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 We did do an article on this way back in 2014, but aside from some outdated information, and there not being enough new releases in the genre since, it didn’t warrant a post every four years. There is however 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 some time later 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.