Cult ’90s platformer Soccer Child is getting a re-release in time for the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
The sport was launched in 1993 on quite a lot of codecs, together with Amiga, SNES, PC, 3DO, Jaguar and CD32, and was ported to Sport Boy Advance and PlayStation within the early 2000s.
Now it’s returning as Soccer Child Assortment, which accommodates the SNES and PC variations and will probably be launched on June 16 for PC PS5, Xbox Sequence X/S, Change, PS4 and Xbox One, priced at $9.99.
Initially launched to coincide with the 1994 FIFA World Cup – the final time the match was held in North America – Soccer Child is a 2D platformer the place its protagonist is armed with a soccer.
When an alien pirate known as Scab tries to steal the World Cup trophy on the ultimate of the 1994 match, his plan goes improper when his ship crashed into an asteroid, breaking the trophy into 5 items that are scatted throughout Earth.
Watching this on TV, Soccer Child – a younger football-obsessed boy who lives in England – decides to move out and discover the 5 items of the World Cup so the trophy could be put collectively once more.
The sport’s essential gimmick is that the majority of Soccer Child’s strikes are carried out along with his trusty soccer. Soccer Child himself isn’t very robust and dies if he touches an enemy, however he can kick his ball to kill dangerous guys and accumulate power-ups which might be too laborious to succeed in.
He may steadiness on the ball and bounce off it to entry greater areas, or pull off headers and bicycle kicks to hit totally different components of the display with the ball.
Soccer Child was nicely obtained when it was initially launched, with CVG giving the Amiga model a rating of 89%, saying it was “one of many extra unique video games of the previous few years, and definitely makes a change from the haggard previous platformers we’re used to”.
