Tecmo World Cup ‘90 happens to be the first football game I ever played, and is far from the polished titles you see today. When I was football-crazy little six year-old back in 1989, Tecmo released this offering as a cash-in to the next summer’s World Cup. It was in direct competition to US Gold’s officially-licensed World Cup Italia ‘90 game, and couldn’t have been more different. 

While the official release contained all 24 teams due to take part in the World Cup, Tecmo World Cup ‘90 contained just eight teams. Given that teams were seeded and grouped in real-world football according to their recent performances, Tecmo’s choice of teams for inclusion seemed baffling. Only five were within the top six seeds: Italy (1st), Argentina (2nd), Brazil (3rd), West Germany (4th) and England (6th). USA and Soviet Union were included, neither being particularly strong at the time, and both eventually finished bottom of their groups. Japan were included despite not even qualifiying! A political move perhaps? More likely a financial move designed to ship units in Tecmo’s motherland…

Anyway, the choice of team was irrelevant. There were no stats like in today’s games, no realistic physics engine to show differences in skill. The teams were identical, save a change of kit, and even that was strange. England wore orange! The game mechanics were simple, two minutes per match, score more than the opposition. No draws - if you were level or behind after two minutes, game over. Win seven matches (i.e. beat each team) and you were champions. In theory, fourteen minutes of play (plus stoppages!) to win the World Cup. Sounds easy, right? WRONG!

I think it’s safe to say that this is an arcade football game in every sense of the word. While the promo poster claimed this game to be realistic, it wasn’t, especially next to it’s official rival. The one thing in my opinion that made this stand out as an arcade game? The sheer difficulty of it. It’s as impossible as impossible gets without ACTUALLY being impossible, if you catch my drift. If you even wanted a chance of beating this game, you’d have to have a stack of 10p coins as long as your arm. Then maybe you’d have a chance. I just played through the entire game, start to finish, with the mighty England (not) and I was there for four hours. Countless losses, countless last gasp goals, countless draws meaning GAME OVER. This game is so frustrating that you’ll want to put your head through the screen, throw your laptop or whatever. 

And that’s precisely what is missing from a lot of modern games. A steep difficulty curve. From experience, it’s been quite easy to coast through a lot of my recent games, or at least not have to repeat a particular section a stupid number of times. I loved back then how this game became like an addiction; an addiction to sticking one past the USSR goalkeeper and proceeding to the next game; an addiction to ploughing on despite way too many losses and a steely determination to beat the whole thing. Games like this, the old-school shooters like Radiant Silvergun and even the earlier MegaMan games, all especially unforgiving. 

This game is by no means a classic. It won’t be compared to the likes of Ico, GTA or Halo. It was simply another football game, by the numbers, but to me it is so much more. It is hours of my life spent ceaselessly determined; blood vessels in my brain bursting at the seams just to kick on and score that vital goal. I bled this game for many an hour when I was a kid, and for that, I will always look back on it with a vast amount of fondness - and hate!