Rugby: The World Cup is a great sports game. Great for its time. Great for its hardware. Great if you hate yourself. But is it a good* sports game? No.
Look, Iโll give credit where itโs due: this is about as good as rugby gets on the C64. Itโs all here: scrums, lineouts, kicks, passes, and the best part of rugby drama: drop goals. Penalties are mercifully left out to keep the action flowing.
But then thereโs
that joystick. One button. One lonely, overworked, and brutally misunderstood button. Want to pass? Press the button while moving left or right. Want to kick forward? Press the button while moving in the direction of play. Want to kick to touch? Button + diagonal. Want to do any of these things without accidentally doing the wrong thing? Good luck, pal. The button isnโt here to help you. Itโs here to make you suffer.
And scrums? Those god damn scrums. Wiggling the joystick left and right at warp speed might simulate rugbyโs physicality, but mostly it simulated
destroying your joystick. Iโve never won a scrum, and quite frankly, Iโm not sure I want to anymore.
The A.I. also delights in trolling you while the ball is not in your possession. You
cannot switch players manually. No, the computer decides that for you, and itโs quite arbitrary about it. Too often, when youโre
so close to a tackle, the computer just decides, โYou know what? Letโs make you the other guy. So there you are, so close to glory, only to be body-swapped into oblivion. Itโs rugby designed by Kafka.
That said, itโs not
all bad. While the sprites are simple, you actually get a lot of them, and they animate nicely. The animation is smooth. You get a both a close up of the field, and to your left, you get a whole birdโs eye view of it too.
The intro music is nice. While thereโs not music during actual gameplay, you get nice gameplay sounds like cheers and whistles.
Walking Circles developed Rugby: The World Cup. Theyโre mostly known for
Spitting Image: The Computer Game โ yes, thatโs a thing.
Rugby: The World Cup had ambition. But ambition doesnโt always mean fun, and when youโre trying to squeeze rugby into one button and eight joystick directions, fun doesnโt just get sidelined โ it get stretched off the field. So no, I canโt recommend this game. Itโs impressive, but why suffer through this?