I’m hankering to play a really simple, old-school football (oh, all right, soccer…) game. Back in the 90s, there was a game called Sensible Soccer. One button. Directional controls. That was it.
I’m not after photo-realism, complicated gesture-based controls, button-combos or licensed teams. I just want some simple, old-fashioned, unrealistic arcade football.
Potential systems I could play this on are an iPad 3, an Android phone or a Mac running Yosemite (and I can play web-based games of course). If it’s not too demanding a game - and given the requirements, it shouldn’t be - I can probably run it in a Windows VM I have kicking about on the Mac, as well.
…yeah, I got that somewhere around the house! And Amiga Power was simply the best video games magazine around! Corr blimey, this thread is bringing back the memories!
So I got Sensible World Of Soccer installed. Instant nostalgia. I remember spending hours with my brother editing the team data so we could have Rebels v Imperials.
Fired it up and the theme tune kicked in - Goal Scoring Superstar Hero. Until that moment, I’d have been prepared to swear that I’d forgotten it, but it came flooding back… a cheesy slice of 90s dance music, with an awesome FMV intro which was basically the developers fooling about on the football pitch - when devs were celebrities amongst PC gamers.
Then I got frustrated at the simplistic controls, but I assume I’ll get better.
I have SWOS still, though I mainly play the management mode as it is something you can play casually unlike the insanely complicated I’m-not-sure anything-I-do-makes-a-positive-difference-to-my-team’s-performance Football Manager.
In SWOS, a few shrewd buys and optimizing your formation and you can win the European Cup back-to-back with a San Marino club team.
In the first few Championship/Football Managers you can power through a season in a couple of hours. In the last few FM it takes a few hours just to get through preseason. But it adds to the reality to have an entire world of football simming in the background.
