"The top of the Jaguar soccer games."

Soccer games on an older systems is actually a little hard to get into simply because of the challenge involved of controlling the players and the ball. Fever Pitch Soccer is something that you can enjoy as long as you’re willing to play against a high difficulty from the computer and a ton of other teams. Fever Pitch Soccer is also the only game on the Jaguar that you can have more than fifty teams, each with their own sets of attributes and skills. As you progress, you’ll find that Fever Pitch has options and features leaps and bounds above the Sensible Soccer games.

-The Game Play-

For the most part, you play soccer with one of fifty plus teams from different portions of the world and attempt to make it through the championship games. Now, as you progress through the game, you can pick up better players depending on how well you do while you’re playing. The further along you get in the game, the smarter the computer gets until you’re left fighting to keep control of the game or you’re trying to keep the computer from scoring too many points. A lack of difficulty control here makes the game exceptionally hard to play and you might find that it can be too difficult in the later stages.

Something that you might find both interesting and disheartening is the fact that the game options you have are limited to just a couple of options. You can turn the referee tolerances to a higher or lower level, which will affect the way that the penalties come out and you can even tinker with the weather options. However, when you mess with the pre-sets, you run the risk of making the game twice as difficult than it actually needs to be, which might make for an annoying run through the championship circuit. The replay option is probably the neatest feature in the options, but you only need to it when you’ve made a great goal and want to taunt your friends.

One of the more impressive features that the game has to offer is the overall control that you have on your team. The kicks are all done with a corresponding button on the Jaguar pad with the A, B, and C buttons, and those kicks all play a big role on how well you do in the game. The control can be changed though at any given time depending on the weather that you’re playing through. Where you might think that you have complete control on the ball, the way that the ball bounces when you kick it a certain way can change the path if the field is wet after a rain!

-The Visuals-

Visually, Fever Pitch has larger characters and a larger playing field than the other soccer games, but you will find that the game still has a grainy feel to it that just doesn’t go away. Telling your characters apart from one another is easy enough to do because of the jerseys that they wear, but you’ll find that the animations on the kicks and otherwise seems a little stiff and off in most cases. The cut-scenes that you have in between the different events in Fever Pitch are well worth watching, simply because they do tend to add a little flavor to the game.

-The Audio-

The audio that you find here is only good in the title screen and the options menus. Aside from that, you have no music on any of the stages, which makes for an exceptionally lonely run through the circuits. The sound effects that you have are actually well worth listening to because of the voice clips that come in at different points in the game. The crowd is always chanting to help you onto victory and if you have it up loud enough, you can almost feel yourself in the middle of a soccer game. All in all, I would have asked for a little more in the music department, but there is enough of the effects to keep you in the theme of the game without losing your interest.

-The Verdict-

Fever Pitch Soccer has a good amount of game play and a staggering amount of teams that you can choose from to have fun. Though the game doesn’t have all that much in terms of game play options, it does have a larger visual display and a slightly different take on the way that you can control the ball depending on the weather. Small features like this really make a difference and when stacked up against the Sensible Soccer series, you’ll find that the larger sprites, the higher degree of control and the sheer amount of teams makes this the best of the Jaguar soccer games.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 09/30/02, Updated 09/30/02