Sega Worldwide Soccer '98[3], known in North America as simply Worldwide Soccer '98 and in Europe as Sega Worldwide Soccer '98 Club Edition, is a video game developed and published by Sega for the Sega Saturn in 1997 and Windows in 1998 only in Japan and in 1999 in North America as Worldwide Soccer Championship . It is the third game in its series, following Victory Goal and Sega Worldwide Soccer 97.
Development
Sega Worldwide Soccer '98 used the same game engine as its predecessor, Sega Worldwide Soccer '97.[4]Cobi Jones played an advisory role in the game's development and served as its spokesperson.[5]
English commentary was provided by Gary Bloom (known for his appearances on Football Italia) and Jack Charlton.[4] The English commentary had longer sentences than the Japanese commentary, so more memory needed to be allocated to buffering on the sound chip for the English version. The developers were aware of this issue but did not get around to addressing it due to the game being rushed to release; as a result, playback of the commentary stops and starts again in a manner similar to stuttering.[6]
The game received mixed reviews; most critics wrote that the game was too unchanged from its predecessor.[8][16][17] The four reviewers of Electronic Gaming Monthly particularly complained at the inability to change the position of players during breaks in the play, and John Ricciardi summarized that "The addition of Club teams is nice, and the engine seems to have been polished up a bit, but otherwise this is pretty much the same game as last year with some annoying faults."[8]Sega Saturn Magazine similarly judged that "there's little to justify purchasing this game if you already own the '97 edition. Sure, it has all the current Premiership sides and players, but at the end of the day, it plays virtually identically ..."[16]GamePro similarly held that there weren't enough changes, and recommended holding out for the Saturn port of FIFA: Road to World Cup 98 instead.[17][c]Next Generation was an exception, arguing that "Sega has made a wise decision to leave well enough alone with the third game in the series. Rather than making sweeping changes in gameplay, the designers have tweaked things a bit and stuffed enough little features into the game to make it a worthy update."[14]
Some reviewers particularly criticized the lack of improvement in the goalie AI,[8][16] though the greater racial accuracy of the player models as compared to Sega Worldwide Soccer '97 was praised.[14][16] Also, despite the general criticism of the lack of improvements, critics for both Sega Saturn Magazine and GamePro felt that the graphics were good enough that no improvement was needed.[16][17]
Notes
^Two critics of Electronic Gaming Monthly gave the Saturn version each a score of 5.5/10, and the rest gave it 7.0/10 and 4.0/10.
^In GameFan's viewpoint of the Saturn version, one critic gave it 96, and another 94.
^GamePro gave the Saturn version 4.0/5 for graphics, 4.0/5 for fun factor, 3.0/5 for sound, and 3.5/5 for control.
^Lackey, Jeff (1997). "Worldwide Soccer". Computer Games Strategy Plus. Strategy Plus, Inc. Archived from the original on January 30, 2003. Retrieved December 14, 2020.
