If I was to tell you that there was a trilogy of SNES games released in Japan and that the European markets only got one entry you would most likely assume that what we got was the first entry right? J-League Soccer: Prime Goal 3 is a football/soccer game developed and published by Namco in Japan, It was the third and last part of their Prime Goal series which was released for the Super Famicom (The Japanese version of the Super Nintendo). It features all fourteen teams of the 1995 season of the J-League, with there real names and logos. The first two games in this series never made it out of Japan
The game was the first in the series to be released in Europe with the name 90 Minutes: European Prime Goal. There were quiet a few changes to the game though for a start the fourteen teams of the J-League were swapped for fourteen European international sides, these are Norway, Romania, Scotland, Belgium, Italy, Sweden, Holland, Bulgaria, Germany, the Republic of Ireland, England, France, Wales and Spain. In connection to this the graphics have been adjusted to replace all of the Japanese looking players with players representing various ethnicities, logos have been swapped but beyond these cosmetic changes and the game being translated it is pretty much the same game.
I must admit that the Japanese version is a lot easier and cheaper to get hold of and it is very easy to get in to an exhibition match where your playing against either the computer or another player but the game does actually feature numerous modes and it can be a little hard to navigate your way into some of these in Japanese. The European version is a lot better if you want to get the most out of the game but it actually sells for a lot higher price, despite being a football game it seems to demand prices of around £20 for a loose cart and they don't come around as often as you'd think.
OK so as well as having the obvious exhibition mode there is also a tournament mode, and a mode where you can train your own player and have them recruited into one of the games teams, then there is a league mode, an all-stars mode which takes the best players from the fourteen teams and uses them to create two all-star teams to play against each other and finally a cup championship mode.
I don't think bearing in mind that this game is made by Namco that its surprising to find that this game has a very arcade feel to it. If you leave the game to its own devises then your met with some lively music and the logos/flags of the various teams flashed in front of you, it really is the sort of thing you'd expect to see in an arcade. When you start the game you will see that the way the game is played is vertically with one goal being to the left of the screen and the other being to the right. I never played this game back as a kid so now that I find myself playing it I am reminded of the Neo Geo arcade game Super Sidekicks, if you have played that then this game has a very similar feel, it is a very arcade feeling game. I found it much easier to score goals in this than in any of the other football games I have played during my SNES review series, my first game ended 15-4 with me winning(This was playing with two 10 minute halves). Personally this made me enjoy the game though as with me actually being able to score goals and the computer seeming decently capable as well then there seemed to be a lot more pressure to both push the ball in to there zone as well as to try my best to get it out of my own quickly as well. Personally I didn't feel like there was a set way to shoot at the goal which always insured that you scored, obviously the harder you seemed to make it swerving around passing the harder it seemed for the opposing team but there was no sure fire method you could use to cheat. For a long time I didn't think that fouls even seemed to exist in this game as both I and the computer were constantly sliding at each other knocking each other over all over the pitch and yet no one seemed to get carded for it, but then I did eventually see yellow and red cards so I guess the game is just a bit lenient in this regard. If you like or dislike this will depend on how aggressive a player you are I guess, personally I would be happy if I could get away with letting my players headbutt the opposition and getting away with it ( There was actually a football game back on the spectrum which I owned as a kid that actively encouraged you to foul the opposition with no consequences). Also if you can score a goal then the ball find its way into your goalkeeper's hands then you can just hold it until the time runs out for an easy win. The controls are pretty much standard for a football game when the ball is in your possession then one button passes, one button shoots, and one crosses it in. When you don't have the ball then these buttons either tackle or do things like select the player closest to the ball.
I think that the graphics for this game are actually pretty normal for the time the game was released. They are nice and functional and you can always see what is happening, I never lost track of the ball or wasn't able to determine who I was controlling or who had possession. I love all the touches such as the word GOAL sliding across the screen just after you have scored and seeing little cut scenes of your players charging down the pitch afterwards with the crowd visibly excited.
The sound is pretty decent overall, there is some digitized speech in the game, but it is kind of hard to understand, alongside this there is a lot of sort of clapping and chanting noises but they have a sort of echoey distant sound to them, they are all put in to the game in the appropriate places along side a little bit of music here and there overall I think it works
I would find myself giving this game a 7 out of 10, of the SNES football games I have reviewed so far (This, Virtual Soccer and Super Goal 2) I have certainly found this one to be the most fun. I have already talked about the price of this game, it is a bit of a steep game to buy if you want a Pal copy, you can get away with a Japanese copy but only really if you just want to play it on a shallow level without being able to get into all of the modes easily this is good enough for me but it depends on what your personally looking for in a sports game.
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