Recently at work, a group of 32 lucky punters took part in some kind of FIFA14 World Tournament. The game itself is very life like, it almost pours off the screen into the real world, and the moonlighting managers (three hour lunch break today eh chaps?) sit and cheer like real fans.
Am I taking part? Am I watching? Like hell.
For me, the shiny modernity of a modern football game just doesn’t cut it. It has no quaintness, no charm, and frankly if you like football that realistic, why not just go and play in the garden for pity’s sake?
I liked my football games a little more old school. Not that I was any kind of gamer now, then, or ever, but as any kid does, I enjoyed playing on my friends computer’s, and soccer type games actually offered some of the few decent opportunities for live head to head contests.
It goes all the way back, in fact, to the 70s, where visiting my father’s house I came across a classic Atari cartridge console. It was the second video game I’d ever seen, after an early “Pong” console on holiday in Arran, and it belonged to the son of a very famous footballer of days gone by. My stepbrothers used to borrow it, and I loved it, especially the “Combat” cartridge with the biplanes.
The game that got played the most was the first football game, the inimitable “Pele’s Soccer.” No flash manager mode here, you were limited to selecting a formation of, er, 1-2 as your men, shown in plan view as hexagonal blocks with sticky-out little feet, were clearly skewered together in a fixed equilateral triangle, kidneys impaled. It didn’t seem to stop them running, as they flew up and down the pitch accompanied by a marching little sound like a centipede tap-dancing. The round ball was a square and only travelled in straight or 45 degree lines (much like England) and a shrill whistle blasted out of the screen if it went out of play.
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| It's all action on the wing |
The scoring of goals, a relatively easy business as the console controlled goalkeeper had the speed of a shrivelled slug, was signalled by a computerised fanfare, and firework display graphics nicked from the advert breaks on the Benny Hill show.
I say scoring was an easy business, I should have added “if you were playing me” because I hardly ever caused Benny Hill expressions of goalular delight, while my stepbrother and his cousins would regularly stuff twenty past me in an eight minute game. I always tried to claim it wa because I had the crap joystick where the handle grip would come off.
They would say it was because I was crap. They were right.
I played other olde school football games on various platforms. “Football Manager” on the Sinclair ZX81 offered, um, a blurry grey screen interrupted by score reports and the chance to manage Newport County, but it was the progenitor to one of the most successful game series. The Spectrum version had highlights; black or red stick men either scoring or not scoring, in very jerky basic.
“Match Day” on the Spectrum was a real cut above any previous game, however. It was probably the first to have anything even approximating playable, realistic action, and you could use Panini 82 World Cup annuals to name and commentate upon all your players - “And what a goal for Boniek!!!”. You could even play on a black pitch, but too bad about the unstoppable goals from throw ins.
That were scored against me by my friend. In great numbers. I never won a game of this either.
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| Scoring in "Match Day". Just like I never did |
“Pele’s Soccer" was still the best though. The great man even endorsed it. That’s how good he thought the three impaled hexagons in a triangle were.
Copyright Simon Hodgson / Bloody Mulberry 30.07.14
