The third Japanese football game has a very different feel to both Konami and EA’s games. On paper, this is easily the worst football game I’ve played so far (and not just on the N64) and yet…it’s oddly enjoyable. If you paid money for this game, you would no doubt be annoyed, but giving it a quick blast to see how bad it is truly is quite fun.

You may notice that there’s no cursor showing who you are currently controlling – that’s because you never control any individual players. Instead, you control a random assortment of players who are near the ball, all moving in the same way. Even when you have the ball, the other players will “kick” an imaginary ball at the same time the player with the ball does.

The a and b buttons are different kinds of kicks, these are just in a general direction and not a proper pass – that’s on the C down button, and you have no control over who you pass to (it often goes to a player behind the current one). The goalkeepers are also amazing at what they do, and the CPU even struggled to score when I gave them lots of chances.

Fouls are very loose in the game, as sliding tackles rarely result in a foul. There is a shoulder barge button that does usually give a foul, and I had a lot of fun seeing how many players I could get sent off the pitch. It turns out that after four players are sent off, you can no longer get cards. And even with four players sent off, the absence of a defence didn’t make a huge difference due to the goalkeeper’s skill.

It also helps that the sprite-based players are also funny to look at, often looking like gingerbread men. The graphics combined with the way you control multiple players at once, it feels like a hybrid of football and foosball.

This is a wonderfully dreadful game.

Fun

So, how’s it managed to sneak into the mid-60’s, then? Well, persevere with it (and, strewth, does it take some perseverance) and you’ll discover that, for all it’s stinking great, size 15 faults, there’s something strangely enjoyable about it.

Tim Weaver, N64 Magazine #8. Review Score: 66%

Remake or remaster?

This isn’t worth buying in any way, just emulate it (with the English translation patch) to see how enjoyably bad it is.

Official ways to get the game.

There is no official way to get J.League Dynamite Soccer 64.