It was one of the most notorious disasters of the 8-bit era. World Cup Carnival undoubtedly looked the part, presented in an impressive large glossy box, complete with a sew-on patch, stickers and a wall chart. But the ephemera disguised a dark secret that anyone who shelled out £10 soon discovered…
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In the 1982 World Cup, the England team acquitted itself well, winning all three initial group matches, including a sensational 3-1 victory against France. Sadly for England fans, the second group stage saw their team eliminated following two goalless draws; out but undefeated, manager Ron Greenwood and his team returned to England, rueing the missed opportunity for World Cup glory.
By the summer of 1985, England was already on its way to qualifying for the next World Cup, to be held in Mexico a year later, thanks to a brace of thumping wins against Finland and Turkey. The hype was building, and anticipation was high. Never before had there been an official World Cup 8-bit home computer game. Now was the time.
Powerhouse publisher U.S. Gold stepped up to the spot. “U.S. Gold is releasing the exclusively-licenced [sic] Mexico 86 World Cup two weeks before the commencement of the World Cup Finals,” reported the Spectrum magazine Crash in September 1985. A month later, Your Spectrum revealed that the game would include a ‘progress monitor’ built-in, a way for fans to enter the real World Cup results into their computers, a modern-day version of the wall chart. U.S. Gold clearly had plans, but with the game’s release not planned until the following Spring, it went quiet, with everyone assuming the publisher was busy producing a footballing extravaganza, complete with a big box full of goodies. Half of it was true.
This advert for the Spanish release of World Cup Carnival displays all the items that came in its package.
The magazine reviews arrived in the summer of 1986 – and it was brutal. Crash magazine gave World Cup Carnival 26%, with one reviewer bluntly commenting, “This is the worst football simulation I have ever seen.” Sinclair User’s Clare Edgeley awarded one star out of five, saying, “The graphics are so bad, they’re funny.” On the Commodore 64, things were no better. “Very glossy packaging with posters etc but it’s a bit like a rosy red apple full of maggots,” raged ZZAP! 64 magazine. Finally, Amstrad users did not escape the horror of World Cup Carnival. “A real professional foul by U.S. Gold… Maradona is Mr Honest in comparison,” concluded Amstrad Action, with a stunning final score of 0%.
Crash magazine’s scornful review
It was a notably poor game, which was bad enough for reviewers; but there was also a dishonest aspect, as alluded to by Amstrad Action above. Unmentioned in its adverts, packaging, instructions – anywhere! – was the fact that World Cup Carnival was an existing game, Artic’s World Cup Football, released two years earlier, with a practice mode tacked on. With many magazines getting review copies just as the World Cup was ending – if you wanted to take advantage of the free wall chart, you’d have already taken a punt – eyebrows and suspicions were raised. The final insult was the price rise, up one pound from the previously advertised £8.95.
Spot the difference!
The response in the letters pages throughout the 8-bit magazine world was vociferous. Developed by “AS Designs”, a thinly-disguised Artic Software, readers were understandably unhappy at the deception. Some magazines, such as Computer & Video Games, never even received a review copy, resulting in confused readers such as Michael from Birmingham: “On June 27th… I bought World Cup Carnival, which cost £9.95. Then, on June 28th, I bought a football simulation game called World Cup Football… which cost £1.99.” To make matters worse for U.S. Gold, the Artic game was now available at a budget price.
Unhappy of Birmingham
U.S. Gold’s damage limitation began as early as July 1986, with a reply to criticism in the trade paper CTW. “World Cup Carnival is a modified, improved, enhanced, localised version of another piece of software,” explained U.S. Gold’s Tim Chaney. “It has two A2 colour posters, a cloth patch, the World Cup competition – all in addition to a better version of the game.” Nevertheless, customers felt rightly aggrieved that they were being sold an existing game at five times its current price.
So What Happened?
Well, that’s where things get a little muddled. According to a letter, from U.S. Gold, printed in the October 1986 issue of Crash magazine, “We duly commissioned a company, who will remain nameless, to produce a piece of entertainment software that matched, in terms of graphics and playability, Ocean’s Match Day, but with added football associated events and some unique fun features such as ‘ball control’.”
U.S. Gold began preparing its lavish package until the alarm bells rang early the following year. Apparently, the nameless software house was about to go bust, its freelance programmers having produced nothing of note. U.S. Gold severed links at the end of February 1986 and desperately searched for a new developer, but time was not on its side. “Our only option,” continued the letter, “was to take a game that had not sold well, make modifications and add features not previously available.” U.S. Gold also claimed that it had alerted its distributors and retailers of World Cup Carnival’s origins and instructed the latter to inform customers upon purchase. But most incredibly, the publisher signed off by remarking that World Cup Carnival was ‘to the good of the software market’, setting a precedent for publishers to ‘produce quality software on the back of a licence’.
Erm, okay, muttered a thousand 8-bit fans.
The C64 version stood in the shadow of International Soccer, a game released FOUR years earlier.
So What Really Happened?
In Fusion Retro Books’ The Story Of U.S. Gold, World Cup Carnival appears to be a tale of miscommunication and misunderstanding, with general manager Tim Chaney and U.S. Gold boss Geoff Brown seemingly confused over who was doing what with the licence. What’s clear is that the nameless software house was U.S. Gold’s own partner, Ocean, although whether the Manchester company had tendered out the game to another software house is unconfirmed. Did Ocean develop a game itself, but it wasn’t up to scratch? Did it ask a freelancer to do it, who subsequently faded from view? Did it do nothing, misunderstanding U.S. Gold’s request or presuming it just wanted the Match Day engine? Or did it just ‘forget’ about the whole thing? In any case, U.S. Gold firmly pressed the big red panic button at the end of February. The only option was to plough on, adapting an existing game. A bemused Artic Software answered the call.
Struggling in the ever-competitive software market, Artic saw the approach as a way of making some extra cash for minimal effort. Taking its existing game, World Cup Football, it added a training mode and penalties (courtesy of Tony Warriner, Adam Waring, plus original coder Donald Campbell), sending the result to U.S. Gold.
One of the extra segments coded by Tony Warriner.
According to Tim Chaney in The Story Of U.S. Gold, he knew the game was terrible, putting his company into damage limitation mode: “We marketed the hell out of it, but we didn’t show the game to anyone.” Cue upset distributors, shops, magazines and, most importantly, customers.
The Aftermath
For Artic Software, World Cup Carnival was a bittersweet moment. Its deal with U.S. Gold effectively saved the company, but there was a nasty surprise waiting on the subs bench: co-founder Richard Turner had earlier sold the rights to World Cup Football’s code to Prism Leisure, which re-released the game in 1985 as part of a sporting-themed compilation. When Prism discovered ‘similarities’ in the two sets of code, it threatened U.S. Gold, which, not unreasonably, turned back to Artic. The subsequent deal with Prism offset most of the money Artic received for World Cup Carnival, pushing the veteran software house into bankruptcy.
Despite its initial bluster, U.S. Gold’s position softened the weeks after World Cup Carnival’s release, as Sinclair User reader M R Jones of Southampton demonstrated. In the September 1986 issue, they told the magazine of their disgust, sending the game back to U.S. Gold, before phoning the publisher and being hung up on when they demanded a refund. Two months later, they were reporting back to Sinclair User. “I would like to point out… that U.S. Gold eventually replied… apologising for any inconvenience suffered and offering me a free copy of Cyberun.”
U.S. Gold weathered the storm and, despite the fuss, World Cup Carnival sold in a decent quantity, the publisher cannily offering retailers its imminent – and excellent – golfing sim, Leader Board, at a discount if they held on to their copies of World Cup Carnival. As for U.S. Gold’s business partner, Ocean, it remained silent on the matter, its role, even today, obfuscated and indeterminate.
Ultimately, World Cup Carnival proved a triumph of marketing, albeit of the most deceptive and cunning type. It also marked the first use of the official FIFA licence, helping to instigate the phenomenon of soccer games we enjoy almost 40 years later – not that that was much compensation if you’d shelled out all your pocket money on this most infamous of football games back in 1986.
To read about World Cup Carnival and more, buy A Tale Of Two Halves: A History Of Football Video Games – only from Bitmap Books, the world’s finest publisher of premier-tier gaming books.
