90 Minutes: European Prime Goal

The Game

90 Minutes: European Prime Goal is an adaptation of Japan's J-League Soccer Prime Goal series created for a Western audience. While the J-League version of the game is fully licensed, this release has international teams with made-up player names, and with it being a late release in the console's life cycle I think it went under most people's radar. We'll find out if that's a good or bad thing very soon!

It was developed by Namco, and what more needs to be said about Namco, really? Developers of some of the most well-known games of all time. Pac-Man, Galaga, Dig Dug, Xevious, right through to their acquisition by Bandai and moving into publishing some of the most popular games of today like Elden Ring. 6 decades and counting.

It was published by Ocean Software, who were one of the biggest developers and publishers of the 80s and 90s, putting out a ton of licensed games for home computer systems before being bought out by Infogrames, who became Atari UK, who were then bought out by Namco Bandai, and we've come full circle!

Gameplay

The game plays like most football games of the era: control a player with the D-Pad, use the four face buttons to manipulate the ball in some fashion - pass, shoot, long pass, all that good stuff. The problem I personally find with football games of this era is the ball doesn't stick to the player as well as it does in modern football games, which may be realistic, but doesn't make for a fun game in the slightest. So it came as some surprise to me that 90 Minutes actually felt more in line with an early PS1 football game in terms of control than other SNES football games, which could be due to the fact it released quite late on in the console's life cycle.

The game is quite fast-paced, which means there's always something going on, until the momentum is broken up by these cutscenes that pop up mid-game. Sometimes when you run toward a defender it will change to a cutscene where you choose either left or right, the defender does the same, and you either dribble past or get tackled. It's a nice idea and it looks quite nice, but it just takes you out of the game a bit whenever it happens.

The gameplay does have its downsides, but they are downsides that most football games of the era that I've played suffered with. Team AI was poor: they won't advance toward the ball unless you take control and run them onto it, which isn't ideal when tied into the second issue, which is the passing. Passing is always just a straight line from whichever direction you're running in, and with the angle of the game you can't see most of your teammates, so passing is a lot of guesswork where you pass off-screen, change player and hope you can run onto the ball - or it ends up just sitting there. Frustrating, but not surprising.

The default difficulty of the game seemed quite high, and I found I had a lot more fun lowering that to the bottom, which might be a skill issue. But I wasn't making any progress whatsoever and I wanted to get through a few games and see as much of the game as I could, and once I had done that I did start to find some enjoyment out of the game. There was definitely some fun to be had here, especially if you had a second controller and someone to play against.

I did come across a bit of a game-breaking bug where as soon as your goalkeeper saves a shot he can just stand there and let the time run out, so if you're a goal up you can just run the clock out, do the same in the second half and guarantee a win, which I may or may not have taken advantage of a handful of times!

The game has a good selection of modes, including a fairly innovative attempt at one called "You're a hero": you name a player, choose what they look like, pick some attributes, then train them over the course of a year, choosing training sessions like sprinting and overhead shots which give you a rating, and when it's done you get shown your new stats. That player can then replace one of the players in the game, so you could create friends, family, or real-world players. The only downside to this that I found is if your training doesn't go well then the stats aren't close to the stats of the players you replace, so it felt a bit pointless. From what I can see you can't retrain or add anything to the stats, so a good attempt at something different but something that fell a bit flat ultimately.

Graphics

Some parts of the graphics are really quite nice. The cutscenes look decent, and there's a cool newspaper clipping at the end of each match which looked nice.

The players on the pitch look mostly the same with the odd different hair colour, but the teams are different enough that you can always see who you're controlling and who you're meant to be passing to, which is ultimately all you want from a football game of the time.

Sound and music

Not really much to talk about here. The intro theme is a banger, but otherwise there isn't really much else. Every match is played with a weird mixture of music and crowd sounds that after a while do eventually sound like what you'd expect from a football match. Horns and chants are all recognisable, but also completely alien and not quite right. It's a shame, because music in Namco games is usually up there with the best.

The People

One of the biggest names that worked on this game was Naomiki Yanagisawa, who worked on the graphics. He went on to work in design management for Super Smash Bros. on the Wii U and 3DS, was General Manager on some of the Tales of series of RPGs, Progress Management on Mario Kart 8 and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, and got various Special Thanks credits on games including Super Smash Bros. Ultimate on Switch, so he really ended up making a name for himself after this!

There was also Yoichi Take, one of the programmers, who went on to work on Super Smash Bros. Brawl on the Wii as a programmer, was a Development Producer on NieR Replicant, and was eventually credited as CEO for the development of Dragon Quest XI on PS4 - another long and storied career after this SNES football game!

A lot of the rest of the people that worked on this also ended up in the Tales of series, some in Smash Bros., and a few worked on the Klonoa games, so it seemed like they all stuck together off the back of this game.

Box art

PAL release, 1995.

That Ocean logo fills me with a huge amount of nostalgia - so many of our Amstrad CPC464 games were published by Ocean, and that logo was everywhere in my childhood. The design of the SNES box itself, with the black bar on the side and blue underneath, is lovely. It's just a shame the picture inside is so godawful. One full leg, a sock, the other knee, and a football - it's like they cropped the wrong part of the image, or zoomed in when they weren't supposed to and just went with it. Just awful.

The back is better. Nice black-and-white image of some football men, good screenshots, and the blurb covers everything it needs to. The back does pretty much everything right - if they'd got the picture on the front right, they would've aced it.

Overall I give this box a rating of - Accurate, but I wouldn't have given it a second look on the shelf because of the bullshit art on the front.

The Press

Computer and Video Games:

European Prime Goal starts out as a very good game and it has to be said it plays very well in two player mode but at the end of the day this is just another football game struggling to survive in the Premier League.

81/100

Nintendo Magazine System:

For a football game to succeed it has to be realistic and although this is fun to play it's not for serious football fans.

80/100

Total! (Germany, translated):

In short, anyone looking to pick up a football game should reach for ISSD or the action-heavy Fever Pitch Soccer. 90 Minutes will please beginners at most — professionals and football fans will get only a tired smile from it.

3.25/6