Producer: Gremlin Graphics
Retail Price: £7.99
Author: Chris Kerry

In direct competition with Ocean's Matchday II comes Gremlin's latest big-name licence, Gary broker's Superstar Soccer. Similar to Mr Ritman's game, this gives the player the dual aspects of management and real playing action, but approaches them quite differently.

The game is structured into four divisions of sixteen teams, with the player's team starting in the fourth, playing both league and cup games. My of the four division tables can be examined, as well as a teams' statistics, set-up and list of players.

When the player starts a match, he can change the control of the coach, centre forward and goalie to human or computer. If all three are set to computer control, the player can elect not to watch the match, but just let the computer work out the result.

The player only has one footballer to control for the whole match - the computer follows the action on the ball, which means that the player's centre can be a long way off screen. When the player has the ball, he can either pass, by holding the joystick towards a player and tapping the button, or shoot, by holding down the button.

A knock-out league cup competition is also held during the season, giving the player a chance to go for a trophy as well as the league title.

COMMENTS

Joysticks: Cursor, Kempston, Sinclair
Graphics: Cluttered text on the options screen, and poor during a game
Sound: lacking
Options: extensive menu system, with plenty of onscreen information

What has happened to the software industry? There are more football games on the market than I've had hot dinners - and that's saying something! Unfortunately Gary Lineker's Superstar Soccer holds nothing new. The game isn't very well laid out, and the options menu is cluttered with text. The playing screen isn't any better, with poorly animated and difficult-to-see footballers running around the garish pitch. Gary Lineker's Superstar Soccer is a sort of cross between Football Director and Matchday II - but hasn't the flair or playability of either.
NICK [54%]

Not having control over the whole team is strange - you can't even tell which player is under your control, making the action hard to follow, especially when you're at one end of the pitch and the ball is at the other! it also means that you have a much less significant part in the game - in Matchday II you have a feeling of complete control and are able to set up moves how you want to. In the light of Matchday II, Gary Lineker's Superstar Football is a very poor offering - I know which one I'd rather buy.
BYM [33%]

Gary Lineker's Superstar Soccer is very much in the vein of Football Manager. Managing a football team end guiding it to the top of the league does have its appeal, but I prefer to control the action on the field rather than off it. The graphics are barely average, with very little to make them stand out. On the whole this is a good football management game, but Matchday II is still the definitive football game as far as I'm concerned.
ROBIN [67%]

Gremlin
£7.99
Reviewer: Marcus Berkmann

"... And now the big match of the winter between those software giants,Ocean Utd and Gremlin Academicals, as they both try and steal each other's thunder with top-ranking footie sims on the Spectrum. What do you think, Greavsie?"

"Wor gor grunge wor fwunk, Saint."

"Well of course. We sent cub reporter Marcus Berkmann to weight up the challengers..."

Gary's done good, Jimmy. All the lads done good. It was the right result on the day, Jimmy, they gave 469035470000 per cent. Meanwhile, we have Gary (in by helicopter for the press launch - pass the roamaphone) lending his name to this little number from Gremlin, another of that company's management game-cum-footie action simulations a la Footballer Of The Year. That game, which came out a year or so ago, was a bit of a mishmash - beautifully programmed but a little deficient in the game department. And, well, this is much the same.

Super Soccer isn't as glossy as its predecessor, possibly 'cos there's rather more to it, but I'm not sure this hybrid approach can ever be very successful. Most people want either a management game (like The Double or Football Director) or a straight ahead action simulation like Match Day. Combine the two and you don't take the best of each - you just take half of each. And two halves don't always make a whole (Thank you, Wittgenstein, Ed)

You're playing six-a-side, in a division of 20-odd, but you only play seven games a season. Confused? in fact you can change the rules to play any number of games if you wish Your players are graded in terms of skill (0 to 99) and age (youth is best) and you have a squad of 10 (two subs, two reserves). To upgrade your team you can recruit a player, trade players with other clubs and improve your team by giving them extra training. All these cost training points - you start with 250 of these and you get more and more all the time (why and how, I'm not quite sure).

In terms of sheer information, this game's almost as comprehensive as The Double, but Johnson Scanatron put it to better use. Choosing your team and then keeping it together is both very easy and reliant on large quantities of luck. There isn't the subtlety here of many other similar games.

Then we move to the game itself, which to be frank is not a patch on Match Day II. It's harder to control, less well animated and generally less fun to play. You can choose joystick control of centre forward or goalie (all the other members of the team will be looked after by the computer), and if you take control of the coach too, you can decide on your attacking and defensive tactics (three choices each). Or if the game bits bore you to death, you don't need to watch them at all, and can go straight to the results.

It's perfectly playable and all that, but there's nothing here that would recommend itself to fans of any of the game's I mentioned above. It's got a pic of Gary Lineker on it, of course, which may sway some people, but if you're really determined to buy it you shouldn't let that put you off. Otherwise, in the words of the French midfield maestro Michel Platini, "Malade comme un perroquet, Brian, je suis choked, et gutted..."

Label: Gremlin
Author: Colin Dooley, Chris Kerry
Price: £7.99
Memory: 48K/128K
Reviewer: Christina Erskine

Gary Lineker's Super Star Soccer attempts to combine building up a skilful team with actually playing the games. Two genres in the one game, with you trading and recruiting your players, as well as taking part in League and Cup matches.

No surprise that, with so many elements incorporated, both areas are treated rather superficially.

When playing the fixtures, you can choose whether to control both your centre-forward and goalkeeper, either or neither. Also check you've selected a suitable match length time - because when it says 'real time', it means it, and it'll take a long time if each match is 90 minutes long.

The joystick/keyboard options for passing, shooting and generally staying the match, are unnecessarily cumbersome and frequently do not translate into the ball movements that you intended.

To pass, the eight joystick directions represent your team mate's positions, rather than the exact position you wish to pass to - and it appears to make little difference anyway since your colleagues will often just stand there and watch the ball float past, millimetres from their feet. To shoot at goal, you must keep a close look at an on-screen indicator which fluctuates back and forth, determining the direction of your shot. Frankly, it doesn't appear to matter - I sailed into Division 2 from the 4th in straight seasons, without ever feeling I'd mastered the playing controls properly.

The game seems 10 nave cheerful disregard for football rules. You can score direct from throw-ins. Preston North End repeatedly barged my goalkeeper, knocked the ball out of his hands in order to score, and the keepers, on several occasions, took goal kicks from inside the net. Surely the game's sponsor, who has never been booked in his life, would have something to say about all this?

On-field the computer-generated ball play is so quirky that the team seemed to do just as well whether the centre forward I was controlling was haring up and down the field like an all-parts-intact Bryan Robson, or standing on the sidelines.

The Lineker name should ensure that it will sell well, but Match Day II beats it.

Gremlin's own goal?

Fantasies are made of this: join a fourth division team as centre forward and win promotion to the first division. Not only does Gary Lineker's Superstar Soccer give you the chance to participate in the games but it also allows you to play manager (and coach) and make all the really important decisions. Unfortunately Gremlin's program is not the stuff of which dreams are made...

There are two basic sections to the game; on-screen playing and the tactical decision making. During the former you wear the centre forward's shirt and the computer handles the rest of the players. The idea is to anticipate the movements of the rest of the team and to put yourself in the best possible attacking position.

Whenever the ball goes out of play (throw ins. free kicks etc ) the screen changes and gives the player the chance to make the all-important tactical decisions e.g. the player can choose to Shoot, Pass or Mix. SHOOT means that all the players on your side in a position to kick the ball will have a shot at goal. PASS means the rest of the players will try and pass the ball to the centre forward (you) and MIX is, as the name suggests, a mixture of both. There are also defensive decisions to be made including cover (which is a concerted effort by your team members to regain possession of the ball) and defend which results in the players staying back and shoring up the defence.

For each match a time compressor is included, where the player can speed up the game (this compressor varies with the various versions but it can be set to run at 10 times normal speed on all versions). This is jolly handy if you don't want to sit through the full 45 minutes per side.

It's not all fun and games on the turf though; those all-important managerial decisions have to be made - should you try to recruit a new player? Should you try and trade one of your ageing players? Should you use some of your valuable trade points at the start of the season in an attempt to improve the general performance of your team?

Gary Lineker's Superstar Soccer is a valiant effort to combine two highly popular minority interests - the football game simulation and the football strategy game. Unfortunately all it manages to do is oversimplify both types of game and consequently leaves the player feeling a little left out of it all.

Reviewer: Andy Smith

RELEASE BOX
C64/128, £9.99cs, £14.99dk, Out Now
Spec, £9.99cs, Out Now
Ams, £9.99cs, £14.99dk, Imminent
Atari ST, £19.99dk, Imminent

Predicted Interest Curve

1 min: 55/100
1 hour: 60/100
1 day: 45/100
1 week: 20/100
1 month: 10/100
1 year: 0/100