Producer: US Gold
Retail Price: £9.95
Author: AS Designs

The release of Wold Cup Carnival coincides nicely with this year's Mexican extravaganza. Unlike the real thing, this game is played by two players who compete against each other, or by one player against the computer. The program also allows up to nine players to select teams from a list of 24 World Cup candidates.

The game begins with the players running out onto the field. About one third of the pitch is on screen at any one time, scrolling sideways as the players run down towards the goal. You only have control over the player nearest the ball, and he changes colour slightly when in possession of the ball. Kick offs and goal saves are all automatically executed.

The score is displayed at the top of the screen along with a time limit. The game is played over 90 minutes, but this isn't real time - each game actually takes about three minutes to complete with an allowance for extra time at the end. Apart from the main match there is also a practice mode where you can practice ball control, penalty shooting and saving. There is also a practice match option so you can have a dummy run before going on to the real thing.

The complete package includes all sorts of World Cup memorabilia such as a wall chart with stickers to plot the progress of the real thing this summer, and a sew-on badge.

There is no strategy involved in World Cup Carnival and players cannot be allocated to positions according to their particular skills - the computer sorts all that out, so the only thing you have to worry about is controlling the players on the pitch and trying to score goals.

COMMENTS

Control keys: Player one: 1 up, Q down, S right, A left, bottom row to kick; Player two: 0 up, O down, K right, J left, bottom row to fire. P pause, H instructions
Joystick: Kempston, Cursor
Keyboard play: okay
Use of colour: severe clashes at times
Graphics: far from 'state of the art'
Sound: pardon?
Skill levels: one
Screens: scrolling window for match, plus penalty screens

World Cup Carnival is an appalling game and it's a disgrace to see a big software house like US Gold releasing it. The layout of the football pitch is as basic as you can get - no centre circle, no penalty area, no six yard box and no supports for the goals. The graphics are very bad, with footballers who would look out of place in one of the first Spectrum games. The clock counts down and not up which is very confusing and the teams don't even swap around for extra time. US Gold have stuck to the bog standard Spectrum character set. I couldn't find any music to listen to even though there is an on/off option for music! All I can say about this game is there is a nice whistle effect and the packaging is great. This game is awful; avoid it at all costs.

This is the worst football simulation I have ever seen. Playing the game is a little too easy unless you happen to have a colour TV or monitor - when the colours used are very bright and eye strain occurs after a few games. Controlling your man is not difficult, although sometimes the computers choice of the 'man nearest the ball' is a little strange. The graphics are very poor, the players only have two stages of animation and there are many bad attribute problems. The players are a bit better. Sound is poor; if you're lucky you might hear the odd whistle being blown. On the whole I wouldn't be too happy if I forked out two quid for this one, let alone a tenner. The pack of World Cup bumph makes up for it a little, but not enough for me to recommend it to any one.

Not exactly a mega-game this. In fact it's not much of a game at all. The game itself is sub-standard, but all the freebies are quite good; but then, they have to be, because I don't think many people will buy the package for the game itself. Maybe football freaks will enjoy it, but I can't see anyone flipping over it. The colour is initially quite helpful, but when the clashes start making the players disappear - things get a bit out of hand! Overall, it's not an awful game - US Gold have made a lot out of the World Cup deal, what with all the accompanying bits, but the game itself lacks any real outstanding elements.

US Gold
£9.95

How kind of the Ed to let me, an ignorant girly, review this football program. After all, I'd never even realised that the World Cup is a five-a-side contest. Then again, maybe things were different in the 1984 World Cup - the copyright date you'll find on the packaging if you look very, very hard. The holes in this game are so wide you could drive an Artic through them.

In fact this is an Artic game that wasn't even highly praised in its own day, enhanced and re-released. Load it up and you'll find that despite the practice mode, which has no practical link at all to the soccer simulation, at heart this is still the same mediocre game it always was, and that's still available, unenhanced, both at a budget price and as part of a compilation! Alternatively there's always Ocean's far superior Match Day.

Practice consists of Taking and Saving Penalties and Ball Control. These are Daley Thompson type games with spartan graphics and slight control problems. Somehow it decided that I needed more practice and I was forced to reload because I couldn't break out of a purgatory of Penalty Kicks.

Training allows a one or two player single game while World Cup commits you to becoming Bulgaria, Outer Mongolia or A.N. Other and playing the full competition. Either way you'll discover a peril that makes my blood run cold. One team wears white, with the player in possession turning pale blue, This means that against a green pitch they are almost invisible! How can our lads in Brazil stand up to these sneaky tactics? And it's infectious; as players come into contact they defect to the other team's colour!

I suppose that the Ed thought I might like the wealth of posters, stickers and wallcharts and even a snazzy sew-on patch for my footballer-spotters anorak... but I didn't! Maybe US Gold should go in for the souvenir market full time!

WORLD CUP FIFA!

Clare Edgeley knocks out US Gold's latest in the first round.

Label: US Gold
Author: A S Designs
Price: £9.95
Memory: 48K
Joystick: Various
Reviewer: Clare Edgeley

With football madness rising to fever pitch, US Gold has launched World Cup Carnival - the official world cup game.

And it's awful.

Bleep. Action. And Robson flickers wildly up the pitch, dribbling the ball before him. A fumbling pass and he's intercepted. But by whom? Which team? The game suffers from excruciating colour clash. Where the ball once was is now a large squiggly blob of cyan and white. Eventually it turns into Hoddle - cyan because he's controlling the ball, Pasarella - black for the opposing team, and Lineker - white and representing your team. When those three colours get together definition flies out of the window and identification is impossible. The best you can do is twiddle your joystick and hope the mess will sort itself out.

On they dribble. World Cup Carnival is played as a five-aside. It's just as well really because the pitch is minute.

In fact the football part of World Cup Carnival is no more and no less than Artic's ancient World Cup - a game which did well enough in its time - almost two years ago - but compared with current techniques in programming the graphics and scrolling routines are straight out of the ark.

This is mutton dressed as lamb. The mutton being Artic's original and the lamb being a few frills US Gold has added to persuade you you're getting your money's worth. There are three new practice modes which, in my opinion, are more exciting than the game. Taking and saving penalties, practising ball control and a training mode. Taking a penalty is played in Daley's Decathlon style - to gain speed while running up to the ball, pump your joystick back and forth rapidly. Then press fire and tilt the joystick in the direction the ball is to travel. It's very difficult getting past the goalie who seems to have ESP. The graphics are better than the game proper and the simulation of running is quite realistic. Almost average anyway.

Saving penalties is tedious. Once your opponent has kicked the ball you dive in one of seven directions to save it. Ball control is a little competition to see how long you can keep the ball in the air by a variety of kicks and headers and is very boring. The training mode takes you back to Artic's original graphics and is a total let down.

Once I'd tidied up on my footie skills I decided to put them into practise. I anticipated being almost enthusiastic, I particularly wanted to test the penalty practise mode. Accordingly, I tried barging, tripping, kicking, but to no avail. Goal kicks were the only result meaning that all those semi-exciting practise modes are a complete waste of time.

You'll get more excitement out of watching the World Cup on TV than in wasting your time with this hurriedly cobbled together mish-mash of a game. And the posters, stickers, charts and badge which comes with the package in no way make up for the game's obvious shortcomings.

Incidentally, the Artic original is currently being sold to the trade at 65p so it should be out by now at budget prices.