But really, why didn't the Speccy have a definitive football game?

[StanVanman]

There isn't a single footy game on the Spectrum that's stood the test of time. Sure, we all have fond memories of Match Day, but it was painfully slow and shallow and flawed even in its day and it's almost unbearable now. All the side-on 3D games are essentially rubbish.

Something like FIFA on Megadrive version was obviously out of reach, but it's just not the case that the Speccy couldn't have handled something overhead-viewed like Sensible Soccer or Tehkan World Cup. (It did get two dire ports of Kick Off.) And we know that because loads of games have the requisite PARTS.

Gazza 2 is smooth and fast, although the graphics are so basic it's hard to know if you're in the centre circle or at the corner flag, and the goalkeepers may as well not exist for all the use they are at stopping shots. And basically all it can do is play friendlies between a very small number of teams, there's no long-form game structure at all. But impressively and uniquely, you can instantly toggle between a close-in view and a zoomed-out one. (In fact the best way to play it is to use the "radar" screen until you're bearing down on goal, then switch to zoom view for shot-aiming.)



Manchester United Europe is only a bit slower and is a lot better looking, uses the full screen for the pitch, and has much more in the way of tournament structure and whatnot, and real players, although it's still sideways, the tiny centre circle and penalty areas are ridiculous and the colour causes a lot of clash. The icon-based menus are also annoying. But overall it's probably as good as Speccy football gets.



Gary Lineker's Hot Shot has colour without clash, is vertically orientated like Sensible Soccer and Kick Off, but the scrolling is jerky and the view is so excessively zoomed-in that you basically just have to punt the ball up the park blindly - at full strength it goes about 90 yards - and chase it.



Adidas Championship Football is vertically orientated, is also pretty fast and smooth, has really snazzy graphics where everything is clear and clash-free, and is much more slickly presented, but then wrecks it all with insanely terrible controls. If it controlled like almost every other game here it'd be the best by a country mile, despite a smallish play area, but as it stands it's a complete mess. Look at the shambolic state of the goals scored in this video.



MicroProse Soccer - originally written by Sensible Software as a shameless clone of Tehkan World Cup - looks good, it's got weather and banana shots and indoor and outdoor variants, but again it's way too zoomed in with a small play area and it's hard to tell the players apart, so you can't meaningfully pass the ball. It's just a case of getting the ball anywhere on the pitch and going on a mazy solo dribble into the opposition box, and in fact you see the goal so late that it's actually easier to walk the ball into the net than kick it.



Michel Futbol Master is an even more shameless TWC ripoff with decent graphics and a zoomed-out viewpoint that lets you see a fair amount of the pitch and players at once, but the play area is tiny and the framerate is guff so all the gains are lost and we're back to a solo-dribble game. Plus it's all in Spanish.



Italy 1990 was probably the FIFA of its day, with the official licence and TV-style presentation, and it's modestly a playable kick-and-chase effort, but again a terrible framerate sucks all the fun out of it, it's too zoomed-in and it's almost impossible to tell the teams apart.



And in the modern era, Speccy Soccer Community Edition is a commendable (and blatant) attempt at replicating Sensible Soccer, zoomed out so you can actually play a proper passing game, and with excellent features like action replays, but let's be honest, while its ambition is admirable and it's an impressive achievement, when it comes to actually playing it it's so fast and jerky and the framerate so bad that you can barely tell whether you're in possession, never mind what's going on in a wider sense, and you get motion-sick after five minutes.



If we could Frankenstein all these bits into one game - Speccy Soccer's viewpoint, Adidas' graphics, Gazza 2's smoothness, Man Utd Europe's large play area and depth of options, Italy 1990's presentation and Michel's arcade zip - it'd be a stunner. And there's no inherent reason that should have been impossible. We know the machine can handle all those aspects. But at the end of the day, nobody gave 110% and we ended up sick as a parrot.

[redballoon]

Woah WOAH WOAH!
Emlyn Hughes International Soccer was the definitive football game on the ZX Spectrum. A truly wonderful footy game. Match Day II was the top of the league until this game along. No other ZX Specturm football game was ever loaded up again after this release. Ocean's Adidas Championship Football had the potential but just shot wide.

[StanVanman]

It's absolute pants

[zx1]

I'll need to check this out. I don't think it made much impact when originally released.

[redballoon]

It's absolute pants

You’re absolute pants.

[RWAC]

Another vote for Emlyn. It's the only football game I liked on the Speccy.

[SteveSmith]

Another vote for Emlyn. It's the only football game I liked on the Speccy.

And only SU gave it a good review out of the Big 3, and YS especially hated it. Although the poor-scoring reviews seem to be a case of "there's already football games out there, so it automatically gets a low score for unoriginality".

[StooB]

I'll need to check this out. I don't think it made much impact when originally released.

Emlyn Hughes International Soccer is by a long way the most successful non-management football game on the Spectrum, and on the C64 too. It was denied the number one position by RoboCop for a few months in early 1989, and was still in both the Spectrum and C64 full-price top 10 in August 1991.

[PeteProdge]

Another +1 for Emlyn Hughes' International Soccer from me. Far and away the best football game on the Speccy.

Sorry, but while Match Day 2 may well have impressed at the time, it's hugely eclipsed by the brilliance of EHIC.

And yeah, we Speccy users don't have the luxury of Sensible Soccer, sadly, which for me is the best footballing experience across popular home computers/consoles. That was a stand out on the Amiga.

[Daveysloan]

Yeah, another vote here for Emlyn Hughes International Soccer, I really enjoyed that, it was far better than the Gazza & Lineker games.

Microprose Soccer wasn't bad, but sadly it's one of the very few games that actually was better on the beige commode.

[Pegaz]

Emlyn Hughes International Soccer is by a long way the most successful non-management football game on the Spectrum, and on the C64 too. It was denied the number one position by RoboCop for a few months in early 1989, and was still in both the Spectrum and C64 full-price top 10 in August 1991.

Yes, in terms of playability, theres no better soccer game, although Emlyn Hughes is basically an enhanced version of the legendary Commodore International Soccer from 1983.
I've never really enjoyed the football simulations on the Spectrum back in the day, the last one I remember trying was Emilio Butragueno football, but I quickly gave up.
The only Spectrum football game that I like is the homebrew title ZX Striker, which features only free kicks, but its very playable and addictive.
The C64 simply shines in this genre, because there are also great Microprose soccer, Super Cup football, Kick Off 2 or Graeme Souness Int. Soccer, which is a really nice Sencible Soccer port from Zeppelin games.

[Mpk]

Not a commercial release, but this year's Speccy Soccer does a spectacular job of the whole Sensi thing.

https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/3 ... ition_2023

[StanVanman]

Well, now I see WHY we never got a good football game - it would have been wasted on all of you

Seriously, though, I had a go and it's purest parp. The front end is so comically bad it took me 20 minutes just to work out how to control any of the players, let alone choose a different team. And when I finally did, it's just Match Day but faster (because it's only using about a third of the screen for the pitch) and a lot uglier.

You get possession, belt it along the touchline and chase after it, then cut diagonally up from the corner of the enormous penalty area and shoot into the net. (Or launch a straight-line daisy-cutter from 45 yards, watch it bounce off the keeper's dive and walk in the rebound. Or if you get the ball in the area, most of the time you can just walk it round the keeper.) I don't even know how to kick the ball into the air and I won my first game 6-0. What on Earth are you all seeing in it?

Not a commercial release, but this year's Speccy Soccer does a spectacular job of the whole Sensi thing.

Already covered it in the OP.

[StanVanman]

Yes, in terms of playability, theres no better soccer game, although Emlyn Hughes is basically an enhanced version of the legendary Commodore International Soccer from 1983.
I've never really enjoyed the football simulations on the Spectrum back in the day, the last one I remember trying was Emilio Butragueno football, but I quickly gave up.

Gary Lineker's Hot Shot is actually a translated version of Emilio Butragueno 2.

[AndyC]

Trouble is every one is compromising somewhere to make the rest work. Zoom in enough that teams are distinguishable, lose the amount of pitch you can see. Increase the size of the playable area, lose scrolling speed. Better player AI and ball physics, less time for drawing or a lower frame rate. Even things like the comically small centre circle are attempts to minimize the amount of redrawing necessary.

Honestly the Speccy just isn't very well suited to football games, the colour restrictions in particular add a lot of complexity and make fixing some problems harder (small sprites are fine when colour can be used to distinguish teams). Personally I think the 2.5D approach of things like Match Day work better as you're compromising less on the amount of pitch you can see whilst keeping teams relatively distinct, but then I'm not really a footy fan.

[StanVanman]

Michel Futbol Master is actually pretty good arcade fun, and I thought I might have a go at translating it, but it's in the most bananas mad tape format I've ever seen - 350 blocks of 129 bytes

[StanVanman]

Trouble is every one is compromising somewhere to make the rest work. Zoom in enough that teams are distinguishable, lose the amount of pitch you can see. Increase the size of the playable area, lose scrolling speed. Better player AI and ball physics, less time for drawing or a lower frame rate. Even things like the comically small centre circle are attempts to minimize the amount of redrawing necessary.

But something like Man Utd Europe shows that a big play area with decent graphics and distinguishable teams at respectable speed and smoothness is definitely doable. (I can't see that reorientating the pitch vertically would have much of an impact on anything - it's already scrolling in both axes anyway.) And zooming out a bit Speccy Soccer-style would mean less scrolling overall, so less CPU load. And Speccy Soccer's teams are very easy to tell apart.

[PeteProdge]

Seriously, though, I had a go and it's purest parp. The front end is so comically bad it took me 20 minutes just to work out how to control any of the players, let alone choose a different team.

I've got it going in under two minutes. And that compares favourably with the Amiga's Sensible World Of Soccer (my personal all-time favourite football game on any platform). Much prefer the front end to Match Day.

And when I finally did, it's just Match Day but faster (because it's only using about a third of the screen for the pitch) and a lot uglier.

I find it pretty realistic and a lot more visually pleasing over wide-headed ape-like players in Match Day 2.

[Lee Bee]

Emlyn Hughes seems to be the "definitive" Speccy football game, given how popular it is. But just because it's the "best of the bunch", doesn't necessarily make it a truly excellent football game to end all football games. Could it be improved? Absolutely. There isn't even any title music.

Personally I have a huge problem with the audio in all those classic footie games, including Emlyn Hughes. They're so sparse in sound effects, it's almost like watching a silent movie, and the ones which do have sound effects (Reebok, Italy 1990) are kind of irritating. That's why Speccy Soccer is my personal favourite as it has great audio.

[StanVanman]

I find it pretty realistic and a lot more visually pleasing over wide-headed ape-like players in Match Day 2.

The sprites are fine, but the pitch with the skinny black markings and the ludicrously wide penalty areas and the total absence of crowd/stadium/ad hoardings etc, ugh.

[PeteProdge]

The sprites are fine, but the pitch with the skinny black markings and the ludicrously wide penalty areas and the total absence of crowd/stadium/ad hoardings etc, ugh.

As someone remarked, it's a very tricky thing to get a realistic model of 11-a-side football running on the Spectrum at a reasonable speed. Compromises do have to be made. A decent game engine will take up more memory, so you also end up with a bare-bones league system and primitive front end. Oh and forget about menu music (the least important thing anyway).

[AndyC]

But something like Man Utd Europe shows that a big play area with decent graphics and distinguishable teams at respectable speed and smoothness is definitely doable. (I can't see that reorientating the pitch vertically would have much of an impact on anything - it's already scrolling in both axes anyway.) And zooming out a bit Speccy Soccer-style would mean less scrolling overall, so less CPU load. And Speccy Soccer's teams are very easy to tell apart.

But Man Utd compromises with the small centre circle etc. And whilst zooming out means less drawing, it's likely to mean more players on screen, which means more AI has to run so it's not necessarily less CPU.

[firelord]

In my spectrum era, the closest thing to Tehkan World Cup I owned was Five-a-side Footy



It looked like a poor-man Tehkan World Cup but at least it was playble. I also owned Match Day 1,2 and Super Soccer but I was not that impressed by them.
In the end I played both Match Days a lot.

[Ast A. Moore]

Emlyn Hughes International Soccer was the definitive football game on the ZX Spectrum.

I concur. Would could do a poll, but the winner is obvious. I, for one, would be voting for it.

[StanVanman]

But Man Utd compromises with the small centre circle etc. And whilst zooming out means less drawing, it's likely to mean more players on screen, which means more AI has to run so it's not necessarily less CPU.

I doubt drawing a bigger centre circle would be that much of a drain. (And if it was I'm sure I could live with the smaller one.) It already manages fine with 10 or more players onscreen at once.