In the history of sports video games I think titles based on the most popular game worldwide have had the least support. Thats right Im talking about Soccer...or Football if you're from somewhere other than N. America. I've always heard that the reason soccer is so popular is because you need very little equipment to play. All you need is some balls.


Players need to have access to balls

However even though many in the States have shunned the game as inferior (read not violent enough) to other more popular, regularly televised games; I do not. I used to play soccer and still occasionally enjoy watching the World Cup in the wee hours of the morning.

So Of course I was interested to hear about the new game Mario Strikers Charged for the Wii that was recently released. I figured it was about time Nintendo tried to utilized the Wi-Fi capability in a sports game, and what game is more popular worldwide then footy.

Having not played the predecessor to this game, Super Mario Strikers, I don't know what it will be all about beside what I can gleen from the reviews I've read about it. Mario Strikers Charged was released in Europe several months ago and seems to be doing well in those markets with newer controls and strategy.

But will this change the stance that nearly everyone I talked to had about soccer?

No, No it won't.

Soccer sucks was a common response people gave when asked how much they enjoy the sport. The fact that the Iraq national team just won a large tournament didn't change things either.

You can follow this trend all the way back to the NES and Goal!


I played this game a ton and never understood why it wasn't more widely played....well actually that's not entirely true, I knew the controls were bad and the graphics were, well, lets just say sub-par. But it's still fun today kinda.

Then came Nintendo World Cup


This game was better in a lot of ways than Goal! Like a lot of other people I tired of it pretty quickly.

Mega Man Soccer was the next game I spent much time on.


While it was fun and the different soccer arenas you could play on were cool, there weren't a whole lot of different moves for your character to perform and after a while it was thrown into the fire with all the others.

I stopped playing soccer in real life and got really fat, I mean Orca fat. I was so fat that I had to have the wall of my bedroom demolished so they could gurney me out and to the hospital all the while being taped by Montel Williams. Ok even if that didn't happen I still stopped playin soccer and started playing Doom 2.

I later discovered FIFA 97



This game was like 3d compared to some of the earlier games I had played. The graphics were better and the control was much improved as well. The real problem was that nobody wanted to play. People just didn't want to play a soccer video game. Who knows if this will change anytime soon.

I hope Nintendo's newest Soccer Game can allow people in the States to connect with the die hard fans abroad. If the Wi-Fi works really well they might just score a goal with this one.