Nostalgia is a lot of smelly old bottoms, this much we know. Sure, stuff was brilliant when you were a kid, but just because you liked it when you were a young’un doesn’t mean it’s any good now.
Take Fingermouse – a curled up bit of paper on a man’s finger. What a rubbish idea. You liked it at the time because you knew no better. Same thing goes for computer games. Why would you spend your time playing something as obviously archaic as Pole Position when you could be throwing state-of-the-art, photo-realistic cars round tracks in Gran Turismo?
Not all games age with time though, as this week’s Game That Time Forgot will demonstrate – Sensible Soccer.
Sensible Soccer isn’t really a game that time forgot, it’s more of a
game that people lost contact with over time, though it always kept a
place in their hearts.
And that makes the new Radica Arcade Legends Plug And Play version
of Sensible Soccer the Friends Reunited of computer games. Though
people think they’re happy with their FIFA and their International
Superstar Soccer, they can’t help but sneak back and shack up with
their first love. But has Sensi stood the test of time?
At first, the game isn’t much to look at – 22 tiny blocky men on a
vast football pitch viewed from above – ISS Pro Evolution it ain’t. And
the crowd noise sounds like the noise a waste disposal unit makes when
you drop your watch down it. And, as the Radica has copied the
Megadrive version of the game, there’s a terrible piece of nasty
videogame music that constantly plays underneath all the action. But
the gameplay…
Oh, the gameplay. It all rushes back to you so quickly. The
physically impossible 40-yard curling screamers, the heroic diving
headers, the ‘spinning round and round’ ball control technique. In the
13 years since Sensible Soccer was released, football games have
certainly got more realistic to look at, but they’ve lost the instant
joy that Sensi had.
Sensible Soccer succeeded because you could see so much of the pitch
all the time. And because it was fast. And because you could beat teams
18-0. And, crucially, anybody could play it. You didn’t have to study a
manual for a month practising shoulder-pad/analogue-stick/X-button
finger contortions. One button is all you need to pass, shoot and tackle. It was, and
still is, perfect in it’s economy.
Like most games, one player Sensi was fantastic. But two player Sensi was mindblowing.
And then there were the player names. Never one to bother with
licensing player names, Sensi is full of people called Eric Centona and
Jean-Pierre Pepin. Or you can dispense with real teams all together and
play as a Custom Team (hecklerspray recommends the team Dance Craze -
Disco is a tasty little forward).
If having a version of Sensible Soccer that plugs straight in to
your telly still doesn’t sell it, the Plug and Play comes with two
other games. Cannon Fodder – tiny men run around shooting baddies – is
worth the asking price alone. And Mega-Lo-Mania… well, we’re sure some
people like Mega-Lo-Mania.
The real draw, as we all know, is Sensible Soccer. We’ve been given a second chance to love it. And we’re not sure we can ever go back.
Find Sensible Soccer Plug And Play At Kelkoo.co.uk
[story by Stuart Heritage]
