Bryan Robson's Super League

Your Spectrum

Dougie Bern 8/10

Rick Robson 6/10

Ross Holman 7/10

JOYSTICK JURY Are you ready for a software siege? It's time for our trusty panel of joystick jurors to line up all the latest and greatest games and put them through their paces! Let Ross Holman, Rick Robson and Dougie Bern lead you to the hottest arcade action around! BRYAN ROBSON'S SUPERLEAGUE Paul Lamond £12.95 Rick: You can tell this is Bryan Robson's football game and not Glenn Hoddle's. The emphasis is definitely on sweat and perseverance, not grace and artistry. This is a manager's game, not a simulation, but presumably Bryan's name sells better too. The gimmick of this is to combine the pleasures (and pitfalls) of a dice board with a computer. Of course they could be combined on a T.V. screen but then you wouldn't get the impressive packaging. If you buy this for the skills of the ball rather than the beauty of the box you might be disappointed. Basically you have to build a team and keep it fit (and more importantly solvent) to win the league as you battle against chance and hazards depicted by weather, bank managers and errant train drivers rather than Barnes or Gary Lineker. Your matches are mapped out on the board and take you to the major cities rather than the major teams. Yer actual fans (and there are some left!) might think too much emphasis is put on weather as though this is cricket not soccer. A player's worth is seen in monetary, not skill terms but the most expensive is only £120,000 so we're really in the second division. You can profit by breaking your opponent's legs (without fear of suspension) or cheat by saving goals that the ref hasn't seen go over the line. Not bad as a long playing strategy game.

Read it at Your Spectrum Unofficial Archive

Sinclair User

Overall 2/5

Chris Bourne 2/5

Publisher: Paul Lamond Price: £19.95 Memory: 48K The first thing you'll notice about Super League is the price; £19.95 is steep for any game. This time it is a computer-moderated board game, and we suppose the price has something to do with all the bits of cardboard and money and dice. What you do is manage a team, through a league season. The computer handles the league tables, random events, and fixes the gate money. There are two stages. First you are shown the week's draw of matches on the computer. Teams travel from wherever they were last time around, and if a home team arrives at its own ground with a move in hand over its opponent, it gets to buy a player, which increases the points value of the team. The second stage is the match. Again the dice are thrown and referred to a table which translates the score into points. After that, teams can play Match Cards - if they have them - to nobble the opposition. It is a likeable game, not really very faithful to football and not really requiring a computer, most of whose functions could easily be carried out by the players. We tried hard to like it more, but there are some niggles. The instructions on the box lid are ambiguous in places, particularly regarding movement and in what order players should move. Those flaws serve to irritate. For the price one expects everything to be done perfectly, and our rating reflects that. If you don't mind clarifying the rules yourself and have plenty of dough then you can get a lot of fun out of Super League. Perhaps that's why it was launched in Harrods.

Read it at Sinclair User Magazine Online