Flashback Friday: Sega Soccer Slam

The World Cup in underway in Brazil and World Cup Fever is sweeping the Solarverse. FIFA is the best selling sports game in the world and puts out an accompanying game for the World Cup, and FIFA is actually really damn good, year in and year out. The closest competition would be Konami's Winning Eleven/Pro Evolution series, which is ok, but FIFA Soccer tends to own the digital soccer/football world.

So this week for Flashback Friday, let's not talk about either one and instead shine a light on Sega Soccer Slam.

Sega Soccer Slam was released in North America (follow me here) for Gamecube on March 18th, 2002, Xbox on August 22, 2002 and Playstation 2 on September 2, 2002. As you can tell from the cover art and the name, it's an arcade spin on The Beautiful Game, much like RedCard and more recently with Mario Strikers: Charged for the Wii.

(For the reason that I am an American, I'll say the word 'soccer' but just know in my heart I want to say 'football' for my international fans).

Throw the rules right out the window here; punch your opponents and unleash special kicks with characters that look like Power Rangers villains.

There were several modes in the game, Practice, Exhibition, Challenge, Tourny, and Quest mode.

Practice mode teaches you step-by-step how to play Soccer the way your 8-year-old self always wanted to, like a superhero. Exhibition let you choose your team (6 to start, 3 more you can unlock), your stadium, and your opponent. Challenge Mode lets you create a custom team and play a set of matches to unlock 9 extra characters. Tourney Mode lets you create a Tournament (weird, right?) that lasts 5 days (in-game of course). Finally, Quest Mode allows you to choose from one of the starting 6 teams, play 10 games, and accumulate money to spend on character art and power-ups, basically their idea of a "season" type mode.

There were also 2 mini-games: Hot Potato, in which you earned points from passing, but anyone in the blast zone when the ball explodes loses points, and Brawl, which is a 4-player beat the crap outta each other game.

Each team had its own unique look and specialty:

- Team Toxic (Green) - from North America. Excel at passing.

- Team Volta (Yellow) - from Western and Southern Europe. Excel at Speed.

- Team Subzero (White & Ice Blue) - from Eastern and Northern Europe. Excel at fatalities hitting and abusing. (Can't be a coincidence, right?)

- Team Spirit (Purple) - from Africa. Excel at High Shot Combos.

- Team Tsunami (Ocean Blue) - from the Pacific Rim (Hawaii, Australia, Japan. Not the movie....though that would be pretty sweet). Excel in shot accuracy.

- Team El Fuego (Red) - from Latin America (Mexico, Argentina, Brazil). This is your typical "well-balanced" team and is also aggressive.

The 3 unlockable teams is where it starts getting a little more obscure:

- Team Love (Pink) - An all girl team who hoped to meet their idol; Team Subzero member Lola. They are faster than Team Volta, making them the fastest team in the game.

- Team Robo (Robot colored, I guess?) - Robots created by Team Tsunami member Rumiko. After trying to exterminate the robots, seeing them as failures, the Robots formed a Soccer team to take down their creator. Best shooting team in the game.

- Team Ohm (Gold) - from Southeast Asia. Team member Dakai (a Burmese ex-rebel leader) was secretly making an elixir of immortality, when he ended up making a superhuman power for his team. They are similar to Team El Fuego, with added hitting and shooting power.

I remember playing a LOT of this game on my original Xbox. While it was a pretty fun single player game, this was best spent with other players giving you a real challenge. I remember the AI for Soccer Slam either being super easy, or unforgiving, adding the human element kept this game exciting and fun.

If you are looking for a fun arcade Soccer/Football game to take a break from FIFA with, I would easily recommend playing a few games of this with friends in between televised World Cup matches.

GO GO USA!