World Cup Carnival

• Title — World Cup Carnival • Developer — Artic Computing • Publisher — U.S. Gold • Series — FIFA World Cup • Released — 1986 • Genre — Traditional football simulation • Modes — Single-player Multiplayer • Platforms — Amstrad CPC Commodore 64 ZX Spectrum

Ten teams (Uruguay, Italy, Germany, Brazil, England, Argentina, France, Spain, Mexico and Scotland) are available in the Commodore 64 and Amstrad CPC versions of the game while all 24 teams that played in the 1986 World Cup are available in the ZX Spectrum version. For all three platforms, the World Cup mode is played from the quarter finals onwards. Matches last for 3 minutes, and there is no ability to change formation settings etc. In addition to the tournament mode, there is a practice mode available to be loaded separately. The practice mode on the Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum versions contains activities for practicing ball control, taking penalties and saving penalties, while the Commodore 16 version does not contain the saving penalties activity.

Artic Computing was responsible for making changes to World Cup Football to meet the publisher's needs, with Adam Waring and Tony Warriner claiming to have worked on the new title screen and the "practice mode" subgames. In an interview with Edge in 1996, Charles Cecil stated that the game's publisher U.S. Gold did not send any review copies to magazines until the game was already actively on sale. In a 1998 interview with the same publication, he added that the magazines' delayed access to the game caused a "furore" and that the game had already sold widely by the time reviews were able to be published.

At the time of its release Zzap!64 awarded the C64 version of the game an overall score of just 11%, offering praise solely for the packaging and in-box posters. Amstrad Action gave the Amstrad CPC version a 0%, explaining their score as one that applied to those who already owned Artic Computing's World Cup Football. Crash scored the ZX Spectrum version at 26%, with the reviewer stating "This is the worst football simulation I have ever seen". Writing for Sinclair User, Clare Edgeley described the ZX Spectrum release as "awful", calling particular attention to the frequent color clashing in the graphics and the inapplicability of the three practice modes towards the main game. John Minson (under the pseudonym Rachael Smith) gave the ZX Spectrum version a 3/10 in his review for Your Sinclair, describing it as "the same mediocre game it always was" and criticizing the color palette used for the players onscreen. Micro Hobby declined to give the ZX Spectrum release a score in its review due to its status as a clone and expressed a lack of satisfaction with the new practice modes. Several publications highlighted the game in their worst-of-the-year awards for 1986. Readers of Crash magazine voted the title as the "Least Pleasing Game" of the year while the game placed 3rd in the same award category in Amtix! and Zzap!64. The title was awarded "Computer Game You Most Regretted Buying in 1986" by readers of Popular Computing Weekly. In his "Hot Shots" column for Commodore User, Mike Pattenden gave U.S. Gold the "Arthur Daley Dodgy Software but a Good Earner Award" for its role in publishing the game.

Shortly after the game's release, developer Artic Computing was sued by Prism Leisure Corporation for copyright infringement as they had sold the copyright of World Cup Football in 1985 to keep the company afloat; Prism quickly won the lawsuit with Artic required to pay Prism for all the sales of World Cup Carnival, bankrupting the company in the process.

Despite the overwhelmingly poor reception, U.S. Gold attempted to get the 1990 FIFA World Cup license in Italy; they failed, however, with Virgin Mastertronic gaining the license and developing World Cup Soccer: Italia '90. U.S. Gold soon released their game as Italy 1990.