 S... S... DRUCK. In 1994, the world is enjoying this badass new retooled Mega Man game called Mega Man X. It's universally praised and enjoyed and almost immediately becomes one of the best games on the Super Nintendo. But wait, here comes another Mega Man game down the pike. What, already? Yes, that's right. It's Mega Man Soccer. Uh... Wait a second. Is this real? This isn't a joke. Mega Man Soccer is a real thing. This was my reaction as a 12-year-old kid at the time. Excitement that a new Mega Man game was coming around so quickly, immediately followed by pure bafflement and abject confusion. Remember this was years before stuff like Mario Tennis or Mario Golf and even Super Mario Kart still seemed like, not only a novelty but as an exception because it was such a great game. Mega Man Soccer is just, why soccer? Why Mega Man? I mean, what's next? Street Fighter Skiing, Breath of Fire Badminton, Castlevania Croquet? Okay, so forget all the reactions and the confusion and the jokes. How does the game play? Is it any good? Eh, it's okayish, I guess, but it's really not all that good. While Mega Man Soccer is not without its charm, it's not anything to write home about as a soccer game. I'll admit up front I'm not a big soccer guy, I don't know at second hand like I do many other sports, but I do know a good soccer game when I see one like Sensible Soccer or International Superstar Soccer Deluxe. A big part of what makes those games good is the ability to see so much of the field and a good balance between speed and pacing. That's the biggest flaw of Mega Man Soccer, you just can't see enough so you just end up staring at that grid with the dots on the top of the screen. Plus the field overall just seems too small compared to how big the players are. And the controls are sluggish and don't always feel very responsive. I guess that word best sums up the gameplay, sluggish, and because of that the balance of the gameplay suffers, it's a chore to get the ball down field. Another huge flaw is that you're often at the mercy of the computer teammates AI, and that is really frustrating because your teammates are idiots that don't know how to get open. There's some positives here though, like the laugh out loud attempt to somehow tie this game in with the Mega Man universe, with a story that has Dr. Wiley's Robot Master's hijack a soccer game, and of course the only way to stop them is for Dr. Lake to form his own soccer team of Mega Man's, this is like the plot of a bad 1980's Sylvester Stallone movie. But hey, if you play the regular exhibition mode you can form your own team of robots. From a selection of guys like Cut Man, Wood Man, Skull Man, and Feral Man, just to name a few. You can see how each of these guys stack up with this status screen here, which divvies up skill based on speed, kicking, tackling, and defense. You can pick your formation at the beginning of the game, and even make substitutions at halftime. Plus each robot has their own special move, like a fireman robot can make a shot that sets the ball on fire, or Cut Man can turn the ball into a pair of clippers. See there are some good ideas here, it's just that the gameplay itself isn't all that great. To be fair Mega Man's soccer does at least go the NBA Jam route of ignoring most of the rules, so you can recklessly slide into guys and all that. But again, everything here just feels like they slapped this game together in a few weeks. And not just from the gameplay, the most telling evidence of how half-assed this game was put together is that there's no ending. You beat the championship mode and it just boots you back to the title screen, there's not even any credits. So yeah, Mega Man's soccer sounds like a weirdly intriguing idea, but the game is a disappointment thanks to the listless gameplay and the half-assed execution. This game COULD have been pretty good. Games like Rockman Corner have discovered unused code in the game that indicates that the development team was planning on having Mega Man's soccer be four-player compatible. Now that would have made this game totally worth it. The way Mega Man's soccer turned out though, it's hard to justify playing today.