Go!Go! Beckham! Adventure on Soccer Island (Gameboy Advance)

I was wandering around Cash Converters earlier, as I like to do, because it's quite a handy place for picking up bargain games for the blog. On this occasion, I spotted they had Go!Go! Beckham! Adventure on Soccer Island for the GBA. It's not a game I was familiar with... I'd only ever heard of it once, a couple of years ago, thanks to a fellow forum-goer (and blog follower... thanks, puffle!). Even then, I knew absolutely nothing about it, but for £2.99 I reckoned it was worth a punt (see what I did there?).

I hadn't even whacked it into the DS, though, when I saw that it was made my Denki... and my heart sank. Denki were responsible (obviously) for the previously-played-for-the-blog game, Denki Blocks! (those people at Denki love exclamation marks more than I love putting three full stops for a pause!).

Still, from the screenshots it looked like an entirely different game, so on it went. And although the presentation has a lot of the hallmarks from that game, I enjoyed Go!Go! Beckham a lot more.


Beckham ponders over his next move. Don't think too hard, Dave, it might hurt!

Go!Go! Beckham! is a platform game, where bad guy Mister Woe and his League of Monsters are running wild over Soccer Island. Obviously this isn't right, and look who's here to save the day! It's David Beckham!

If you think that's a slightly strange premise for a videogame, well, yeah, it is. Diddy Dave is a cute looking little fella (apparently there are those that think the same of the bloke in real life), and as he runs around the side-scrolling levels, booting and heading his footy all over the place.

Naturally there's a lot more to it than that. There are monsters on the island... I wouldn't exactly say they're rampaging around the place, mind. They trundle about, occasionally getting in the way, but are soon dispatched with a couple of trademark 30-yard raspers from our Dave.


In a clear case of art imitating life, Dave collects a huge pile of cash.

Strewn around the island's levels are coins (of course) and gems, which should be collected, and keys, which must also be collected to unlock the goal. Collect all the keys on the level, then blast the ball through the goal and the level is complete. With 40 cutesy levels to be cleared, there's plenty to do. The game also saves high scores and best times, so there's plenty of replay value here as well.

Go!Go! Beckham! Adventure on Soccer Island is a really nice little platform game. The football mechanic does add something a little different. I've never played a Kirby game (there's something for the future), but I used to watch Aidan playing, and I see a slight resemblance to those games here, but with plenty of its own charm and ideas, too. What a good little pickup for three quid.