The World is Watching so, Why Not?
With the eyes world so focused on this year’s FIFA World Cup being played in the US, QUByte Interactive (QUByte Classics) thought it would be the perfect time to re-introduce you to… Soccer Kid Collection. A remake of two Super Nintendo games from 1993 and 1994. The Adventure of Kid Cleats and Soccer Kid. I know what you are thinking and you are not wrong. These “classics” beg the question of, who wanted these? I have no memories of these when they were originally released. Apparently, they were originally released by Krisalis Software for the Amiga in Europe and then released for other consoles around the world.
MSRP: $9.99
Platforms: Xbox (reviewed), PlayStation, Switch, PC
Price I’d Pay: $4.99
The main protagonist of the games is a soccer loving kid tasked with saving scattered pieces of the World Cup trophy that was from a failed robbery attempt by an alien who collects trophies from around the universe. You are the hero, equipped with nothing but a soccer ball and your soccer skills. Sounds like a plausible story line. I mean what alien race wouldn’t want to steal the World Cup Trophy? And of course, a kid with a soccer ball can save the day, right? Soccer Kid is a side scrolling platformer where you defeat all the enemies with your trusty soccer ball. And just like the real soccer, you can’t use your hands. Armed with a ball and your feet, you go from country to country to find and collect the pieces of the trophy.
However,… this is not as easy as it may or may not sound. The mechanics of the game are a little tricky to master and get the timing correct. The jumping is not great and if you miss an enemy, the game punishes you by making your ball go off screen to which you only option is to avoid enemies until you can find your ball and try again. Timing the shots can also be a pain and one shot is not enough to kill most enemies. To make things worse it is really easy as I said, to miss an enemy and then get killed in just a few hits from that enemy and then die only to have to start the stage over. It can get very frustrating, very quickly. And with only three lives, you can find yourself staring at a “GAME OVER” screen pretty quick.
As far as the look and feel of the game, it definitely looks like a SNES game. And the action feels like something from the 90’s. And the story? Well, that is another thing. I think that games like these are needed to help bring back some of the nostalgia, and to give a newer generation an idea of what it was like to play games in the 80’s and 90’s. But I’m not so sure that this would have been the game I would have chosen for this. While I don’t think it is a bad game, I also don’t think it has the wow factor when it comes to the nostalgia. I did find the game to be hard and unforgiving at times and then just repetitive in places. The controls are simple enough to understand but difficult to time correctly.
I’m glad that this game collection exists for someone who might have fond memories of playing this game, but I have none of the same nostalgia for it as some. And maybe I’m not the target audience for this game, but I’m also not sure if it would be something that I would want to look further into if I was just browsing the store and saw it. Which leads me back to my original question. Who asked for a remake of this?
Review copy of game provided by publisher.