Ultimate Soccer is a 1993 soccer video game by Rage Software released for the Mega Drive/Genesis by request of Sega which even allowed their mascot, Sonic, to be featured in the game menus.
Focused on national teams (with a total of 64, all with fake names and individual team values), it had one of the highest option counts for 16-bit football games: up to 18 different settings can be changed, including ball weight, weather, surface, tightness of ball control, passback rule and perhaps the most remembered of all, the ability to play 6-on-6 indoor football. Several game modes are available, including friendlies, penalty shootout, Ultimate League, Ultimate Cup (group phase and knockout stage) and Knockout. However, the game lacks both passwords and battery save, and all competitions must be completed in one sitting. Up to eight players can play if two 4-player adapters are used.
Ultimate Soccer is played in a field of vision similar to the Madden NFL games in the console, a second-row view behind the players' shoulders that can also be tilted to show more field depth or more detail closer to the bottom of the screen. Player sprites, while small, are well animated and with small details such as dirt or water splashing from the players' feet (which would become one of the trademark effects in Sega's own Worldwide Soccer)
