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, I’ll give credit where it’s due: this is about as good as rugby gets on the C64. It’s 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 there’s
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 isn’t here to help you. It’s here to make you suffer.
And scrums? Those god damn scrums. Wiggling the joystick left and right at warp speed might simulate rugby’s physicality, but mostly it simulated
destroying your joystick. I’ve never won a scrum, and quite frankly, I’m 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 it’s quite arbitrary about it. Too often, when you’re
so close to a tackle, the computer just decides, “You know what? Let’s make you the other guy. So there you are, so close to glory, only to be body-swapped into oblivion. It’s rugby designed by Kafka.
That said, it’s 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 bird’s eye view of it too.
The intro music is nice. While there’s not music during actual gameplay, you get nice gameplay sounds like cheers and whistles.
Walking Circles developed Rugby: The World Cup. They’re mostly known for
Spitting Image: The Computer Game – yes, that’s a thing.
Rugby: The World Cup had ambition. But ambition doesn’t always mean fun, and when you’re trying to squeeze rugby into one button and eight joystick directions, fun doesn’t just get sidelined – it get stretched off the field. So no, I can’t recommend this game. It’s impressive, but why suffer through this?