Sega Soccer Slam Preview
Preview - it's out in the States, and we love it because it's a bit like Speedball
Football, it's a funny old game. Every once in a while, a developer takes this bizarre adage to heart, and produces a football game which ejects tradition and focuses on the fun bits. Unlike their hawckey and fwootbwall counterparts though, these loosely bound footy blitz games are often shunned by real football supporters. Thankfully, either Sega did no market research, or it just plain didn't care, because here I am with a copy of Sega Soccer Slam, developed by Visual Concepts in conjunction with Black Box Games, and it's really rather rocking.
Jam to Slam

Massive stadia stand to be unlocked
Keep it quiet, right, but I'm a football fan. I won't vomit blood for eleven overpaid cockney retards, only to be eviscerated by opposing supporters for mentioning the score, but I'll happily follow 'our boys' to the World Cup, at least in spirit, and offer the opposition some of that trademark invective. And I will happily participate in any other shameless, churlish behaviour to glorify the insipid spectacle. Beer in hand.
Soccer Slam appeals to me because it's not really football. It's a bastardisation, in the same way that Brutal Sports Football on the Amiga bastardised the NFL, and it's for the same reasons that I like Soccer Slam. Set on a smaller version of the footy field in an enclosed arena, each team consists of four players; one in goal and three outfield. With the clock counting down the only objective is to rack up more goals than the opposition, and the only rules are those dictated by the control system. If some smartass is racing down the wing at you, you have to choose whether to race off and mark his mate, risk an easily avoidable slide tackle, or just wrongfoot the upstart with a right hook.
The controls are extremely elegant. You can pass the ball with the whopping A button (spooning the ball upwards if you hold it down for a second), take a chargeable shoot with the B button, punch with Y and tackle with X. A quick tug of the right trigger will have you dashing down the field, and the left trigger can be used to put your player in the proverbial zone. Depending on your team's specialty (so for Sub Zero that's ice, Tsunami it's water and so forth), your player will become anything from a walking fireball to a pillar of water, with enhanced running and gunning speed. That's not to say it's slow to begin with. This is the fastest sports game we've played, and we only had it on the Normal setting...
Intricacy

You can zoom the view in and out all over the shop
The teams are no bland, faceless drones, either. Tsunami, for example, consists of two big fat men (one barefoot in a Hawaiian shirt) and a bodacious young female with realistic breast physics. These chaps have different skills in different areas, and picking your team is as much down to that as anything. When you get them onto the field however, things get even more interesting.
Instead of merely increasing the power of your shot, charging your shot bar the whole way triggers a special shot. In most cases, the ball is teed up high in the air and then acrobatically thumped goalwards in slow motion. You can choose the direction of the shot using the analogue stick, assuming you managed to escape the flailing fists and studs of your opposition, but this slow motion gives the keeper time to react. Of course, playing in a two-player game, the visual indicator of where the shot will go is a dead giveaway, so all sorts of feints and shimmies will be employed. Psyching your best mate out on the couch and then rubbing his nose in it is tremendous fun, but the scoring rate is so high the game sheds any and all of the unpleasantness borne of furious last minute comebacks in Pro Evolution Soccer.
That's assuming you want to play against your friend. You can join up and take on the combined might of the game's tricky single player Quest mode, with ten league matches, play-offs and a cup final with skill-boosting post-game spending sprees in the Skill Shop. You can even take individual control of a particular player if the switching becomes a bit too difficult to keep up with. CPU colleagues respond to your request for the ball and even take their own shots now and then. It's all very endearing.
Boom Shak-a-lak

Scoring is much more than choosing your angle...
I mentioned a power bar earlier. It's a useful tool. If turning into a fireball or ice bucket doesn't take your fancy, you can always wait for it to charge up completely and blow the lot on a Killer Kick. Holding the right trigger and lofting the ball in the air, the whole game slows down and a loud heartbeat vibrates your sound system. Ignoring the muffled sounds of teammates, you must take control of a player and move him into the path of the lofted ball, indicated by green concentric circles on the pitch, and press the A button just in time to leap Matrix style twenty feet into the air and hammer the ball home. This is a high risk manoeuvre, but goals from these plays punctuate any game like an earthquake.
Apart from dodging the standard attentions of your opponents and playing a poker face for the goalkeeper, you have to get the power bar charged up in the first place. You can do this by connecting lots of passes, scoring a few goals, outwitting people with shimmies and beating the living daylights out of everybody else. Once charged, you can let rip with the Killer Kick, and witness the magnificent spectacle that accompanies it. Action replays are one thing, keeping track of the ball perfectly and giving you a chance to swoon over the spectacular visuals, but the goal celebrations are the best bit. Every character in the game has a unique style, from the French ponce Arsenault with his jeering and 'igh-class accent to the enormous, loud-mouthed cockney Half-Pint who bangs on about how that goal weren't nuffink as good as a Bernie Inn, which, I'm unreliably informed, was some sort of eatery in the mid-80s.
Wide Boy

A quirky two-footed step-over
So what we have is a delicate blend of footballing elements with zany-but-loveable Saturday morning cartoon characters. And in some cases, bounteous bosom. The gameplay is extremely sharp and the game feels extremely solid. If the ball hits a player, it deflects. If the ball hits the side, it comes off at the right angle. If the keeper saves your shot and it hits the back of a defender's head and rebounds in, you get a funny animation of him lying on the ground sobbing and a pop goes the weasel style overture to torment him. Nice.
The graphics are perhaps the game's strongest asset so far. The characters are all beautifully animated, with staggering curves and intricate clothing designs and facial animation. It never occurred to me until I thought about it, but when they stand around boasting and mocking the opposition after a goal, they do so with perfect lip-sync, and the cartwheels and backflips involved all stand up suitably to closer inspection during the action replay. Add to this motley collection of characters some extraordinarily detailed stadiums (with many more to unlock) and real, live polygonal spectators (loads of 'em) and you have quite a solid achievement. And as if this were not enough, there's even an English - well, feasibly English - commentator with wacky lines for all the players. He hasn't got boring, either.
Although Sega Soccer Slam is not due out in Europe for quite some time, its success in the States suggests that it will appeal to just about anybody, and we fully expect to heap awards upon it when it eventually emerges. It's not really the killer sports application Cube fans were after, and we have yet to establish quite how well it stands up to repeated play, or whether there is much depth to it, but in a cast of also-rans, multi-platform ports and revamps, which is a pretty accurate portrayal of the Cube's line-up for this year, it leaves quite a significant impression. One to watch.
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Comments (58) Latest comment 10 years ago
Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!
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'bounteous bosom'
LOL. And you say I'm obsessed.
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Any Man U fans about? Mwaha ha.
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All they need is one or two top defenders and nothing will stop them (eg. lizarazu, Nesta etc).
And they have the money. Oh yes. Expect £25 million + to be spent this summer.
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On a slightly remotely linked topic then....
What's the difference between Dwight York and Israel?
Israel knew when to pull out of Jordan.
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Peej
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Lazio spent £75m the other Summer. Aren't they in the shit, now?
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Errol, why did I just know you were going to be a Man U supporter? Is it because you're from the Home Counties?
Anyway, pretty damn good evening last night, got my Cube and the Scum's season went down the toilet
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finally get paid this week, hoping to have it by the weekend.
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I thank yew.
Didn't Leeds spend alot of money on players for nowt?
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Well I dare to be different. I once visited Manchester, and my sister even studied there, which ought to qualify me for a lifetime of season tickets at the Stretford End, and yet I *hate* Man U.
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Damn, I had one for my Dreamcast. It worked very well in most of the games.
They better release one otherwise the Gamecube will be worthless to me.
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Did you get all the problems with your telly sorted out then?
If you have got one then I'm intensely jealous - EB are absolutely refusing to sell any until Friday. They claim they've been warned by Nintendo not to and they apparently had to sign something. Sounds like tosh to me but then you never know with Nintendo.
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Wow! I never heard of anyone hating Man U before?!?! =]
Seriously, tho, why can't England supporters, support English clubs in Europe. I'm as jealous as any supporter of Man Utd's money and success (and thats what it is - jealousy) but at the end of the day, when they are in Europe, I am on their side. Same with any English club.
Norwich are the favorites to go up..... not that we will actually achieve it, but who'd of thought we'd EVER be favorites??!?
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I'm not even going to dignify that with a response other than by saying IT'S MAN U FFS! How *could* you bring yourself to support them??
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Back to the serious subject of breast physics, I think the best example of this was in Baldur's Gate
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Same thought went through my head.
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Because of all the teams playing in Europe Man Utd do more for English than any other club. They house more of the England team than any other club, and most of them are Man U youth players. How coulg *you* not support Man U, and then support Chelsea, which don't even have any English players, let alone English internationals, or potential England internationals.
Every other English club yes, Man Utd no.
I hate to say this, but that is really pathetic!
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No it's because I hate their, and their supporters, attitude that they're the best football club in all history and they can do no wrong. Well as what has happened this season is that that simply isn't true. It was obvious this season wasn't going to be Man Utd's when they sold Jaap Stam because of Fergie's petty "if you don't agree with me 100% then you have to go" attitude and it's been downhill ever since.
Quite frankly supporting a football team just because it has a lot of Englishmen in it is stupid, I've been a follower of Arsenal for the vast majority of my life, should I give up that support now just because it's lead by a Frenchman and hardly has any homegrown players? I don't think so.
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Just play Giggsie and stop messing about with rota's you muppet.
Although I personally don't *like* the Ar$e by default, Freddy has scored me some good points the last few matches so sometimes u can overlook hatred!
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He's certainly on fire at the moment, which is excellent for me while he's playing for Arsenal, but he could be a bit of a problem in the World Cup.
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Where are the chances for our own home-grown talent from the youth teams? Every club has one so where are the rising stars of tomorrow?
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I watch Chelsea Reserves on an irregular basis, their "home ground" is my local non-league team's ground (who I support obviously) and they've got some decent young players in it that I think could end up in the full team given time. It's not all doom and gloom and considering players wages being vastly inflated clubs will have to bring youngsters into the game via youth teams etc. because transfer fees/salaries are getting silly now.
Seeing Zola playing at Aldershot and scoring from a fine free kick is worth 4 quid of anyone's money!
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If only that were true. When I lived in Manchester it was full of thugs in Man U shirts. It reminded me of home.
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My Prediction for the World Cup:
England and Ireland in the finals
1 all draw goes to penalties. David Beckham misses England 5th peno Roy keane steps up and puts his 5th home
Roy Keane will then be made president of Ireland and every boy born in Ireland after that day will be called Roy.
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Scum. People like that should be locked up in a zoo.
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Thats an insult to monkeys.
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That's it!! Put the hooligans in zoos, and allow apes and monkeys to mingle with society!
I can just imagine it;
"And in order to comply with new equal rights legislations, this is your new boss, Mr. Ooka."
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Cue wise looking old orangutan swivelling to face the camera in big leather seat...
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It's gonna be great!!
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Etc.
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Imagine it? I live it, mate......
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Along these lines, thought I'd share the fantastic email I got today.
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When Mark Shuttleworth (very rich space tourist) returns from space,
everybody dress in Ape Suits. Pass it on...
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If we're using that argument, then perhaps the teams we have in Europe could have English players. Then we might consider supporting purely on the "English" factor.
Did anyone see the documentary on Fergie? I must say, my respect for the Man U players went up (taking all that crap from him) but my dislike of the club also increased. Fergie is an egotistical git. With that said, I will not deny that they are fun to watch and he is a good manager. I think I'll route for Bayer now (although Real will win this season). It'd be neat having a team winning it without winning their home title.
As for the game... I'm keeping my eye out for neat titles before splashing out on a GC, and this looks like a good start. If I'm going to get a console I want to be playing fun, warped, humourous multiplayer games.
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everybody dress in Ape Suits. Pass it on... "
Say what you like about the shiteness of our country, but this would probably be the only place in the world where you could convince the population to do it for a laugh. Just look at the last census. I'm so proud, of myself and fellow countrymen, to have made Jedi an official religion.
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I've always followed Chelsea, it's been a bit embarrassing of late with the big money signings, the sort of thing I always used to hate Man U for in the 80s, but the fact that they have plenty of non-English talent is neither here nor there - why should it be?? I support the team for god's sake, not the country, saying I should stop supporting my team because they field French & Italian players is frankly just a short step from saying I shouldn't support my team because they field black players (I know you're not saying that but you see what I mean). I kind of support England in a half-hearted way during World Cups for a bit of a laugh, knowing perfectly well that they'll be shit and get knocked out early on - it reminds me of the happy days when Chelsea were in the 2nd division & you went up the Shed basically to have a sing-song and hurl abuse at John Hollins - but when it comes to club competitions, I have no interest at all in seeing another English club do well.
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Bingo, which is why I think it is kind of fruitless arguing you should support a British club in Europe. It has nothing to do with their nationality.
As for Chelsea, since the move to throw tickets up to stupid prices to pay for the huge wage bills that seem to be doing nothing for the club, I've been meeting a lot of their fans down at Fulham. It is incredible how the economics can destroy it for the fans.
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FWB - I actually used to live about 200m from Craven Cottage and walk both there and to Stamford Bridge to watch matches (back in the days when Fulham and Chelsea were about three divisions away from each other and mutual loathing was relatively low). But after they demolished the Shed and with it the atmosphere I kind of lost interest (prices also had a lot to do with it), and especially since leaving the UK I've really kind of lost touch with it all to be honest...
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Who cares about the arguement! WE'RE GOING TO CARDIFF!
hahahahahahahahaha
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just doesn't have the same ring to it does it?
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Peej
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Hey I'd rather have Norwich play at England's Rugby home (Twickers) and not Wales' Rugby home, in the absence of Wembley, but at the end of the day - who cares! =]
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