"Pass it" "I can't"
First of all, Nintendo World Cup is an arcade football (soccer) game. It did for football (soccer) what NFL blitz did for football. It's controls were simple. A pass button, a shoot button, and pressing both together would make you do a bicycle kick. That's where the arcade element came into the game. Bicycle kicks were crazy, animated shots and were almost guaranteed goals with certain characters on each team.
At the beginning of each game, you were allowed to assign your squad. You use the same character, and only that character, throughout the whole game. Something like the Be a pro mode in FIFA. Now, every generic player on each team had a team generic bicycle kick animation, which I must admit stays within a stereotype for each country. The Russians, for instance, had a bicycle/special kick (yes, the animation was also accessible as a regular souped up shot) where the ball would start to glow and pulsate and then shoot like a rocket straight to goal. I called this the cannon special because to me it looked like the ball changed from a football (soccerball) to a cannonball. Most of these team specific specials required proper positioning on the pitch though, which meant that you had to time the use of your generic team special. Then there were the stars of the team. Their bicycle kicks/special almost always converted, but they definitely had the cooler animations for these kind of shots. Then there was the ultimate star, who most players affectionately called "cool dude." On every team, there was a player wearing a pair of sunglasses. His special never missed, no matter what his positioning on the field was. You could shoot a special shot from your own goal line with him and still score easily. Thing is though, during the game your player can run out of juice and when this happens you pretty much have no more "guaranteed goals" since you are typically the only person that uses specials on the team.
One half in a game of football (soccer) was pretty long (5 mins real time) and there was no option to reduce it. So games could get long and redundant sometimes, especially if you used up all your juice early because even though it replenishes at the half it was easy to use all up within the first minute of play. And with players laying on the floor due to exhaustion and some other crazy elements in the game (rocks on the field, wind and rain etc.) it could boil down to two on two from originally a five on five football (soccer) experience.
The graphics in this game is serviceable, even by today's standards. It is anime, quite reminiscent of that of River City Ramson. And it works perfectly with the overall theme of the game.
The sound is excellent too. It is quite reminiscent of Double Dragon. The tunes are catchy, and once you have played for a little while will be instantly recognizable. They even tried to match music with the different countries' cultures. Brazil in particular had the Samba playing in the background whenever they were playing a home game. Neat.
Now, what really made this game a bargain is the fact that it was packaged with another great game--Super Spike Volleyball--both of which supported four player multiplayer, and to me, when I was eight, that was just the coolest thing ever.
You owe it to yourself to try this game out. True. It's not simulation soccer, but it is close enough, and Nintendo had already had Soccer out already, so it was supposed to compliment Soccer not compete with it. Overall....One of the best games that I've ever played in my life. A must own AAA title