A Tehkan Welcome...


Tehkan World Cup was unveiled to arcades in 1986 to become the most successful video soccer game of its era. Utilising an ambitious cocktail cabinet form factor with a horizontal display, its innovative trackball control system was the prime component of its extensive playability, where it particularly excelled as a player vs. player game of the highest quality and finesse. Made by the company soon to be Tecmo, it held its own against newer games (including its own 1990 sequel) for many years before succumbing to the age of the home entertainment system. This website is a homage and an exploration of what is in some people's view the greatest ever video game.


What's in Store?

This website offers a chance to see the amazing Tehkan World Cup in action through downloadable video clips. You can also listen to its musical sequences that celebrate the gamut of sporting emotion. With the advent of M.A.M.E., it is now possible to play Tehkan World Cup on your PC, giving rise to a second chapter of existence for this former prince of the coin-op domain. Presented is a primer on MAME and how you may enter Tehkan World Cup's hallowed field of play through this miracle of emulation. Should you decide to take up the challenge, a page of statistics and known world records has been compiled for you to guage your performances against the best. Pretenders should be warned, however, that the road to TWC mastery is not a stranger to either disappointment or bouts of tendonitis.


About the Author

To address you in the first person, my name is Michael Aidulis and I hark originally from Glasgow, Scotland, whose amusement arcades formed the venue for a cell of hardcore TWC players from its release through to the early nineties. This group took TWC to its highest level of play, inventing some unusual goals along the way and revelling in the spirit of competition. To these men, I tip my adolescence, while I occasionally long to go back to that time and place again. This website is such an attempt. Through the lifegiving blood of MAME, I have regained my lost childhood and the facility of the most incredible game ever conceived. Thanks to the flexibility of the MAME environment I was further able to create video sequences that captured my passion and style of play for others to see. This was both a dream to undertake and a labour of love, a ravenous time-consuming monster, involving the creation of around 60 minutes of raw play time in MAME .inp format, converted into 40,000 screenshots at 60fps that were recompiled into 106 short sequences of play, the best of which you may now view at your leisure. You can read a more detailed account of my journey in TWC in this page entitled "Confessions of a TWC Junkie."


Acknowledgements

To Tehkan and the designers of Tehkan World Cup, mentioned elsewhere on this site, a flaggon of ale. Your source code contained the stuff of magic. It came alive. To those people from Glasgow who made TWC more than a game but a field of dreams, I hope your subsequent lives were as simple and rewarding. To the authors of MAME, who go about making time a little less linear, I wish you a house with a nice view and a highly paid career in the sector of your choice. Thanks to you, I'll never, ever run out of coins. This site was directly inspired by Pantazis Kastellorizo, aka. Grand Master Peter. From sifting through his TWC site www.powerstrike.net, I found the zeal to make my own. Finally, the biggest thanks go to my wife, without whom all my victories would be meaningless. You have sacrificed many a minute and hour in order that I might feed another obsession.

Home / Intro / Watch / Listen / Play / Stats / FAQ / Guestbook / Contact