0 to Z of Playstation 1 Games - Actua Soccer 2

     

Actua Soccer 2 was in face the third entry in the Actua Soccer series after the club edition of Actua Soccer that was released in May of 1997, Actua Soccer 2 coming in the November of that same year, as usual with the Actua games it was developed and published by Gremlin Interactive, and was released exclusively in Europe, the game is sometimes known as Actua Soccer 98, like many football games of that year that were trying to cash in on the World Cup 98 fever.

Unlike the club edition that released earlier in the year Actua Soccer would go back to an international team based football game, the game however had a much more polished engine than the first two Actua Soccer games, the polished engine was optimized for 3D PC graphics cards.

The game also featured the full Italian Serie A league, as well as a new scenario creator, and a new team creator mode which allowes the player to create up to 128 of their own teams, another change to the game was the commentary team with Trevor Brooking joining Barry Davies in the commentary box.

The game features 64 international teams with 20 players making up each of the squads, with a total of 24 stadiums to choose from, the game also features improved weather effects such as snow, rain and a bright sunny day, as well as options for customized tournaments and leagues as well.

Football game no story present the custom scenarios could possible be considered story esque but that is quite a long reach.

Like the Club Edition review for Actua Soccer 2 are on the very light side with just two surviving, with the same review outlets as before Absolute Playstation and Computer & Video Games UK, and again their scores follow a similar pattern, Absolute Playstation awarding the game a 90/100, while Computer & Video Games UK only awarded the game a fairly poor 3/10, as a result the Gamerankings average for this game is a 60%.

With no other traditional review available we head to GameFAQs for their user ratings with a toal of 13 user ratings, averaging a 3.5/5, with a majority of 6 users giving the game a 3/5, only one user gave the game a lower rating with a 2.5/5. with the remainder scoring the game between a 3.5/5 and a 5/5.

Over half of 9 users who rated the difficulty rated the game as just right with 33% of users rating the game as tough, the lifespan of the game has a decent split of rating with the minimum being 4 hours spent playing the game, all the way up to 40 hours, the games average lifespan coming in at just over 17 hours.

This is the part of 0 to Z where is visit five online retailers and see what the availability of the title is, and what price you would be looking at if you wanted to pick this title up, the sites that I will be using for this are Amazon.com,  eStarland.com, retrogames.co.uk and Gamedude.com I know the last one is very location specific, but from a podcast I listen to I’ve  heard they have a huge stock of older games, I will also be including Ebay.com as well

So lets get down to business with Gamedude, who alongside eStarland.com unsurprisingly don’t stock this European release, more surprisingly Retrogames.co.uk don’t stock the title either so we quickly head of to Amazon.co.uk, where copies of the game are like the previous entries in the series it is quite cheap to pick up.

A used good quality copy of the game can be picked up for as little as 93p this comes with a shipping fee of £2.03 so a total cost of £2.96 which converts to $3.84 in the US, in the Euro region this converts to €3.26, and in Bermuda it will cost 3.84 Bermudan Dollars.

At the time of writing this there are no new copies of the game are on the market, if you are looking a very good or like new copy of the game, for a very good condition copy which is still cheap at only a few pence over £3, a like new copy will set you back a fair bit more however with a current minimum price on Amazon of around £24 which converts to 31.13 Bermudan Dollars, in the Euro Zone you are looking at €26.39 while in the US it will set you back $31.13.

Over to Ebay.com where a copy of the game disc only will set you back $1.60, this ships from the UK and comes with free international shipping, please be aware though you will need a PAL console for any copies of this game, if you are looking for a more complete copy of the game, then for $10.59 you can get a good quality complete copy of the game, however this ships from Australia, and with the shipping costs you are more than doubling the price.

There is however another good quality used copy for sale, again this ships from Australia and is on the market for $6.69 with shipping costs just over $5, your best bet for a copy of the game however seems to be UK based sellers, with a couple of copies similarly priced to Amazon with one coming with free international shipping.

 

Written by

P J Gibbon