Title: Captain Tsubasa III: Koutei no Chousen (trans. Captain Tsubasa III: The Kaiser's Challenge)
Release Date: 07/17/1992 (Japan Only)
Developer: Tecmo
Publisher: Tecmo
So this was a game that I was dreading, as I knew Captain Tsubasa is a sports manga based around soccer, but this ended up being a really neat game. Let's jump in!
Background
As mentioned about a phrase and a sentence ago, Captain Tsubasa is a very long running, on and off again sports manga and anime series based around the Japanese soccer team trying to win the FIFA world cup, and specifically the player Tsubasa Oozoro, the "heaven-sent child of football." I have no experience with this manga or anime aside from hearing that the most recent anime is quite good. The manga was written by Yoichi Takahashi, who primarily has only written Captain Tsubasa and other soccer manga.
The manga, counting all of its iterations, is 110 volumes long and its latest series ran up until 2024. The anime also ran up until last year; I am pretty sure Blue Lock the newest sensation soccer manga/anime has now eaten Captain Tsubasa's lunch.
Gameplay
The story of this game follows your team as your are fighting your way up the world cup to challenge your main rivals, the Germany team. While this seems like it would be a straight soccer sim, it is actually a turn based, stat based, RPG where you are guiding your managing your team's stats against the opposing team, and then picking who challenges who over shots, steals, and passes. The system feels very similar to an SRPG like Fire Emblem or Shining Force where you are managing the percentages and probabilities of your gambits actually working before commiting to the tactic. Hopefully, over the course of a match, you are stacking up more positive outcomes than negatives to come out ahead in the game.
Now, this game is rather inscrutable for to my monolingual brain, since it was a Japanese only game, but where it shines is through its presentation. The game seems to be an adaptation of the manga and anime, and the matches play out as story driven affairs that are filled with the bombastic action of a nail-biting anime. Similar to how, in Fire Emblem, you have flashy attack animations and "critical hits" to spice up what is really a numbers game, Captain Tsubasa is filled with really well crafted animations, sound effects, and music that really give a jolt of adrenaline to the action. Each match through the game has its own unique music, each rival team has a fear star players each with their own special attacks and unique interactions with your characters, and you eventually get your own special attacks/star players to rival your other teams.
While I didn't play much of this game, I ended up watching about 6 hours of the game (the game is about 20 hours in length) on in the background while working on a puzzle, and it was really charming game that continually surprised with the effort put into its presentation.
The music, as well, really slaps...
In the end...
While I can't give the recommendation to whether or not this game was good/bad (the person I was watching really seemed to enjoy it), it is certainly worth watching some snippets of a playthrough for the presentation. It is pretty wild and fun! I am also almost positive there will be another Captain Tsubasa game before long on this blog.
Next time, folks, we have the iRem platformer, Dinocity.
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