European 5-a-Side

Sinclair User

Graphics 68%

Sound 80%

Playability 70%

Lastability 55%

Overall 57%

Garth Sumpter 57%

Here they come, here they come, here they come! As predictable as rain at Wimbledon, the deluge of footy games make it through the tunnel (just) in time for the World Cup. Just like the Biggest Match, there can only be one eventual winner. So who, at the end of the day, will emerge with the shiny gold goblet and who, will be saying "Well, our marketing gameplan was sound, but the programmers didn't really give 100%. And it was an awfully partisan crowd"... FIVE A SIDE FOOTBALL Label: Silverbird Price: £2.99 Reviewer: Garth Sumpter Ere we go, 'ere we go, 'ere we go. And there, for the want of a playable game, goes Five a Side Football. There are some nice touches to the game and make no mistake but football games are most tricky on computer and very few games have the ability to get away with it, and Five A Side football is an excellent example of not getting away with anything at all really. Play is either between two punters or, if you're short of friends, you can play against the computer. Each player has five in their squad (although the goalkeeper is left entirely to his own devices) and control passes to whichever player is closest to the ball as indicated by the flashing arrow of doom that appears above them. The game is a bird's eye view from above and any miscreant magpie could easily score a few direct hits on any of the players as they all move soooo slowly as to be easy targets. In fact, it's probably the lethargic progress of the game that is the single most annoying factor to the game along with the sampled speech telling you to "Go for it!" Play is by joystick or keyboard, moving your highlighted players around until they get possession. They can then dribble until they are tackled or shoot via a quick dab on the fire button, with a longer press sending the ball scooting through the clouds to no great effect except leaving yet another hole in the battered old ozone layer (yea, let's get socially aware eh kids?) Each half is three, five or a masochistic ten (count 'em) minutes long, punctuated by the occasional sampled roar of the crowd and the snores of whoever's playing the game. If you can tell that I didn't get much from Five A Side Football then you'd be spot on. The game is slow, the graphics are quite reasonable and the sampled speech is as good as you'll get. The main problem is the whole package comes together to give you a game that's as interesting as the sex life of the average Benedictine monk and about as watchable.

And it's a goal mouth scramble! And he's got a toe to it! And it's a goal!

C&VG (Computer & Video Games)

Overall 35%

Silverbird Spectrum/Amstrad £2.99 Just for a change, here's a football game that doesn't feature all the World Cup teams or give astrological profiles of the Cameroon First XI. This is just good, old, played-in-sports-centres-by-balding-overweight-business-men Five-A-Side. Well, calling it "good" is perhaps a bit of an overstatement, this being one of the weakest of the current crowd of soccer sims. The Spectrum version starts off with some crisp sampled speech, but from there it's all downhill. The game is slowsville, the viewed-from-above players look like they're bent in the middle as they run around, and tackling the opposing team can sometimes get them very confused, causing them to run backwards and forwards on the spot. Yuk.

AMSTRAD SCORES Overall: 37% More colourful, but in all other respects, similar to the Spectrum version and equally poor. Something of an own goal for Silverbird, unfortunately.

ACE (Advanced Computer Entertainment)

Overall 860/1000

Spectrum £2.99cs C64 £2.99cs CPC £2.99cs This budget kick around for 8-bit machines started the season strongly - topping the league in the early part of the year. Unfortunately it was knocked off the top when the big cheque books came out for a series of superior full price footy launches later in the year. Provided good end to end entertainment with an efficient dribbling and passing mechanism.

C&VG (Computer & Video Games)

Graphics 6/10

Sound 6/10

Playability 5/10

Value 8/10

Fun 4/10

Total 29/50

Tony Dillon 29/50

FUNNY OLD GAME INNIT CECIL? Footballs have been kicked around computer screens for just about as long as the gaming habit has existed. 1988 saw more releases than ever before - Tony Dillon asks what is and what is not good computer football. Of all the simulations, authentic endorsements and plain old original attempts, there can't be any topic that comes as close to a games player's heart that our very own Soccer. Even in the very early days of paddles and mono displays, where the Grandstand home entertainment console reigned supreme with it's incredible 4-game selection football was one of them. Admittedly it was nothing more than computer tennis with double the number of bats, but it was still football. And it was the first. Since then, many have tried to recreate the feelings of running about on an open pitch, being buffeted by the wind, the cheers of the crowd and smells of the other players. What we at C+VG have tried to do is come up with a comprehensive guide to the more memorable ones, the best, the worst, the one with the nicest graphics, the one that you couldn't tell the difference between the ball and the players, or indeed the players from the pitch, or simply the one that we liked the most. Also, we've put our heads together and come up with a league table of all the football games around at the moment. Including the ones we didn't get to mention. So, here goes, straight into section one, which funnily enough is about. ARCADE FOOTBALL Of the three genre of football games (Arcade, Managerial and Diagnostic), the arcade is easily, judging by the sales, the most widely popular, though games like Football Manager still rank high up in the list of best selling games. There were many early attempts at football games way back in the dawn of programming history, when programming people were just finding their feet. Now defunct Artic, for example, released World Cup I and II, which both featured small matchstick men, slow gameplay and a very low computer skill level. Funnily enough, World Cup II was given a facelift (well, not really a facelift, more a snip-and-tuck around the chin) and was released by US Gold under the title World Cup Carnival to coincide with the World Cup happening at the time. It came packaged with lots of photographs, posters and other World Cup memorabilia. Nevertheless it flopped and went down in game history as one of the worst games ever, ranking up there with The Great Space Race itself. Probably the most successful of the early arcade football games was International Soccer on the Commodore 64. Originally only available on cartridge (now released on tape and disc by CRL), it featured large blocky graphics, crude animation and a tendency to crash quite a lot (well, mine did!). The funny thing is, even with todays high programming standards and the high level that consumers expect to find of today's software, it's still one of the best you can get on the 64. Except, of course, for a slightly altered version I saw a while ago, changed by the hands of our dear friend, Mr Gary 'Moose' Penn, who changed the players from their running state, and placed them all in wheelchairs, which is sick, and terrible (snigger), and not (cough, splurt) at all (ready to burst) funny (Ha ha ha). So, what else happened that shook the world of football gaming? Matchday did! Written by Jon Ritman, and Bernie Drummond, it was quite simply incredibly superior to anything that had appeared before it, on the Spectrum anyway. It featured large, well animated graphics, a goalkeeper that could dive and a chance to play through a knockout championship to win the FA Cup, as well as simultaneous two players to boot. Not long after that came Matchday II, which had all the above and then some, such as jumping headers, a league facility with a code entry system, and improved graphics, not to mention DSS. What's DSS? The Diamond Deflection System. What this does is work out what direction the ball's going to travel in when it hits off another player, with the player's speed and direction brought into account. Between these two came the game that should have been a lot better and, judging by its features, it was. Unfortunately, it wasn't. Super Soccer included things like sliding tackles, enemy levels and extra training, but was so bug-ridden and unplayable that it flopped. One major bug was the energy thing. If you played a long game, the players would run out of energy quite quickly. What they would finally end up doing was jog around the pitch at a snail's pace, then if you tried to do a sliding tackle, they wouldn't get up again, so basically 80 minutes into the game, the pitch would be littered with dead players. Both the Nintendo and Sega have their own soccer games, Nintendo's is called Soccer, and is quite playable and has several levels of play. It also has a two-player option, but suffers from slightly sluggish joycard response. That withstanding, it's still a lot better than you can buy on most home computers. Sega's World Soccer is one of C+VG's all-time favourite games, and can be held responsible for many hours of lost work time - particularly the case with Gary Williams, the Ads Manager. Unlike him, though, the game is absolutely brilliant and fully captures the spirit of a big game, with the players able to do overhead kicks, banana shots and slide tackles. It's a shame that it's only available on the Sega, as it's the best soccer game on any home system. Up until recently, games have been displayed in semi forced perspective 3D, which works really well but often makes aiming for the goal difficult. Now a new trend is emerging: the overhead viewpoint. Games like European 5-a-Side and Supercup Football let you view the action from above, which gives a much more accurate look at the action, with the size of the ball increasing and decreasing to denote hoots skyward. Easily the best, however, is the new one from Microprose/Sensible Software. It's smooth, fast, very playable and extremely polished and scored 95% in the last issue. It's menu system is incredible, and the game comes a very, very close second to World Soccer - it's easily the greatest football game available for home computers. But these are mere highlights of all the arcade football games around at the moment. Check out the league table for the full C+VG report. Now, let's move onto the next section, which by some staggering coincidence happens to be about. MANAGERIAL FOOTBALL Moving completely away from games that require fast reactions and an eye of an eagle, and onto the slower, more thoughtful games that are around the managerial. Typically: in a managerial game you take the role of the manager/secretary/accountant of your chosen team and have to make all the right decisions with the ultimate aim of taking your team to the top of their league and winning the FA Cup/World Cup/Nations Cup/whatever. Of all the ones I've seen, rather than mention games that stand out, I'm going to talk about the companies involved. First is Kevin Toms' company, Addictive. They released the first successful managerial game way back in, oh, well it was a while ago. It was then hailed as the best football game ever (not much of claim; check out the opposition at the time!) and was pretty simplistic. Written in 100% basic, it consisted of a series of screens with a choice on some of them. After cycling through them, you get a few highlights of the match you just played, with matchstick men and beepy sound effects. Though not much by today's standards, it still has to get a mention for being the original. I wish I could say the same for it's successor, FM2. The only difference between them were screen redesign and better graphics on the game highlights. A shame really, considering what could have been done. One company that I have to mention are D+H games, a company almost solely devoted to managerial games, especially football ones. Though none of their games require huge amounts of thought, feature no graphics, have a tendency to be slow and are generally small, there is still an edge of the seat feeling when playing a match as minute by minute it updates the score. Probably their most famous one is Football Director, What a lot of people don't know is that Football Director is only part of a series. As well as the usual Football Director II, which boasts nicer screens and faster gameplay (except on the +3, which is six times slower than any other version), there's a two-player Super League, which is identical to Football Director except that it boasts two-player simultaneous action, and International Manager, which is Football Director set in the topsy turvy world of international football. The last company I have to mention is the company that has recently written the best ever managerial game, Goliath Games. Headed by Doug Mathews, of ex-Scanatron fame, Track Suit Manager was the company's first release, and was well-received by everyone and featured all the teams in the World Cup, and all the players in all the teams (around 700 in all) as well as accurate statistics on all of them, a revolutionary ,match commentary system that gives you a continuous flow of text telling you what's happening on the turf. All this would normally cost speed, but in this case it doesn't. The speed of the game is fully adjustable via the joystick, from the full 45 minutes a half, right down to eight seconds a half. The Spectrum version is a bit slower than the Commodore version, and boasts a masterful piece of compaction. All the data just fits, and looking at the statistics I've been given, there were two bytes left at the end of it. The funny thing is there were two spelling mistakes, "Substitute" and the other one escapes me for the moment. The point I am two letters missing altogether, so if those letters were included, there would be no room left at all. I can't talk about managerial games, though, without mentioning the worst: Soccer Boss. Soccer Box is not a very good game. In fact, it's very bad. It boasts amazingly s-l-o-w gameplay, unresponsive controls and is sooo easy. Needless to say, it's still riding high in the budget software charts. Makes you think, doesn't it? But of course, there are many others. This is just the cream of the crop and we simply haven't the space to re-review all the old games, for the simple reason that there are so many of them. We came up with over 30! Plus there are lots of pools prediction things and record filers and lots of other serious gimmicks that can't be classed as games. We leave you now with the league tables. We've done two because it just isn't fair to class arcade games alongside strategy games. If you've written a football game that you think is any good, or you know of one that isn't mentioned here and you think it should be, then why not drop a line to C+VG. Even if it doesn't get reviewed in the mag, we'll still get back to you and let you know what I think of it. Please include an S.A.E. if you want the tapes returned. FOOTBALL DEATURE - LEAGUE TABLE 1 - STRATEGY Title: Tracksuit Manager Home Ground: Goliath Games Realism: 9/10 Depth: 8/10 Speed: 9/10 Visuals: 7/10 Fun: 8/10 Tot: 41/10 Title: Brain Clough's FF Home Ground: CDS Realism: 6/10 Depth: 8/10 Speed: 8/10 Visuals: 2/10 Fun: 10/10 Tot: 34/10 Title: Football Director 2 Home Ground: D+H Games Realism: 4/10 Depth: 6/10 Speed: 6/10 Visuals: 5/10 Fun: 8/10 Tot: 29/10 Title: The Double Home Ground: Scanatron Realism: 8/10 Depth: 6/10 Speed: 3/10 Visuals: 3/10 Fun: 6/10 Tot: 28/10 Title: Football Director Home Ground: D+H Games Realism: 4/10 Depth: 3/10 Speed: 3/10 Visuals: 4/10 Fun: 7/10 Tot: 21/10 Title: 2 Player Super L. Home Ground: D+H Games Realism: 4/10 Depth: 3/10 Speed: 2/10 Visuals: 3/10 Fun: 8/10 Tot: 20/10 Title: Int. Manager Home Ground: D+H Games Realism: 5/10 Depth: 3/10 Speed: 3/10 Visuals: 3/10 Fun: 5/10 Tot: 19/10 Title: Football Manager Home Ground: Addictive Realism: 2/10 Depth: 1/10 Speed: 3/10 Visuals: 3/10 Fun: 5/10 Tot: 14/10 Title: Football Manager 2 Home Ground: Addictive Realism: 2/10 Depth: 2/10 Speed: 2/10 Visuals: 5/10 Fun: 3/10 Tot: 14/10 Title: On The Bench Home Ground: Cult Realism: 3/10 Depth: 2/10 Speed: 1/10 Visuals: 2/10 Fun: 3/10 Tot: 11/10 Title: Soccer Boss Home Ground: Alternative Realism: 2/10 Depth: 1/10 Speed: 1/10 Visuals: 2/10 Fun: 1/10 Tot: 7/10 All the marks are corresponding to the best version of that game. The +3 version of Football Director 2, is six times slower than any other version, so it would be unfair to review that version. FOOTBALL FEATURE - LEAGUE TABLE 2 - ARCADE Title: Sega Soccer Home Ground: Sega Graphics: 9/10 Sound: 8/10 Playability: 8/10 Value: 8/10 Fun: 9/10 Tot: 42/10 Title: MicroSoccer Home Ground: Microprose Graphics: 9/10 Sound: 7/10 Playability: 8/10 Value: 8/10 Fun: 7/10 Tot: 39/10 Title: Match Day 2 Home Ground: Ocean Graphics: 8/10 Sound: 6/10 Playability: 8/10 Value: 7/10 Fun: 8/10 Tot: 37/10 Title: International Soc. Home Ground: CRL Graphics: 5/10 Sound: 4/10 Playability: 9/10 Value: 9/10 Fun: 8/10 Tot: 35/10 Title: Match Day Home Ground: Ocean Graphics: 7/10 Sound: 4/10 Playability: 7/10 Value: 6/10 Fun: 6/10 Tot: 30/10 Title: European 5-a-side Home Ground: Silverbird Graphics: 6/10 Sound: 6/10 Playability: 5/10 Value: 8/10 Fun: 4/10 Tot: 29/10 Title: Gary Lineker's SS Home Ground: Gremlin Graphics: 6/10 Sound: 4/10 Playability: 6/10 Value: 5/10 Fun: 5/10 Tot: 26/10 Title: Peter Beardsley's Home Ground: Grandslam Graphics: 6/10 Sound: 4/10 Playability: 6/10 Value: 5/10 Fun: 5/10 Tot: 22/10 Title: Supercup Football Home Ground: Silverbird Graphics: 3/10 Sound: 2/10 Playability: 4/10 Value: 6/10 Fun: 4/10 Tot: 19/10 Title: Super Soccer Home Ground: Imagine Graphics: 5/10 Sound: 3/10 Playability: 3/10 Value: 2/10 Fun: 3/10 Tot: 16/10 Title: Roy of the Rovers Home Ground: Gremlin Graphics: 2/10 Sound: 1/10 Playability: 2/10 Value: 1/10 Fun: 1/10 Tot: 7/10 Title: World Cup Carn' Home Ground: US Gold Graphics: 1/10 Sound: 1/10 Playability: 1/10 Value: 1/10 Fun: 1/10 Tot: 5/10

Computer football - second only in popularity to computer Ninjas.

European Five-A-Side - budget footy smash.

Gary Linekar failed to score.

Microprose Soccer - is the one to watch,

Sega Soccer - C+VG's all time fave footy game.

Your Sinclair

Overall 5/10

Nat Pryce 5/10

BARGAIN BASEMENT Come on down! The Pryce is right! (Groan - Ed) Once again Nat Pryce single-handedly guides us through the treacherous world of the budget game. EUROPEAN FIVE-A-SIDE FOOTBALL Silverbird £1.99 Reviewer: Nat Pryce Twenty-one nil! Now that's what I call a good result; a score even Stefan Edberg would be proud of, if, of course, he didn't play tennis. And purely by coincidence, twenty-one nil is one of my best scores in Five-A-Side Footy. Not bad, eh? To get back from all that self indulgent boasting and into the review. FASF (as I'll call it from now on), is the latest game-ette from the frantic fingers of Timothy Closs, author of those slices of software succulence, I Ball and I Ball II. It is a vertically scrolling, monochrome kick-around, viewed from above and packed with Closs' usual nifty graphics, blurpy tunes and, of course, speech - voices rasp out 'Goal Goooal' and 'Go For It' during both the title tune and the game. All this would be hunky dory if it wasn't for the difficulty factor, or rather lack of one (to use an ancient reviewer's cliche). I'm sure you thought my phenomenal score was simply due to my natural talent and high games playing skill; but it isn't! No, in fact FASF is ludicrously easy. So easy that, after about three goes, you'll become completely bored with the game and may have to resort to Neighbours instead. You have been warned...

Sinclair User

Graphics 75%

Sound 85%

Playability 65%

Lastability 50%

Overall 70%

Rickard Jones 70%

Label: Silverbird Author: Timothy Closs Price: £1.99 Memory: 48K/128K Joystick: various Reviewer: Rikard Jones Well blow me over and strike me down if it isn't another football simulation. Could it be something to do with the time of year? Nah. This is Silverbird's offering to the genre and not only is it on budget - it's a pretty spiffy game too. The reason why European 5-A-Side is more interesting than all the other budget soccer efforts is immediately apparent - it looks at the game from a completely different angle ie; a bird's eye view rather than the usual camera side-on view. This has meant a slightly different approach to the graphics - particularly the ball movement. Better still the sound effects are quite incredible with digitized speech providing a commentary on the game - check out of the David Coleman-meets-the-Daleks rendition of "G-Goal", not to mention the other stuff it pumps out. The gameplay is strong. You control one man at a time. The man currently under control is indicated by a large arrow above his head. To pass the ball you tap the fire button once. The ball will only go as far as you want relative to on how fast you were running at the time. For those dramatic goal shots you can get a long range lob shot by keeping your thumb on the fire key a bit longer. The lob shot is particularly impressive because you actually get the feeling that the ball is being blasted high into the air (it gets bigger as it comes towards you) much preferable to that "oh no it's not another blob moving about the screen." you get with most football games. This being five a side, if you don't fancy the direct approach you can always blast the ball against the wall. This gives you a sort of ricochet effect. At first the computer play is a bit stupid, its defence could be generously described as 'sloppy'. But don't let that fool you, because the Speccy has one killer player. This is the goalie, he is no ordinary Joe, no siree. This goalie has been taking lessons from Peter Shilton and Gordon Banks and he's virtually unbeatable. When the goalie saves a shot he lobs it upfield for the centre forwards to start a counter attack. This sort of thing can be quite effective ("I was robbed, Saint, robbed") There are criticisms; where this game fails is in its animation, which is very slow. This is probably due to having too many sprites on the screen at one time. Worse still, once you have clocked the game a few times there are no higher computer play still levels so that's it. Siiverbird has tried though with a pitch colour changer and options to change the game at half time to last from 3 mins to 5 mins or even 10 mins.

Crash

Presentation 66%

Graphics 71%

Playability 57%

Addictive Qualities 54%

Overall 56%

Mark Caswell 44%

Phil King 68%

Producer: Silverbird Retail Price: £2.99 Author: Timothy Closs After watching England's performance in the European Championships recently, you might think you could do better yourself. Timothy Gloss, programmer of the CRASH Smashes I Ball and I Ball 2, now gives you the opportunity to play European 5-A-Side. The match is played on an aerially viewed, vertically scrolling pitch surrounded by a barrier against which you can bounce the ball to pass an opponent. You always control the player nearest to the ball; highlighted by a flashing arrow. Dribbling is automatic and tackling is achieved by colliding with the player in possession. You can kick along the ground or into the air. The ball's size gives an indication of its height. The goalkeeper can only be controlled when the ball goes inside the six yard box. He can dive left or right and, if he makes contact with the ball, immediately lobs it up the field. COMMENTS Joysticks: Kempston, Sinclair Graphics: smoothly animated, monochromatic sprites Sound: snappy title tune plus spot effects and the odd piece of digitised speech Options: one or two players, choice of pitch colour and match duration

GOAL!