Reviews

Football Manager was the first soccer management game I ever played. And what a game!

Understanding the game in the time and age it was designed is fundamental in order to appreciate it. But even today (2008) I take great pleasure in playing this game, 26 years after release.

The game is entirely text based with only the highlights of each match being drawn in glorious BASIC. The player takes the role of a 4th division club coach/manager and is their task to... well, win matches.

The player chooses a team to start with and in each season they play the League and FA Cup matches. If the club finishes the season in the top places it will be promoted to the next division, all the way up to the first. Naturally a club can also be demoted.

Players can manage their team; buying, selling and choosing which players will play each match. A rather simply, yet effective score mechanism based on Skill, Energy and Morale, gives the player an overview of his team and its elements abilities and provides the needed strategic elements.

As the game progresses the player will face matches against all types of teams. A good deal of the strategic thinking comes from knowing what players to choose for each match based on their skills, current league position of his team and the strengths and weaknesses of the opposing team.

While on the lower difficulty levels the game plays rather easily, it's on the higher difficulty levels Football Manager really shines and where the player has to put much more thinking into each match and accept the inevitable loses. It's much, much, more fun and exhilarating to play this game starting at difficulty level 4. But definitely you should try levels 5(Expert) to 7 (Genius). You'll see your progression will not be so easy. But then... that's soccer.

Football Manager is a 4!

Highway Encounter was one of those games responsible for sleepless nights in my bedroom without my parents ever knowing about it. I'd put my alarm clock to 2am (a time I knew they would be sleeping), get up and play it until 7 am.

The game premise is simply enough. Guide your Lasertron (a small weapon capable of destroying the alien's mother ship) through a highway riddled with aliens. There's no mind-bending curves, mazes, secret doors... just a straight highway. But in your course you will find obstacles and enemies. Both need to be navigated or handled with brute force by your drone.

This drone is a Vorton and you are given 5 Vortons. You can however only control one at a time. The others run on auto-pilot to push the Lasertron forward until you either step in the way or they bump into an obstacle. If your main Vorton die, you are given access to one of the remaining ones until you lose all Vortons -- at which time the game is lost.

Highway Encounter was a unique game, and still is to this day. The concept was incredibly addicting and the technical achievements nothing to ignore. The 3D graphics were clear and crisp and the animation was impressively smooth.

Manic Miner is the quintessential Spectrum game; an arcade experience with immediate goals, progressive difficulty, colorful, simple controls and instructions that can be laid out in one paragraph.

Of course it was also highly addictive and fun to play. Manic Miner ranks among my favorite games of all times and its simple drawn character, an icon I will never forget.

The objective of the game is simple. Collect all the objects on the screen and move to the now blinking cage-like door to proceed to the next level. Watch your air supply represented by an horizontal white bar and make sure you finish before it runs out.

The game was however fiendishly difficult. Despite being all about timed actions and pixel-precise jumps, even with the help of my notes it took me forever to finish it. You are only given 3 lives and the loss of one means you'll have to start over on that screen. The game can become frustrating. But that was widely accepted back then and Manic Miner was a favorite among many who would spend hours and hours playing the game and taking their notes on how to better finish each room.