1986 US Gold (UK)
by Donald J. Campbell and JJC
Same game as 'World Cup Football' but with a different world championship, this time in Mexico and with the training of penalties.
It seems that the first program written was considered crap by US Gold folks so they decided to relaunch 'WCF' with a new package.
If this is true I can't imagine the other program. What was it? 22 dots strolling in a green rectangle?
Review by Raphie on 15 Jul 2013 (Rating: 1)
To my knowledge (which isn't good but we'll run with it) this was one of the very first soccer games to be released...what I definately know is this was a game I had as a kid...no it bloody isn't!! That was World Cup Football by Artic you fool, and why have you copied the first line from that review...oh wait silly me this IS World Cup Football by Artic!
Yes in 1986 US Gold unleashed World Cup Carnival, the official game for the Mexico 86 World Cup Finals.....by recycling Artic's World Cup Football for twice the price as well as adding posters and a badge to the packaging...the rotters! Sure it includes teams from the 86 World Cup, sure it added a training mode where you save penalties and other stuff, sure they took out the music but it still doesn't hide that it's the VERY same game! The players are the same, the gameplay is the same, the attribute clash is the same, it's still easy to score a goal with the zig zag technique, it's the EXACT same as World Cup Football.
Their excuse was that they had a World Cup game in the works but it was so terrible they couldn't dare release it, what's more, time was fastly running out and there was no way they could have made a new one from scratch and release it in time for the World Cup, therefore leaving them to recycle World Cup Football instead....which means there are actually TWO versions of World Cup Carnival....although don't get your hopes up over it because I doubt we'll ever see this "second" version....I mean it doesn't exist does it, it's just lies, lies and more lies. And come to think of it this "terrible" game would have been better off releasing instead of recycling code from a soccer game released two bloody years earlier.
Not surprisingly as a result of their scheme, World Cup Carnival was universally panned and is widely considered one of the worst games ever released on the ZX Spectrum, one of the worst soccer games known to mankind and one of the biggest scams in gaming history.
