The Boss

C&VG (Computer & Video Games)

Realism 2/10

Depth 1/10

Speed 1/10

Visuals 2/10

Fun 1/10

Total 7/50

Tony Dillon 7/50

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.

Sinclair User

Overall 1/10

Graham Taylor 1/10

Label: Alternative Author: Peaksoft Price: £1.99 Memory: 48K/128K Joystick: None Reviewer: Graham Taylor You want bad? Really bad? You got it. This is crud. It's written in Basic for gawd's sake! it pretends to be like Football Manager but doesn't make it. It's quite amazingly boring as you have to wait hours for things to happen. So long in fact I thought the program had crashed. If any of you buy this and put it in the charts I'm going to get very upset. If you want a football simulation buy Football Manager, or even wait for Football Manager II, out soon, apparently.

C&VG (Computer & Video Games)

Simon Inglis

FITBA CRAZIE! Two, four, six, eight, who do we appreciate? Well, C+VG, of course. As the world is gripped by football fever, Simon Inglis proves to be on the ball with a special round-up of all the computer football games available. With so much attention lavished on this month's World Cup in Mexico you might think there's enough football on our screens at the moment without harping on about football computer games. But the fact is that although games manufacturers continue trying to milk the national sport - another three this year takes the total to over 20 - most of them aren't much more fun than a goalless draw at Arsenal. And very often the ones that are worth trying are the ones least pubicised. Take managerial games for instance. Everyone has heard of Kevin Toms' Football Manager, mainly because Addictive Games has a strong marketing instinct. Reported sales of over 150,000 make it easily the best seller in this field. Yet its lesser known rivals are actually more challenging and amusing. The Boss from Peaksoft, for example, with claimed sales of over 90,000. You must tackle realistic financial problems familiar to any soccer buff - like repairs from riot damage, rate demands from the council and so on, while favourable comments from pundits like Jimmy Hill play havoc with your team's morale. But then the game spoils itself by allowing you to buy any player you want from your next week's opponents, a gambit not even tried by Malcolm Allison in his heyday! The trickiest managerial game is United from C.C.S. which has horribly inflated prices for players - £2 million for a sweeper would deter even Ron Atkinson these days - but allows you to play clean or dirty on a scale of 1-10, and you pitch in apprentices and sell them off for a quick profit. Big League Soccer from Viper, which arrived last year, has clearer graphics but goes to the other extreme by undervaluing players - Gary Bailey for £25,000! Surely he's not that bad? And what a tedious format. Playing 42 games per season may be realistic but a takes an age to play, especially as you have to select each team from scratch for every match. Football Manager scores because it has a good balance of challenge and reward. If we're honest, no one would play any game for long if, like most football managers, you end up nowhere having won nothing all season. With Football Manager you have to be pretty awful not to do well at beginner's level. Alone amongst the managerial games each match has its own graphic display. Others just show minute by minute scores. The trouble with this however is that you can only sit back and watch the action - like a real manager - and after the first few matches it's tempting to keep nipping out for a Bovril or a pee. None of the players ever get sent off or fined for drunken driving, which makes it all horribly idealistic. The latest managerial game on the market is Virgin's Official F.A. Cup Game, which is great for a crowd to play - well, eight people anyway - but on your own is somewhat less demanding than finding room on the terraces at Torquay. Once you've selected ten teams to manage, the only other decisions to make are to choose between three sets of tactics and in later rounds answer a few fatuous questions. Meanwhile, in between rounds, the computer churns out a load of ridiculous newsflashes which are supposed to affect your teams morale. Flashes such as "There is no news about your team in the press this week" and 'The club's oldest surviving player is 100 years old today'. Big deal! Unless of course the centenarian is still playing. But the biggest anti-climax is the Final itself. Having teased you with a rendition of Abide With Me and a picture of Wembley, once the Final is over the game stops - no cheering, no presentation, no wildly ecstatic graphics Now if you really wish to avoid excitement buy Liverpool (mail order only), possibly the slowest and least rewarding game on the entire market and an insult to the name of that great football club. If, like Tommy Docherty, you can't cope with managerial games for very long, Rothman's Football Quick Quiz, wityh questions by the yearbook's editor Peter Dunk is packed full of toughies, although the version I played had somehow managed to get all the categories mixed up. The non-League section was all about the FA Cup, and the European section was full of soccer trivia. For sheer enjoyment I much preferred Answer Back Sport from Kosmo, which not only includes questions on cricket rugby, boxing, golf and tennis as well as soccer, but also has two action games of soccer and tennis in between quiz rounds. For this reason I can just forgive them for misspelling the name of Liverpool's immortal manager Bill Shankly. A cheapie quiz game available by mail order from Marksman Software, The Ultimate Soccer Quiz, is ultimately rather simple and dull, which might explain why the makers felt bound to slip in totally irrelevant scoreflashes from a fictitious game between Spurs and Everton. Of course the hardest part of soccer to simulate is the actual game itself - hard enough for real professionals nowadays - and in this respect some of the software houses have come closest to scoring own goals. Glenn Hoddle's Soccer from Amsoft offers routine entertainment but little more. It was far too easy to walk the ball into the opponents net - not one of Glenn's specialties. For no discernible reason the goalkeepers wore the same shirts as the rest of the team, a practice which was banned a mere 77 years ago. The ball in Bobby Charlton's Soccer created by D.A.C.C. was so tiny, control was so hard and the instructions so lacking in one vital point that I had to turn to Bobby's very self-conscious message on the other side of the cassette for encouragement, before ringing the makers to find out how to proceed. If you too get stuck the way out is by Pressing Q twice. World Cup Football, like the FA Cup game, is good for a whole crowd, especially those old enough to remember Bobby Moore, who is still featured on the cover. Hasn't anyone told Artic that Bryan Robson is the current England captain? Or that great footballing nations like Portugal and Hungary deserve inclusion rather more than Guyana and Tasmania. A quick scan of the rule book would also inform Artic that a player cannot throw the ball in to himself. Which is where Andrew Spencer comes in. He apparently knew nothing about football until he read the rule book and then proceeded to write International Football from Commodore which outscores its rivals in almost every respect. You can really hurl your keeper about the goalmouth, as well as getting your men to head the ball. The graphics and sound are outstanding and the player's movements easily recognisable. My only criticism is that both teams wear black shorts. International Soccer's closest rival is Match Day from Ocean which also sports good graphics and the Match of the Day theme tune. Unfortunately the computer seems to play some odd tricks, the oddest being to make its players turn away from open goals and kick the ball into touch. The might just be sour grapes on my part however, since I seemed to be totally incapable of beating the computer in the tackle. If you don't have a Commodore for International Football, Match Day for the Amstrad, BBC or Spectrum is the best of the rest. Not all of us see soccer as a mere game however. There are some of us who delight in pouring over statistics and records, and some who use computers to help run their own leagues. Yes, people do still actually play the real game. For such people two Spectrum programs from the Spartan Sports Association - Club File and Tables - are valuable aids. I also liked League Table and Champions, both from Football Follower, which work out past form and list winners (useful for pools punters) and another Spectrum home-produced program called Tables which enable you to keep up-to-date records for the entire Football League and Scottish League, from Football Software. I fear that none of these information packages will help you win a fortune on the pools, and I'm pretty sure none of them will make their creators very rich either. We'll leave that side of soccer to ourboys in Mexico. Long may they be needed to endorse the next crop of football computer games. MANAGERIAL GAMES FOOTBALL MANAGER Addictive Games, [redacted] BBC, Electron, Dragon, Amstrad, C64, Vic 20, Spectrum, ZX81 THE BOSS (also The Champions) Peaksoft, [redacted] C64, 16, Amstrad, MX, BBC, Electron Dragon, Tandy, Spectrum £6.95-£8.95 UNITED CCS, [redacted] Spectrum £6.95 BIG LEAGUE SOCCER Viper Software, [redacted] Amstrad £6.95 LIVERPOOL P. M. Corbishley, [redacted] Spectrum, Atari £8.45 (£14.95 Atari disk) OFFICIAL FA CUP GAME Virgin Games, [redacted] Tel: 01-717 8070 Amstrad,C64/128, Spectrum £7.95 ACTION GAMES WORLD CUP FOOTBALL Artic Computing Ltd, [redacted] C64, Amstrad, Spectrum £6.95-7.95 KICK OFF Bubble Software, [redacted] C64 £1.99 INTERNATIONAL FOOTBALL Commodore, [redacted] C64 £14.99 MATCH DAY Ocean Software, [redacted] Tel: 061-832 6633 LEAGUE TABLE/CHAMPIONS Football Follower, [redacted] Spectrum £6.95, £4.95 (or £9.50 both) Amstrad, BBC, Spectrum £7.95-£9.95 BOBBY CHARLTON SOCCER D.A.C.C. Ltd., [redacted] BBC, Electron £11.95 inc p&p GLENN HODDLE SOCCER Amsoft, [redacted] Amstrad £8.95 (£12.95 disk) SPOT THE BALL Thorn EMI, [redacted] Atatri £9.95 FIVE-A-SIDE FOOTBALL Anirog Software, [redacted] C64 £5.95 (£8.95 disc) FIVE-A-SIDE SOCCA IJK Software, [redacted] BBC, Electron FOOTBALL QUIZZES ANSWER BACK SPORT Kosmo Software, [redacted] BBC, Electron £9.95 ULTIMATE FOOTBALL QUIZ Marksmen Software, [redacted] Spectrum £6.95 ROTHMANS FOOTBALL QUIZ Cassell Ltd., [redacted] Spectrum £9.95 CLUB FILETABLES Spartan Sports Association, [redacted] Spectrum TABLES J. Moore, Football Software, [redacted] Spectrum £5.95 Simon Inglis writes on football for the Guardian and Observer. He has written three books on football and is currently the official historian for the Football League's Centenary History. His second book, The Football Grounds of England and Wales, has sold over 20,000 copies to date and has been widely acclaimed. His latest book, a history of British football scandals, has also aroused great interest. Both are published by Collins Willow. He writes on a BBC computer and his record score at Hopper is 28,540.