Italy 90 is a relatively obscure game that surrounds the sport of European rules football, or soccer. Simulmondo was responsible for the publication of this solid but little known game, and it was designed by the Dardari Brothers, who are also fairly obscure programmers. Italy 90 is a late eighties release and the title was gleaned from its subject matter. The play of the game centers around what was then the up and coming 1990 World Cup championships.
The lead platform was the Commodore 64, but it was picked up by the Amiga and eventually found its way to the more standard MS-DOS personal computer. It is a side scrolling, arcade action style of game that plays out entirely from the third person perspective. It is a fully licensed title and features many players that were popular at the time of its release.
The first thing the user will have to do is select which country he would like to represent in the games. The interesting thing about selecting a country is that selecting a country is also like selecting a skill level. The countries available for play in Italy 90 accurately reflect the skill
of those countries in the late eighties. Some are good, and some are just plain bad. Germany and Italy, for example, are both highly skilled and features some talented and very quick players on their teams. The user looking for more of a challenge may prefer to play as Costa Rica, which did not have a very adept team during this decade. After playing a game or two, the user may want to utilize one of the other very cool customization features. He can, in fact, change the controls to whatever configuration is the most comfortable to him…a very useful feature if you have instinctively come to use certain keys because of play in other sports games.
One of the more odd features of the game includes the fact that, with the goalie, there are only seven players on the field. This is likely to accommodate the lesser graphics of the era, relieving some memory by having fewer players on the field. The gamer will always control the player who is closest to the ball, so there can be some fairly dramatic switches in views. He can move in eight different directions and can also increase and decrease the power of his kicks, which was novel at the time. Overall, Italy 90 has some really good ideas and is a solid soccer play.
