World Cup 2026: Soccer Arcade Games Through The Years

The FIFA World Cup 2026 games are here, and where many of our readers are into the sport, it’s time to provide an updated look at soccer/football arcade games that have popped up over the years. We did do an article on this way back in 2014, but aside from some outdated information, and there not being enough new releases in the genre since, it didn’t warrant a post every four years. We do have enough to add to it now, so we have adapted that 2014 post with some rewrites, additions, and updates for a fresh look at this niche for the business.

My principal experience with the sport came through my years of living in Brazil, which included being there when they won the World Cup in 2002. I wasn’t anywhere near a TV when it happened but boy did I know about it – I’ve never seen such a non-stop party since, with fireworks, horns honking, and hollering, and it just went on for two or three days. It was pretty wild, and stuff like Carnival couldn’t touch it (in fact, where I lived, most people left town for Carnival, so things were mellow when it was that time of year – Rio’s generally where most of the usual partying is). Fortunately there were no riots or violence that I can recall, at least in the place I was living in at the time.

Anyways, onto the games:

Before Video Games

While our main focus here is on the video game, the pre-video era deserves at least a brief mention. Pinball covers this ground well, with a flipperless pingame that was aptly called Soccer by G/M. Laboratories. The first time a flipper pin would apply the theme was with Williams’ 1958 release, Soccer Kick Off.

In the 1950s, companies like René Pierre would develop foosball, also known as table soccer. Many companies have tried their hand at that game, although RP is one of the longest lasting creators of the game.

A head-to-head pin by the name of Star Foot would come along in 1964, where the flippers had figurines of the team players integrated into them, almost like table soccer/foosball. Developed by a company called Satem out of France, this is the only product they have listed on the IPDB. I don’t know if it was the first head-to-head pinball game ever made, but almost all other soccer-themed games released between this and 1975 were also head-to-head games. That would also include a rare example of pinball to come out of Taito in 1967 called Crown Soccer Special. Sega then released Soccer, which was kind of a cross between a foosball & head-to-head pinball game. Sega would also put out the unique Motopolo, which was like soccer with motorcycles.

The 1970s

As a note, I am working hard on a history & trivia book about arcade games from the 1970s – kind of like this post, but expanded to most everything released that decade in terms of video games and pinball. Stay tuned for news on that, but I hope to have it ready before the Summer is over.

At the beginning of our industry in the 1970s, the limitations of TTL-chip technology meant that there wasn’t a huge variety in the types of games that were made available, with many falling under the “ball & paddle” genre.

Tennis was how these B&P games were often billed, but a few times companies would re-brand these with highly ‘creative’ names like Soccer (Taito, Nov. 1973), Soccer (Ramtek, 1973) or Super Soccer (Allied, Nov. 1973). The name got the point across, I suppose. A month later, Taito would adapt their effort into a 4-player version called Davis Cup. Both were the first video games designed by Tomohiro Nishikado, who would later create Space Invaders.

Sega for their part would make one of their ball & paddle games soccer themed and a little different. 1974’s Goal Kick would be the first adaptation of the penalty kick (which has been all the rage with most modern soccer arcade games) into video games, by turning the your typical Pong setting on it’s side and making it vertical. This would make it a precursor to the likes of Breakout, but it’s unknown if this one ever found it’s way to the US to have any direct influence like that, although the cabinet itself (pictured) does have English on it instead of Japanese – while the coin chutes clearly mention Yen, and the flyer is Japanese only. This style of cabinet was typical of Sega at the time.

It wasn’t Virtua Striker or WCCF, but hey, they had to start somewhere with the tech of the time.

Atari was also plenty busy with cranking out ball & paddle games among a few others, but it would be their French division who would take Pong Doubles and turn it into Coupe Du Monde/Coupe Du Franc/World Cup Football (the name depended on the market that they were targeting), then later on there was Goal IV, which was a little closer to digital foosball. Steve Jobs reportedly did some assistance on these as a technician (which is mentioned a few times in Atari Inc. – Business Is Fun).

Speaking of digital foosball, Allied Leisure would release Futsball in 1975, which was the first time a cabinet would be more representative of a foosball table. That’s all Allied would bother with for the sport.

Once technological improvements such as the CPU and color TV gave the world an unusual soccer game by the name of Car Polo (Exidy, 1977). For you younguns out there, this was Rocket League done 1970s style. One of the few color games released that year (yes, these did exist before Galaxian came along, despite what you might have read in some game trivia bits), it was soccer with cars, for up to four players. The concept of cars playing soccer, was revisited in the arcade way back with Konami’s GTI Club Supermini Festa, which had a limited Western release.

Sega was next up with a ball-kicking title,called World Cup and released in the Spring of 1978. Licensed to Exidy for a US release, this was the first arcade game to use a trackball (Exidy would refer to it as a “palmball”). The cabinets have different artwork but the software is the same. This was Sega’s first digital interpretation of the sport, but it certainly wouldn’t be their last.

Atari would fire back with their own Atari Soccer in 1979, which also used their “trakball”, and came in a cocktail cabinet for up to four players. This used the similar scrolling tech that they had done for Atari Football the year prior, but came with slightly more detailed graphics as the players had animated bodies along with symbols (the latter to help people identify their player, given that it was a B&W game).

For pinball, there were a few titles to feature the sport released during this decade: Soccer & Super Soccer by Gottlieb in 1975 (which included a backbox mechanism); Team One by Gottlieb in 1978 (which was rebranded for a couple of distributors for release in Europe); Bally’s Kick Off in 1977 (which was their last EM game); then finally Williams produced World Cup in 1978 (which was their first game with digital sounds).

The 1980s

The 1980s gave us many classics to enjoy, but soccer games from the time don’t tend to dominate many discussions among the games of the era. I’d call all of these either somewhat to very rare – in all my arcade travels and ownership over the years, I have never come across any of these titles to be discussed in person (this includes CAX/PRGE/huge private collections). Perhaps this is more in the US where they just never sold well, and it’s easier to come across them in Europe/Asia/Latin America. But it’s also no secret that soccer just isn’t the biggest sport here, especially where you have so many others to compete with. I never once saw anyone playing baseball or American football in Brazil(basketball only twice), so this isn’t exactly a surprise.

Between Atari Soccer and the next game, fans of the sport didn’t have much to look for even if you were overseas, although the next time that it would show up, it was quite a difference in graphics and gameplay. I am a little surprised that Atari didn’t adapt their Atari 2600 game, Pele’s Soccer, into an arcade version, at least for an overseas release. On a pointless anecdote, I did once visit Pelé’s hometown of Três Coraçoes and saw his statue there, but I’m not sure what happened to the photo I took in front of it.

Anyways…

1983 gave the arcade world two joystick-controlled games: Exciting Soccer (Alpha Denshi) and Pro Soccer (Data East). Exciting Soccer came first, but they are similar to each other, setting the tone for soccer games in the future with selectable teams based on the country, indicators to show ball possession and target and some actual soccer rules. Pro Soccer would be a little more on the technical side than ES, also with a radar feature to show player positions on the field that were outside of the game camera. These were also the first “proper” arcade soccer games in color (Car Polo wasn’t technically soccer). Alpha Denshi would release Exciting Soccer II in 1985, but it was almost the same game aside from a team change and different music; Fighting Soccer released in 1988 by SNK would kind of be like a greatly enhanced version of the series.

At the end of the 1980s, Arcadia Systems would also follow this formula with World Trophy Soccer (1989), although this added a behind-the-goalie view that allowed you to try and block a shot.

Tecmo is often remembered from their arcade titles like Ninja Gaiden or Tecmo Bowl, but there was also Tekhan World Cup, which kicked off a franchise of soccer pieces. The first entry used trackball controllers, improved physics & graphics over the other aforementioned games, also putting it into a cocktail cabinet.  Tecmo would release several sequels to this, starting with Tecmo World Cup ’90 in 1989, then doing a few on the Neo Geo MVS, the 1998 version for Sega’s ST-V system that took the series into 3D to compete with Sega’s Virtua Striker, and finally Tecmo World Cup Millennium that was released in 2000.

Quite a few soccer games from the mid-80s onwards would go back to a horizontal scrolling view of the playfield instead of the vertical one. This would include Universal’s last video game, Indoor Soccer (1985), which also added slide kicks; Nintendo’s Vs. Soccer in 1985/86 for their Vs. system, while over at Sega, they had World Championship Soccer (1989) for their Mega-Tech platform;  Jaelco’s Kick Off (1988); the aforementioned Tecmo World Cup ’90; East Technology’s Last Striker (which also pitted boys vs girls), and Taito’s Kick And Run (1986)

Despite the cartoony look of the graphics, Kick And Run gave soccer fans something a little closer to the real thing at the arcade. It combined elements of soccer games from the previous couple of years, fine tuning things like the isometric scrolling camera, player animations and movements which would become very common in soccer games down the road. This is also notable for being the first soccer game to use foot pedals for activating the kicks; it also returned to the four player format (which was partly due to Gauntlet’s influence, which you can also see in the shape of the control panel). Taito put a lot of faith into this one, going as far as making a whole booklet to promote it, but have you ever come across this one?

While a lot of soccer games try to recreate the actual game in some form, sometimes they go off in a totally different direction. That was the case with Merit/Data East’s Free Kick where they attempted to combine soccer with Arkanoid, which was hot at the time in 1987. Perhaps applying this kind of gameplay to the plethora of penalty kick redemption games out there would make those more exciting, or at least a little different from the norm.

The 1990s

Now we get to what is perhaps the Golden Age of the Arcade Soccer game, as we would see the most releases of games focused on the sport during this time. Sure, part of that was helped by systems like the SNK Neo Geo MVS, but not all of these titles we’ll discuss were MVS games either.

Since that system has been brought up, let’s cover all of the titles that we brought to SNK’s signature 1990s platform.

• Soccer Brawl (1992)
• Super Sidekicks series (1/2/3/Ultimate 11; 1992-1996)
• Goal! Goal! Goal! (Visco, 1995)
• Pleasuregoal / Futsal 5-on-5 Mini Soccer (Saurus, 1996)
• Tecmo World Soccer ’96 (SNK/Tecmo)
• NeoGeo Cup ’98 (SNK, 1998)

While you’ll have to comment below on which of these is the best, I’ve owned The Ultimate 11: SNK Football Championship for several years, and aside from it being the only soccer video arcade piece I’ve owned, it’s one of those games that helps the MVS stand out as one of my best retro earners. Having an HD remaster of that or Neo Geo Cup ’98 right now for the WC on exA-Arcadia would’ve been a nice release.

While games like Tecmo World Cup ’90 certainly held influence over these types of games, Taito would launch a new series in 1991 that would in turn become a strong influence for pretty much all of the other soccer games released from there on out: Hat Trick Hero/Football Champ. Thanks to the superior graphics tech of the time (using Taito’s M68k based F1 system), this one featured scaling graphics, while really leaning into the personality of a real match by ticking the realism up a notch or two. Players were allowed to kick, punch or grab their opponents to take control of the ball; if the ref doesn’t see it, then you’re good to go.  I also think this is the first soccer arcade game where it made a big celebratory deal out of getting a goal, showing the coach’s reactions to goals and having the player run along in front of the crowd as though they had just conquered the world.

Taito would keep this series going through 1996, with the first sequel taking a jump into the 2.5D realm, which is where the series stayed through HTH/Football Champ ’95. Each time, the animations and realism would get better, and this is one of the better places to start if you’re looking for an arcade soccer series to get into. The last time they gave it some love was in 1996 with Super Football Champ, the only entry of the series in full 3D.

Football Champ had a heavy influence on other soccer games through the 1990s, although in part that’s due to the fact that Western devs mostly would ignore the sport. There were exceptions, like Leland’s 1990 release, World Soccer Finals or Art & Magic’s unique Stone Ball (which was essentially caveman soccer). For the most part though, Japan would carry the sport through coin-op.

For a few of the one or two-offs, Seibu Kaihatsu had Seibu Cup Soccer (1991) and Olympic Soccer ’92; one of Nintendo’s last coin-op releases was Super Soccer, for the Nintendo Super System (an adjusted port of the SNES version), whereas on Sega’s comparable multi-game, Genesis-based platform, Tecmo would release Tecmo World Cup in 1992. In 1994, football-loving Tecmo would also release Tecmo V Goal Soccer. There was also Big Striker from Jaelco in 1992, Grand Striker Human Cup & a sequel from Human in 1993 & 1996, respectively; Data East would dabble one last time in the sport with Dream Soccer ’94 (which allowed players to knock cameraman on the sidelines over); while Namco would also only do one, J-League Soccer V-Shoot; then for those wanting to play something off of the pitch and in the streets, there was SunA’s Back Street Soccer in 1996 (which had you selecting countries to play as instead of something like states or made-up teams). Capcom’s only soccer arcade game would come in 1997 as a part for the Capcom Sports Club; Seta would also have a single footballing piece, a 3D style one in 1998 called Eleven Beat World Tournament.

One very interesting one-off came from Gaelco in 1999 called Football Power. This would have been just another 3D soccer game. but they used that arcade hardware advantage, by providing a real, “3-axis motion” ball mechanism at the player’s feet to kick for when you wanted to do that in-game. That would be far more satisfying than pressing a button, although it comes with the drawback of a type of controller that will become victim to decay far sooner than your typical controls. Galeco released a sequel to this with redesigned hardware in 2002.

Konami had completely ignored the sport, up until Premier Soccer in 1993. It wasn’t an impressive entry, same with Ultra Sports/Five By Five Soccer, which was one of two options made available in a cocktail cabinet for bars. 1995 also saw Soccer Superstars, which was kind of a response to a Sega soccer game we’ll mention here soon. You could also say that was like Taito’s Football Champ, but with the camera behind the goals instead of from the side. I think it might have originally been intended as a sequel to Premier Soccer, although I can’t confirm that for certain. A year later they’d do Versus Net Soccer which was kind of an improvement to Soccer Superstars, using pre-rendered graphics instead of hand-drawn, and allowing players to chose the camera’s angle (“top” or side view). Then, they would kick off a proper 3D football game in 1998 with Heat of Eleven 1998, which ran on the fabled 3DO M2 board.

Before we get to Sega, it’s worth noting another single exception that would influence arcade redemption & videmption gaming alike up to today, with GlobalVR’s Kick-It!, Kick-It Pro and later Kick-It Jr. games. First released in 1997, this made it all about the penalty kick, where you’d kick a tethered soccer ball into the cabinet, which would sense the angle of the ball and translate that into the game. A 3D goalie would attempt to block your shots. The FEC I worked at as a teen had a Jr. model, but I remember it not being entirely precise on the physical-to-virtual translation of the ball. Maybe it just wasn’t calibrated properly much of the time. Either way, recent releases from companies like ICE and JET Games USA have titles which still use the basic principle behind this one, with their own ways at handling the ball (w/o the rope). Others have had their takes on the idea too.

All right, now it’s time we arrived at Sega. They hadn’t ignored soccer like Konami had, although with all sorts of hits occupying their roster in the late 1980s & early 1990s, it wasn’t exactly at the top of their list. That changed with their own kind of Football Champ game in 1994 with Super Visual Football Sega Cup. As mentioned, this had the camera angle from above and more behind the goal, and you can see where Konami’s Soccer Superstars was very much like it, but I’d hand the edge to Sega on the graphics and gameplay. That seems to be a taste of what was to come…

Yes, that would be Virtua Striker in 1995. Neither the first nor the last of Sega’s “Virtua” series, everyone knew that if that title was put on the front, that it was going to be a full 3D game. Released in May 1995, it would be the first true 3D soccer game, with fully textured and animated players. While the fans in the stands were a flat texture, they’d wave country flags too. A small radar at the bottom allowed you to see the view of the whole field, although if you’re like me, you never notice that while in the middle of the action. Like almost all of the other games on this post, it was controlled using a joystick & buttons.

Only this and Virtua Striker 2 would be released in the 1990s, but this did create a franchise that would last until 2006 with Virtua Striker 4, which ran on Sega, Nintendo and Namco’s Triforce hardware. This was technically VS5, as Sega had also released Virtua Striker 2002 Edition to celebrate the World Cup being held in Japan & South Korea that year. Each instance improved the graphics, although by what I can gather, the main complaints with the sequels were how the ‘reffing’ or penalties were handled. Not being an expert on these ones, fans out there will have to chime in on which of the various editions is considered to be the best.

Granted, nothing is preventing Sega from going back to the franchise, aside from sales projections. I am surprised that they haven’t given it a shot though, as I’d have to imagine that a modern VS would sell better than Virtua Tennis 4 did (assuming it was good).

Don’t worry, I didn’t forget about pinball, although there isn’t a whole lot to talk about (given that we’re 3400+ words into this already, my hands aren’t complaining). An Italian company called Mr. Game would produce World Cup ’90 in 1990 itself, although I have a hunch that it’s fairly rare to find outside of Europe. It had a color monitor in the backbox though (looks like one of those tiny CRTs that used to be a thing), and a small red LED or DMD-like display. This might have been a first on both of those items?

In 1994, Premier/Gottlieb brazenly called their World Challenge Soccer the “game of the decade”, although after looking at how my Addams Family still earns 30+ years later, I’d press X for doubt on that one. I also don’t see anything particularly special on the playfield. The same month that was released, Midway would ship World Cup Soccer, which ended up selling about 8x as many units as Premier’s game. It just had a better playfield and features, which included a magna-save with the goalie. A couple of years later, Capcom would release Flipper Football, which had the unusual feature of putting the DMD under the glass; underneath that, it had drop targets.

The 2000s

We’ve finally arrived at our current century, although despite the graphics looking better than ever, and cabinets becoming more like simulators, the industry experienced a downturn from 2001-04, which led to a reduction in the number of releases across the board, and more of a focus on redemption. That said, there were still some video titles, including the Virtua Strikers and Gaelco’s Football Power sequel, which I won’t cover a second time.

Namco for their part did produce a second soccer game that was released in Japan in 2000 on Sega’s NAOMI hardware, called World Kicks. It used a similar approach to Gaelco’s Football Power, using the soccer ball kicking controller, just in a different way (no springs on this one). It also would be the first title among these games to support up to four players in a while, as most we’ve talked about in the 1990s only offered 1-2. This had a fun little Easter Egg you could do that would unlock Namco’s obscurish mascot character Klonoa. UNIS would draw from this one almost twenty years later, but we’ll get to that in a bit.

While Sega was busy with Virtua Striker, they did launch a multi-sport mini-game compilation in December 2000 called Sports Jam. It featured events from eight different sports where you’d play a mini-game. From soccer, it only features the penalty kick, as you’d expect from anything mini-game related to the sport.

In 2002, both Sega & Konami launched titles that would see multiple versions/sequels down the road, with both mainly sticking to Asia & Europe since interest just wasn’t there in North America. Sega made the World Club Champion Football (WCCF) series, which was among the very first card collecting/card controlled games that would hit the market. Cards representing real players were placed on a large reader surface that represented the football pitch, and where you would place the cards would assign that soccer player to that point. That way customers could not only collect cards, but create teams based upon their attributes that you could switch around. Setups like that have primarily only found success in Japan although some versions of WCCF have received some support in Europe.

This operated with several versions between 2001-2018, though only the first few saw any action out West due to it being on the expensive side for most operators. Then in 2019, Sega revamped the series with WCCF Footista, but that would only last through 2021, with the game being sunsetted in 2022. Could they return to it someday? Who knows…

Winning Eleven / Pro Evolution Soccer Arcade (2002-2014) – Apparently unsatisfied with the performance of their original games in arcades through the 1990s, this took the PlayStation home console version, adapted enough for arcade play. Some versions allow you to plug in a PS2 controller to use if wanted. In 2006, this was the first soccer arcade I have found that offered online features through Konami’s e-Amusement network, although there might have been others.

Way back in 2011, I also came across this unique game at a trade show called Break Away Robot Soccer, but I never saw another example of this, so if it was mass produced, it didn’t get much attention over here.

Aside from these, there isn’t much to discuss about soccer arcade games from 2000-2018, aside from the occasional redemption piece or pinball machine (very occasional in terms of pinball – I only know of Striker Extreme by Stern). There was also ICE’s re-release of Super Kixx (which had first popped up in 1990) back in 2019 that brought “bubble soccer” to the modern arcade, although I’m not sure how popular that ultimately was. I’m also unsure when the first “kicker” games came along, which are an alternative to boxer arcade systems; you just kick a soccer ball attached to a metal arm as hard as you can to show off your strength. These also often come in “Combo Boxers” that have both.

In 2018, that all changed as Chinese developer UNIS unveiled Fantasy Soccer, a modern interpretation on Namco’s World Kicks that featured a similar control scheme, while coming with their own software. This was made in four & two player editions, and while it was only on the market for a couple of years then, recently UNIS did a new run for Dave & Busters so that they could have a soccer video game this summer (celebrating the World Cup). It’s a slight shame they didn’t seek out or commission a new-new game for that, but clearly they liked this one enough to bring it back.

Not long after that, in 2019, a Swedish company by the name of Kynoa SA created a VR foosball arcade game that they called Koliseum Soccer VR. This was at IAAPA 2025, where it came in the NOVa cabinet you see here. It’s essentially foosball, but you get to choose from numerous arenas, and there are things to spice up the gameplay that physical foosball can’t do, like power-ups.

A couple of years ago, we did see the arrival of Subsoccer Arcade, which is not a video game, but has been quite popular as a two-player game that pits a pair of people against each other in a match of mini-soccer. This is currently being distributed by Sega Amusements, who have been promoting it plenty since the latter half of last year:

Then at Amusement Expo 2026, JET Games USA showed off their new videmption game, World Football Frenzy (which I think can work as a non-redemption game, but I doubt that many locations would bother), while ICE had an updated version of their non-video redemption game, World Football Pro Tourney Edition. It seems like this format of football arcade game is the one that’s enduring most now, but it would be cool to see a return to proper joystick ones someday.

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So that catches us up on the state of the soccer/football arcade. Which of these is your favorite? Would you like to see more fill up the genre, or do you prefer it stick to redemption?

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