Super Arcade Football | Nintendo Switch Review
Updated: Nov 19, 2021
Super Arcade Football is a 2D, modern take on classic football games. It is developed and published by OutOfTheBit, and available on Windows PC, and Nintendo Switch. For this review I will be talking about the Nintendo Switch version which I played in handheld mode.
When Martin's beloved football team Balarm F.C. goes bankrupt, he buys the club from the manager 'Old Joe' for £1 and so starts your journey to make Balarm F.C. great again. You play your way through 4 leagues in your bid to return the club to its former glory. You must beat your opponents in order to unlock the next match and progress through the leagues. Before each match, you will be set 3 objectives to complete such as win the game, concede a maximum of 2 goals and perform at least 8 passes in a row. For every objective that you complete, a star will be added to your rating, so I guess this could add a lot of life to the game if you wanted to go back and get 3 star rating for every match.
It is clear that there has been a lot of inspiration taken from the old classic Sensible Soccer which I loved and grew up with so Super Arcade Football really hit me in the nostalgia department. The visuals and gameplay mechanics are all pretty similar so this was a big plus point for me.
The controls are really very simple but can be tricky to master, especially as the difficulty of your opponents increases. The control stick moves the players around and the A button literally does everything else. Passing, shooting and tackling are all done with the A button so there isn't any real depth to the gameplay. I did like the sheer simplicity of it though. One thing I did not like about the control system is that the game auto selects the best player for you to control while you are off the ball. Now the game's opinion and my opinion on which player is best to control was different on quite a number of occasions so I found this to be very frustrating at times when defending. Some of the refereeing decisions on what constitutes a foul are dubious at best but this really does just add to the fun of the game.
You will find yourself playing on a variety of different surfaces such as grass, indoor wooden pitches and even playing on top of ice. There are also different weather conditions, all of which add a little something different to the ball physics and player movements. Modifiers can also be added before kick off such as turbo objects where you receive a speed boost if your player runs through a turbo pad on the pitch, bigger goals where you can increase the size of the goal frames and asteroids where believe it or not, asteroids fall from the sky and destroy random areas of the pitch. For me, this was a fun little addition to the game which really stops things from getting boring.
There are both online and local multiplayer so you can play against friends or any player across the globe. Super Arcade Football also has a tournaments mode where you can create your own tournament with your own rules and modifiers or you can play in preset tournaments where the rules are already taken care of, you just select the tournament you want and away you go.
I love the way Super Arcade Football looks with its pixely 16-bit style graphics, it really adds a lot of charm and fits perfectly into this style of game. It looks fantastic on the Nintendo Switch’s screen. The sound effects are also done well, you can hear chants and songs coming from the crowd, the kicks of the ball and sliding players all sound pretty good. The music only really plays in the menus and again, it has been done really well with its arcadey style tunes.
Overall, Super Arcade Football was a fantastic dive for me, back into the world of 2D football which I loved so much growing up. It is only let down by the inability to select which player you are controlling off the ball. With that being said, I thoroughly enjoyed this game and for anyone looking for a nice pick up and play arcade style football game steeped in nostalgia, then this is a great option.
PaultheBrave09’s Rating: 3.5 yellow cards out of 5.
For more information on Super Arcade Football please use the following links...
OutOfTheBit - Developer | Publisher | YouTube | Twitter | Website
Many thanks to Heaven Media and PressEngine for the Review Key.
Super Arcade Football | Steam Store | Nintendo Switch
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