Championship Soccer

Sinclair User

Graphics 60%

Sound N/A

Playability 82%

Lastability 81%

Overall 79%

Tony Dillon 79%

Label: STD Software Author: In-house Price: +3 disk £4.49, +2/128 cass £7.99, 48 cass £7.49 Memory: 48K/128K Joystick: None Reviewer: Tony Dillon Championship Soccer unfortunately falls into the same trap as all the other footbally type games this month. It's very good, but doesn't offer anything new or outstanding. What it does have, and I'm beginning to think that this is becoming more and more standard each day, is a huge database containing all the teams, players and ground names of National and International football. This size is possible because of its handicap. It's multi-load. Now to be honest, I can't really see the point in describing the game idea in any sort of depth, because if I've written it once, I've written it a thousand times, but here goes (again). You are the manager of a football team (of your choice) and you start in the fourth division. You have to win as many matches as possible so that you (a) Get promoted (provided that you aren't in the first division), (b) win the Littlewoods Cup, (c) win the FA Cup and (d) win the EUFA Cup. Nice and easy. Winning is just a matter of buying better players and adding them to your team. Buying good players is a costly process, and sometimes you have to pay a little extra before the nice opposing manager will sell that player that you so vitally need. To supplement your falling income, you can borrow some money from the bank. This, of course, puts you in debt. To pay off the debt, you have to pull the crowds into your matches. This is a bit hard when you're a struggling fourth division team. What you can do is lower the price of the tickets and advertise the matches, or just start winning more matches. Sadly, the game is slow, and it's slow for the same reason that all the others are slow. It' written in BASIC. Why? Why why why?!? Have these people seen Tracksuit Manager? Have they not seen what can be done with some clever machine code programming? All that said, it is still a very good football game. It's fairly detailed, there's a lot of variation in it and it's big. It's also mail-order only at the moment. You can get Championship Soccer by sending a cheque or p/o to: STD Software, 8 Glenbrook Walk. Fareham, Hampshire P014 3AH. To finish in a footbally sort of way, here's a closing comment from my bestest friend, Bobby Charlton. 'Well. I went there to win, but he was just faster than me, Harry. That Abbey curve was a bit of a struggle, but we managed to pull through and all in all, the boy did good. Over to you, David.'