, known in North America as simply ''Worldwide Soccer '98'' and in Europe as ''Sega Worldwide Soccer '98 Club Edition'', is a video game developed and published by

Sega is a Japanese multinational corporation, multinational video game and entertainment company headquartered in Shinagawa, Tokyo. Its international branches, Sega of America and Sega Europe, are headquartered in Irvine, California and London, r ...

for the

Sega Saturn The is a home video game console developed by Sega and released on November 22, 1994, in Japan, May 11, 1995, in North America, and July 8, 1995, in Europe. Part of the fifth generation of video game consoles, it was the successor to the succ ...

in 1997 and

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

in 1998. It is the third game in its series, following ''Victory Goal'' and ''

Sega Worldwide Soccer 97 ''Sega Worldwide Soccer 97'' (known as both ''Sega Worldwide Soccer PC'' and ''Victory Goal Worldwide Edition'' in Japan) is a football video game by Sega released for the Sega Saturn in 1996. It was followed by three more titles: '' Sega Worldwid ...

''.

Development

''Sega Worldwide Soccer '98'' used the same

game engine A game engine is a software framework primarily designed for the development of video games and generally includes relevant libraries and support programs. The "engine" terminology is similar to the term "software engine" used in the software i ...

as its predecessor, ''Sega Worldwide Soccer '97''.

Cobi Jones Cobi N'Gai Jones (born June 16, 1970) is an American former professional Association football, soccer player and commentator. He is an analyst for Major League Soccer club LA Galaxy on Time Warner Cable SportsNet. He can also be seen on Fox Spo ...

played an advisory role in the game's development and served as its spokesperson. Commentary was provided by Gary Bloom (known for his appearances on ''

Football Italia ''Football Italia'' was a television programme in the United Kingdom, showing Italian football, that ran from 1992 to 2002 on Channel 4, and continued until 2008 on other channels. It was known as ''Football Italiano'' in its final season. The ...

'') and

Jack Charlton John Charlton (8 May 193510 July 2020) was an English footballer and manager who played as a defender. He was part of the England national team that won the 1966 World Cup and managed the Republic of Ireland national team from 1986 to 199 ...

Reception

The game received mixed reviews; most critics wrote that the game was too unchanged from its predecessor. The four reviewers of ''

Electronic Gaming Monthly ''Electronic Gaming Monthly'' (often abbreviated to ''EGM'') is a monthly American video game magazine. It offers video game news, coverage of industry events, interviews with gaming figures, editorial content and product reviews. History The m ...

'' particularly complained at the inability to change the position of players during breaks in the play, and John Ricciardi summarized that "The addition of Club teams is nice, and the engine seems to have been polished up a bit, but otherwise this is pretty much the same game as last year with some annoying faults." ''

Sega Saturn Magazine ''Sega Saturn Magazine'' was a monthly UK magazine covering the Sega Saturn, a home video game console. It held the official Saturn magazine license for the UK, and some issues included a demo CD created by Sega, ''Sega Flash'', which included ...

'' similarly judged that "there's little to justify purchasing this game if you already own the '97 edition. Sure, it has all the current Premiership sides and players, but at the end of the day, it plays virtually identically ..." ''

GamePro Gamepro.com is an international multiplatform video game magazine media company that covers the video game industry, video game hardware and video game software in countries such as Germany and France. The publication, GamePro, was originally la ...

'' similarly held that there weren't enough changes, and recommended holding out for the Saturn port of '' FIFA: Road to World Cup 98'' instead. ''

Next Generation Next Generation or Next-Generation may refer to: Publications and literature * ''Next Generation'' (magazine), video game magazine that was made by the now defunct Imagine Media publishing company * Next Generation poets (2004), list of young ...

'' was an exception, arguing that "Sega has made a wise decision to leave well enough alone with the third game in the series. Rather than making sweeping changes in gameplay, the designers have tweaked things a bit and stuffed enough little features into the game to make it a worthy update." Some reviewers particularly criticized the lack of improvement in the goalie AI, though the greater racial accuracy of the player models as compared to ''Sega Worldwide Soccer '97'' was praised. Also, despite the general criticism of the lack of improvements, critics for both ''Sega Saturn Magazine'' and ''GamePro'' felt that the graphics were good enough that no improvement was needed.

Notes

References

External links

* * {{moby game, id=/windows/sega-worldwide-soccer-97, name=''Worldwide Soccer'' (Windows) 1997 video games Association football video games Sega video games Sega Saturn games Video games developed in Japan Windows games