, and I played this game maybe five minutes ago. Other than that, nothing special.

Design
It's soccer - using Mega Man characters. You have several modes of play such as exhibition, league or championship mode. You pick your players consisting of several robot masters, form up a team and go to play. The basic premise is to kick the ball into the goal.

Championship mode has a story to it as stated above. You play as Mega Man and face the Robot Masters in whatever order you choose. When you defeat them, they join your team. Each Robot Master has his own different stats, but for the most part I never noticed a difference.

Your abilities consist of passing, punting, blocking, sliding and shooting. If you hold the R-button while shooting you will do a Power Shot which plows through an enemy, including the goalie. By default the matches are two five minute halves, and you get two power shots per half. You can change these for the exhibition and league matches in the options menu, but not for the championship mode. Two players can play for competitive or cooperative gameplay in any of the modes.

Playability
Here's where the game turns to shit. It controls like ass. The biggest problem is that the game always switches the player you're controlling without your permission. You know how most sports games have a button that you need to press to switch to the nearest player towards the ball? This one doesn't. Not only will you get switched when you don't want to switch, but you also have moments where you need to switch and the game won't do it for you. I can't tell you how many times the game has switched me while I was running for the ball only to have to run the complete opposite direction at a moments notice. Controlling this game is a pain in the ass.




Not only that, but it seems that no matter what the stats the defender always runs faster than the offense. This wouldn't be so bad if it didn't affect the entire field of offensive players. The passing controls are bad too. A huge chunk of the time the passes go straight to the opposition. God damn it!







Extras

• Despite how shitty this game is, it is a rare collectible. If you see it at a store somewhere for cheap, pick it up for your collection.

Despite how bad this game is, it can be alright in multiplayer, but not for long. If you're a soccer fan you'll hate this game. If you're a Mega Man fan you might be blinded by fandom to see how terrible this game is. Or hell, you might like it for some other weird reason, but I can't understand why. Still, it's not as bad as the PC Mega Man games at least.

Playthroughs
Mega Man Soccer Bonus Video played by Zomodock and Vegastar hosted on lparchives