J-League Prime Goal EX is one of the first football games in Sony's console, following previous appearances in the SNES, Prime Goal is a straightforward action game with simple arcade controls. While the Japanese version features all 14 J-League teams and fully licensed players, the European version features the same number of national teams with fictional players, all from Europe. Game modes include friendly match, league and cup knockout modes, as well as an all-star game where the player chooses his stars from the best in the selected zone.
Graphically, the game uses a polygonal playing field, while players are represented using sprites, and gameplay features a combination of the face buttons to perform actions (passing, lobbing, shooting, tackling and so on) with shoulder buttons to add swerve to the ball, change team tactics on the fly or pushing the camera backwards to find an open team mate.
While gameplay is fast and simple, it has three quirks: first, unlike most modern offerings,...