Super Soccer (SNES)

The most interesting thing about Super Soccer is something that happened to it over 30 years after release. Included as part of the Super Nintendo offerings on Nintendo Switch Online’s selection of classic games, it ended up being the first and at time of writing only game to leave the subscription service. Exposing this crack in the armor of an otherwise consistent catalogue lead to a fair degree of discussion, but while people were talking about the business side of things and preservation concerns, rarely did people seem too bothered Super Soccer was the game leaving. To most, it looked like one of a slew of standard retro soccer games and thus not the worst game to have lost. To see if it was much of a loss, I decided to give the game a look, and Super Soccer ended up surprising me with its quality.

Super Soccer does use standard soccer rules although it trims the game down to two halves consisting of five minutes each for the tournament mode, although you are free to set the times over in exhibition. The sport itself is depicted at a tilted angle of the field, the players able to a see a large stretch of it a time that does inevitably favor one side a bit. When approaching the upper goal it’s far easier to see where players are and set up your shot while the lower goal will have you running blind and passing to players you might not be able to see at times, but teams do swap after halftime so you will always get a turn with the advantageous and disadvantageous side. This does sound like an unfortunate element of the game design at first and it would have been preferable to have more of the field visible, but this angle is also useful for depicting an incredibly energetic and aggressive take on the sport where you need to be constantly alert and active to have a chance of winning a match.

Constant movement is crucial in Super Soccer because as soon as someone gets the ball, it’s not going to be too hard for the opposing team to close in and try to take it away. Defenders have two means of trying to steal the ball, a sliding tackle the safer option as you pass through a player and pilfer the football, although it can leave you vulnerable amidst players from the other team since it takes a second to complete. The shoulder tackle is a rougher option where you can quickly floor the ball handler and take over possession, but this can also lead to fouls and injuries. The players in Super Soccer can actually be quite distinct despite not having clearly visible stats, but while you’ll likely to get to know them better by their numbers, you’ll definitely come to know who is faster on the field and may even want to injure an opposing player to eliminate them from the game. At the same time, you need to judge whether you want a certain one of your players ejected, but at times the sliding tackle’s lower reliability means you might just shoulder charge to ensure you get the ball rather than risk letting the other team take a shot on goal. When it comes to maintaining possession, the person handling the ball is able to zig and zag well enough to help keep tackles from being too effective, it often a contest to see if the tackler picks the right moment to strike or if the person in possession can weave effectively enough to dodge at those key moments.

Ball stealing is only the first part of a well built system for making the soccer play exciting and electric. Players can move fairly fast meaning you can’t afford to stand still or try and stall out the clock, and what’s more, Super Soccer even lets you control multiple players at once when on defense. While you have some control of the player nearest the ball, you’ll also be guiding other nearby players whose numbers are displayed to help you better block escape routes or make up for a whiffed tackle. Defense can feel more layered and less committal, allowing for risk taking or different forms of pressure, but offense isn’t a slouch either. While you’ll only be directly controlling whoever has the ball most of the time, passing is a bit more layered than just trying to aim for the player with an arrow overhead. You can press Y to kick it towards the indicated teammate and use the shoulder buttons to try and pick a different target, but this reveals itself to be an imprecise system where you might not have the time to pick who you want. This is actually because the Y pass is usually a special pass option rather than the intended one. Your A button kick will send the ball down field in the direction you’re facing, meaning at any time if you see one of your players, you can quite easily kick it towards him and the game will let you take control of whoever is closest to make sure you can complete the pass. This may sound rough to do when going downwards since players are offscreen, but this actually gives some strategic depth to picking your team formation. You can pick how many players are in specific areas of the field, and importantly, if players aren’t near the ball, they will reliably be where they’re meant to be. You can confidently send an A kick into where you know you have an athlete and complete those technically blind passes without much issue.

The highly aggressive play will lead to the ball swapping possession often, and when you approach the goal to actually attempt a shot, the game seems to account for this in how challenging trying to get the ball in the net is. The goalie can be either controlled manually when the opponent is in range of the goal or you can leave it up to the game to do its best to block, and there doesn’t seem to be too much of a difference in reliability. When a kick is made, the kicker will have some midair control over the ball to give it a curve to help it hit specific regions of the net, but the position when taking the shot can also determine how hard the goalie’s job will be. Scoring isn’t a rarity and the extra control of the shot lets you better increase your odds of getting it in, score prevention often about not letting the player get safely to the net first and then preventing them from setting up a nice angle before your goalie is in position. Point kicks being somewhat easy but not too easy helps the game keep its highly combative fielding without it becoming frustrating, points coming with some regularity when players get close enough to the net to make reasonable goal attempts.

Super Soccer ends up fairly involved and sometimes quite difficult if the opposing team has strong players or seems to get a read on how you’re trying to attack or dodge. Exhibition matches against other human players have little downtime, a lot of chances for turnarounds, and might even be a bit exhausting as you need to stay active and canny since slowing down your aggression means they’ll get to try and get the ball around the goalie more often. For single player play you can still expect incredibly lively and challenging play in the Tournament setting where you’ll pick one team and take on all the others on offer one by one. There are 16 teams available representing different countries but not featuring real players, and in a nice touch, every team has a unique musical theme that will play during one half of a match. Teams like Cameroon and Belgium have some fairly catchy tunes, but not all teams are created equal when it comes to stats. Argentina and Germany are far and away the best, their team stats almost three times as good as a team like Yugoslavia or Uruguay. You will definitely have to work harder to make the less skilled teams win, but even a technically weaker team like Japan can have star players that mean you need to take matches against them seriously.

Interestingly, Super Soccer will let you play tournaments with a second human player on your team, and passwords can let you jump back into a tournament later which helps since they can be quite demanding and difficult once you start facing the strongest teams. If a game does end in a tie though, there will be a shootout, something you can practice over in exhibition mode as well. Both teams will get five attempts to kick the ball past the opposing goalie in a closer and more layered form of goaltending, the player now having much more control over the goalie as they have to be more carefully block a ball that can be aimed more easily than ever. There are different regions of the goal to block, the kicker can add more speed to their kick, and the goalie can try to jump into ball’s path but will have to get the timing right or it might be too late. This does feel like more of a guessing game, the time after the ball has been kicked to notice its path very small, but since it is meant as a tiebreaker it likely didn’t want to have the risk of causing a further stalemate. If a game gets down to a shootout it was likely a very tough battle with an even match between two sides that would have been hard to resolve through just more play, and sometimes playing defensively so they can gamble on the shootout can be a way for a heavily outmatched team to try and turn the tables against one of the powerful teams.

THE VERDICT: Super Soccer is a highly involved and aggressive form of video game soccer that keeps you engaged any moment the ball is on the field. Tackling is powerful but possible to counter, meaning both sides are almost always trying to move in ways to be in control, but when it comes time to shoot on the goal, it isn’t too hard to score while also not being a foregone conclusion. Players and teams have notable advantages and failings that make matches feel different from each other, and while it’s a shame one half of the field has visibility problems, the action remains electric no matter where the players find themselves on the pitch.

And so, I give Super Soccer for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System…

A GOOD rating. Super Soccer isn’t a simple adaptation of the sport, it injects a surge of energy into the play so that there’s rarely any quiet time. A breakaway rarely lasts more than a second but the defense doesn’t feel obnoxiously oppressive because you have means to outmaneuver any ball stealers. Super Soccer is especially smart in how it hands over control from one player to the next. On defense where you need more team control you get it as you can move multiple players at once, albeit in the same way so it’s not confusing or too powerful. When you control the ball and do an A kick, the game reads who is near well enough that it is often a fairly reliable way to move the ball down field. Midair kicks allow for blocks and special passes as well, and team formations feel more important when you can try and strategize ways to move the ball across the pitch quickly. Super Soccer will never be able to fully overcome the problem caused by the lower goal being hard to view though, simply handing off the issue at halftime not the best salve for the related increase in difficulty. It’s harder to aim when you need to be closer to see the goalie and it ends up easier for the goalie to counter you as a result. This is going to be an issue with any soccer game that decides to put one goal high and one low rather than on the left and right sides of the field, but the view of the players is what gives Super Soccer its high energy and allows for those moments where both players can weave and strike with more range and depth. It is possible scoring was made less difficult to account for this, but it also mixes well with counterbalancing the aggressive play elsewhere and still requires some work as you often need to bend the ball in or position smartly still to rack up goals.

So the question ultimately comes down to this: Is it a shame that Super Soccer was removed from Nintendo Switch Online’s SNES app? The disappointing truth is I would have said yes regardless of the game’s quality. If we only allow people to play “good” games we can end up removing niche titles that only appeal to certain types of players or ones that were possibly unfairly maligned by critics due to the time of their release or other outside factors. In Super Soccer’s case though, it is actually an enjoyable sports game, lively and action-packed despite it not having any gimmicks that make it more than an adaptation of the sport. It isn’t just a straightforward representation of European football and it plays in unique ways compared to other games that also tried to be realistic in representing it. You might still need an appreciation for soccer to be interested in this title, but Super Soccer plays well while remaining accurate to reality. While I’d argue it has value regardless of its quality, it’s also a much easier a case to make when it is a well crafted adaptation of the sport.