Worldwide Soccer
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Worldwide Soccer is a football video game franchise by Sega initially released for the Sega Saturn in the Christmas of 1996, and later followed by three more titles: Worldwide Soccer '98 still on the 32-bit console and two editions of Worldwide Soccer 2000 for the Dreamcast.
Worldwide Soccer, produced by Sega themselves was one of the killer apps in the peak of popularity for the console. It was preceded by Victory Goal, an already ageing football game (one of the debut titles of the console). The game featured international teams and league, play-off and tournament modes. Although it used fictional player names (due to the lack of a license), the non-volatile memory of the Saturn allowed editing of names. The team kits were as close to the official 1996 kits as possible. The gameplay was also highly praised, and was the top-rated football game until ISS 64 was released one year later. Worldwide soccer was later ported to the PC.
One year later Worldwide Soccer 98 was released, again for the Saturn. This version featured (still unlicensed) clubs from England, Spain and France, two new stadiums and the same free-flowing gameplay. However, it could do little for the ailing console, which had one of its worst moments when its version of FIFA'98 was completely levelled by critics.
One final title, Sega Worldwide Soccer 2000, appeared on the Sega Dreamcast. However, instead of being developed in-house, Silicon Dreams (who previously worked with Eidos on the UEFA Champions League series and also World League Soccer) was given the rights to produce a game bearing the Worldwide Soccer name. While the first title left most fans pleased visually, but disappointed with the gameplay, a Euro Edition (capitalizing on the popularity of Euro 2000) was released in Europe and returned some credibility to the franchise. It still lost out to the arcade attraction of Virtua Striker 2.
No modern successor of Worldwide Soccer is planned, although Football Manager, developed by Sports Interactive and published by Sega, is sold as Worldwide Soccer Manager in the North American market.
