FIFA World Cup Video Games - World Cup Italia '90

World Cup Italia '90

There are three games named after the 1990 FIFA World Cup, all of which seemingly had the rights to display both official logos and Ciao, the mascot. One version was developed by U.S. Gold, and is a significant improvement over World Cup Carnival. With some similarities with Tehkan World Cup, the game had all teams present in the competition, and played through a bird's-eye view similar to Sensible Soccer. It was released for the Atari ST, ZX Spectrum Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64 and Amiga personal computers.

The second title was developed by Sega, and has some similarities with the US Gold title, more noticeably the corner and goal kick screens. Teams are mostly based on the Mexico '86 lineups with some changes, and features player selection, with each player having individual ratings. It has a top-down view like Kick Off.

Later, it was renamed to World Championship Soccer, and continued to be sold long after the World Cup ended. There is a Master System version with the official teams and calendar of the competition, but with only eight non-selectable players each side and just vertical scroll, but still some of the elements of the 16-bit version made their way into the game.

The final, and least known title was developed by Novotrade and published by Virgin Interactive. Unlike the other two titles, World Trophy Soccer was more an arcade game than a serious attempt on simulating the sport: it only had seven players aside, the game only lasted for one half and it followed a fixed playoff tree where the player had to beat all opponents. Because of that, only four teams (Belgium, Italy, Spain and England) could be picked by the player.