Producer: Silverbird
Retail Price: £2.99
Author: Timothy Closs

After watching England's performance in the European Championships recently, you might think you could do better yourself. Timothy Gloss, programmer of the CRASH Smashes I Ball and I Ball 2, now gives you the opportunity to play European 5-A-Side.

The match is played on an aerially viewed, vertically scrolling pitch surrounded by a barrier against which you can bounce the ball to pass an opponent.

You always control the player nearest to the ball; highlighted by a flashing arrow. Dribbling is automatic and tackling is achieved by colliding with the player in possession. You can kick along the ground or into the air. The ball's size gives an indication of its height.

The goalkeeper can only be controlled when the ball goes inside the six yard box. He can dive left or right and, if he makes contact with the ball, immediately lobs it up the field.

COMMENTS

Joysticks: Kempston, Sinclair
Graphics: smoothly animated, monochromatic sprites
Sound: snappy title tune plus spot effects and the odd piece of digitised speech
Options: one or two players, choice of pitch colour and match duration

I couldn't believe it when I heard that Timothy Closs had written a football game, but the first thing that strikes you about the presentation of European 5-A-Side is its similarity to the superb I Ball games. There's even the same use of digitised speech which, unfortunately, isn't quite as clear. The overhead view is certainly a new angle to football games, though the players move quite slowly, especially when there are several on the screen. The real disappointment is that the computer team presents no challenge whatsoever. The only redeeming feature is the two-player mode which should increase the lastability of the game. European 5-A-Side is not in the same league as Match Day II but at the price it's not too bad and should appeal more to younger football fans.
PHIL [68%]

I have never been overly fond of football games, and European 5-A-Side has done absolutely nothing to change this opinion. Graphically the game has some nice touches - especially the bird's eye view of the pitch. But sadly, the whole game is far too easy to play.
MARK [44%]

BARGAIN BASEMENT

Come on down! The Pryce is right! (Groan - Ed) Once again Nat Pryce single-handedly guides us through the treacherous world of the budget game.

Silverbird
£1.99
Reviewer: Nat Pryce

Twenty-one nil! Now that's what I call a good result; a score even Stefan Edberg would be proud of, if, of course, he didn't play tennis. And purely by coincidence, twenty-one nil is one of my best scores in Five-A-Side Footy. Not bad, eh?

To get back from all that self indulgent boasting and into the review. FASF (as I'll call it from now on), is the latest game-ette from the frantic fingers of Timothy Closs, author of those slices of software succulence, I Ball and I Ball II. It is a vertically scrolling, monochrome kick-around, viewed from above and packed with Closs' usual nifty graphics, blurpy tunes and, of course, speech - voices rasp out 'Goal Goooal' and 'Go For It' during both the title tune and the game.

All this would be hunky dory if it wasn't for the difficulty factor, or rather lack of one (to use an ancient reviewer's cliche). I'm sure you thought my phenomenal score was simply due to my natural talent and high games playing skill; but it isn't! No, in fact FASF is ludicrously easy. So easy that, after about three goes, you'll become completely bored with the game and may have to resort to Neighbours instead. You have been warned...

Label: Silverbird
Author: Timothy Closs
Price: £1.99
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Rikard Jones

Well blow me over and strike me down if it isn't another football simulation. Could it be something to do with the time of year? Nah. This is Silverbird's offering to the genre and not only is it on budget - it's a pretty spiffy game too.

The reason why European 5-A-Side is more interesting than all the other budget soccer efforts is immediately apparent - it looks at the game from a completely different angle ie; a bird's eye view rather than the usual camera side-on view. This has meant a slightly different approach to the graphics - particularly the ball movement.

Better still the sound effects are quite incredible with digitized speech providing a commentary on the game - check out of the David Coleman-meets-the-Daleks rendition of "G-Goal", not to mention the other stuff it pumps out.

The gameplay is strong. You control one man at a time. The man currently under control is indicated by a large arrow above his head. To pass the ball you tap the fire button once. The ball will only go as far as you want relative to on how fast you were running at the time.

For those dramatic goal shots you can get a long range lob shot by keeping your thumb on the fire key a bit longer. The lob shot is particularly impressive because you actually get the feeling that the ball is being blasted high into the air (it gets bigger as it comes towards you) much preferable to that "oh no it's not another blob moving about the screen." you get with most football games.

This being five a side, if you don't fancy the direct approach you can always blast the ball against the wall. This gives you a sort of ricochet effect. At first the computer play is a bit stupid, its defence could be generously described as 'sloppy'. But don't let that fool you, because the Speccy has one killer player. This is the goalie, he is no ordinary Joe, no siree. This goalie has been taking lessons from Peter Shilton and Gordon Banks and he's virtually unbeatable. When the goalie saves a shot he lobs it upfield for the centre forwards to start a counter attack. This sort of thing can be quite effective ("I was robbed, Saint, robbed")

There are criticisms; where this game fails is in its animation, which is very slow. This is probably due to having too many sprites on the screen at one time. Worse still, once you have clocked the game a few times there are no higher computer play still levels so that's it. Siiverbird has tried though with a pitch colour changer and options to change the game at half time to last from 3 mins to 5 mins or even 10 mins.

Here they come, here they come, here they come! As predictable as rain at Wimbledon, the deluge of footy games make it through the tunnel (just) in time for the World Cup. Just like the Biggest Match, there can only be one eventual winner. So who, at the end of the day, will emerge with the shiny gold goblet and who, will be saying "Well, our marketing gameplan was sound, but the programmers didn't really give 100%. And it was an awfully partisan crowd"...

Label: Silverbird
Price: £2.99
Reviewer: Garth Sumpter

Ere we go, 'ere we go, 'ere we go. And there, for the want of a playable game, goes Five a Side Football. There are some nice touches to the game and make no mistake but football games are most tricky on computer and very few games have the ability to get away with it, and Five A Side football is an excellent example of not getting away with anything at all really.

Play is either between two punters or, if you're short of friends, you can play against the computer. Each player has five in their squad (although the goalkeeper is left entirely to his own devices) and control passes to whichever player is closest to the ball as indicated by the flashing arrow of doom that appears above them. The game is a bird's eye view from above and any miscreant magpie could easily score a few direct hits on any of the players as they all move soooo slowly as to be easy targets. In fact, it's probably the lethargic progress of the game that is the single most annoying factor to the game along with the sampled speech telling you to "Go for it!"

Play is by joystick or keyboard, moving your highlighted players around until they get possession. They can then dribble until they are tackled or shoot via a quick dab on the fire button, with a longer press sending the ball scooting through the clouds to no great effect except leaving yet another hole in the battered old ozone layer (yea, let's get socially aware eh kids?)

Each half is three, five or a masochistic ten (count 'em) minutes long, punctuated by the occasional sampled roar of the crowd and the snores of whoever's playing the game. If you can tell that I didn't get much from Five A Side Football then you'd be spot on. The game is slow, the graphics are quite reasonable and the sampled speech is as good as you'll get. The main problem is the whole package comes together to give you a game that's as interesting as the sex life of the average Benedictine monk and about as watchable.

Spectrum £2.99cs
C64 £2.99cs
CPC £2.99cs

This budget kick around for 8-bit machines started the season strongly - topping the league in the early part of the year. Unfortunately it was knocked off the top when the big cheque books came out for a series of superior full price footy launches later in the year. Provided good end to end entertainment with an efficient dribbling and passing mechanism.

Silverbird
Spectrum/Amstrad £2.99

Just for a change, here's a football game that doesn't feature all the World Cup teams or give astrological profiles of the Cameroon First XI. This is just good, old, played-in-sports-centres-by-balding-overweight-business-men Five-A-Side. Well, calling it "good" is perhaps a bit of an overstatement, this being one of the weakest of the current crowd of soccer sims. The Spectrum version starts off with some crisp sampled speech, but from there it's all downhill. The game is slowsville, the viewed-from-above players look like they're bent in the middle as they run around, and tackling the opposing team can sometimes get them very confused, causing them to run backwards and forwards on the spot. Yuk.