Tecmo Cup Soccer Game, known as Captain Tsubasa (キャプテン翼) in Japan and Tecmo Cup Football Game in Europe, is an association football sports video game released in 1992 by Tecmo for the Nintendo Entertainment System. The objective of the game is for the player to fight his way from junior league all the way to the finals of the World Cup. Based on the Captain Tsubasa manga series, Tecmo Cup Soccer Game is a Westernized version of the Japanese Captain Tsubasa game released for the Family Computer system, featuring a different main character, a different introduction and more western-looking players. The game contains elements from role-playing games as the players have skill levels and are mostly controlled by different kinds of text commands.

Summary

Considered to be the first of many games based on the series, which have appeared on many systems, this game was the innovator of games that would be known as "Cinematic Soccer". Rather than having direct control over the action like a standard soccer sim, the game has a cinematic angle where the player must choose his actions from a timed list and the results of these actions are animated on screen. Present-day games with a "career mode" setting would be inspired by this game's setup.

Reception

Captain Tsubasa topped the bi-weekly Japanese Famitsu sales chart in May 1988.

Differences

The changes from Captain Tsubasa to Tecmo Cup Soccer Game include: