Captain Tsubasa: Rise of New Champions Wasn’t Being Planned For A North American Release

Captain Tsubasa: Rise of New Champions has been announced this week for Nintendo Switch as well as for PlayStation 4 and PC, but it seems like publisher Bandai Namco wasn’t planning on releasing the game worldwide

Speaking with US Gamer, Bandai Namco director of brand marketing Dennis Lee confirmed that the publisher wasn’t planning on releasing Captain Tsubasa: Rise of New Champions worldwide. Apparently, the only other version planned was one for Latin America, as the anime and manga are extremely popular there. Eventually, Bandai Namco decided to release the game worldwide as it is quite fun and even those who are not familiar with the characters can enjoy it as an arcade football game. This is definitely good reasoning, considering this type of game is pretty much non-existant right now.

When we evaluated the game, we realized that it was a really fun game. So even if they don’t know Tsubasa and the characters, soccer fans and fans of arcade-style sports games can have a really good time playing it. Because of that, we decided that we couldn’t just release it in Latin America.

Captain Tsubasa: Rise of New Champions looks like a faithful adaptation of the manga created by Yoichi Takahashi. The game will feature a lot of different teams, with players all coming with unique skills. A Story mode has been confirmed, alongside local and online multiplayer.

Captain Tsubasa: Rise of New Champions releases sometime this year on Nintendo Switch as well as on PC and PlayStation 4.