"A captain tsubasa dream"

Introduction
This is a quite interesting soccer/rpg game based on the story of Captain Tsubasa, a japanese manga/anime about a kid that loves soccer more than anything else in his life.

Gameplay
This game has a rather easy-to-get gameplay system, although this game is in japanese it will be easy for you to understand it easily. You can control a certain player when the opponent has the ball and you must try to get it, after doing so you have to score goals, as in a real soccer game, but in this type of game you have access to some ''specials'', for example, some characters can use combinations for quickly advance on the field, others can send powerful shots and there is even a goalkeeper that uses Karate moves to stop you from scoring. For example, Tsubasa's Drive Shot (his ''special'') goes very high in the sky and then it turns down near the goal area, Hyuga's amazing Tiger Shot goes straight at his target and so on, every player from the game has their own signature ''specials'' and they are not afraid to use it against you...
About the teams, you mainly get to control Tsubasa's team, but sometimes you can control other teams.

Story
This game follows EXACTLY the same story as the first Captain Tsubasa series (and the first 20 manga), you get to fight the same characters as in the anime and you even get to play the same matches as Tsubasa played. You start playing some matches on Nankatsu soccer field and you can advance up to the end of the National Championship, in which you will fight Tsubasa's biggest rival.

Graphics/Sound
It has beautiful graphics, they were not very improved since the original games but they look quite good for a Sega CD game, the ''specials'' are similar to the ones in the manga/anime and the characters look like having being taken from the series.
As for the sound, every team has their own theme plus you can hear the voices from the characters, since there is some story sequences between the levels and they are quite nice.

Play Time/Replayability
Depending on your skills, you can finish this easily or not, but you'll surely have some hard time doing so. It's nice to see all those characters you love, but this game doesn't have any replay value, you just finish it and you won't want to play it again...

Final Recommendation
This is a MUST HAVE, if you like Captain Tsubasa manga or anime.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 04/02/03, Updated 04/02/03