The Greatest Retro Football Video Game Ever - Final result

After nearly a month of voting, we can now finally announce the winner of our contest to decide The Football Attic's Greatest Retro Football Video Game Ever... and here's how you voted!

Yes, friends, you've voted Sensible Soccer to be the top retro football computer game of all time, comprehensively beating Football Manager with almost three quarters of all the votes cast in the Final.

Over the last week, only one winner ever seemed likely, although Kevin Toms' management sim had Sensible Soccer on the rack for the first couple of days. In the end, however, it was the playing sim that stormed through to claim its place in the Football Attic Hall of Fame as your favourite football video game title.

Our huge and sincere thanks to all of you that took part in our vote-off from start to finish. It's been great fun seeing who you've been supporting during each round!

And now, let's remind ourselves of why Sensible Soccer is such a worthy champion... Once again, many thanks to you all!

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The Greatest Retro Football Video Game Ever: The Final

And so it's come to this... Fifty of the greatest retro football video game titles have been whittled down to just two. Falling by the wayside have been the classic and the clumsy, the majestic and the 'meh', but now we arrive at the Final to find a monumental showdown between two giants of the home computer age.

On the one hand, we have Sensible Soccer, a playing simulation par excellence. 'Sensi' provided everything the football fan could ever want. After-touch control, editable squad lists and team kits, plus different pitch styles and goal replays were just the icing on the cake. What really made it a great game, however, was its sheer simplicity. There were no 3D graphics to render, no sluggish sprites to animate - just a brevity of detail that gave the game its slickness and playability. A masterpiece of arcade football brilliance.

And then we have Football Manager, the grand-daddy of all management simulation games. Originally made for the ZX81 and ZX Spectrum, your job was to manage a squad of players with enough élan to help them rise from Division Four to Division One over successive seasons. By selecting your best individuals and buying better ones where necessary. it was possible to enjoy each match (shown in isometric 3D) and steer your team to ultimate glory. Detailed without being confusing, this was another triumph for the 'less is more' school of video game programming.

But which one gets your vote? Which game had you gripped with addiction every time you played it, and which one is deserving of the title 'Greatest Retro Football Video Game Ever'?

Simply select one of the two titles below, register your selection and in seven days' time, we'll announce the winner as chosen by you, our beloved football nostalgia lovers.

Make your decision, be brave, and may the best retro football video game win...


POLL NOW CLOSED
Thanks for taking part in our vote-off. You can see the result of the Final here!

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The Greatest Retro Football Video Game: Semi Final result

The last five days of voting are finally over and now we can announce who has reached our Greatest Retro Football Video Game Final!

Thanks to all the votes you registered, we ended up with a clear winner in Group A and a tie for first place in Group B!

Despite a neck-and-neck battle with Sensible World of Soccer over the first four days, it was Sensible Soccer that eventually stretched its lead towards the end of the Group A campaign to come out top, In Group B, however, there was a three-horse race that proved exciting right to the bitter end!

From the word 'go', Football Manager led from the front, picking up many of your votes, with Championship Manager very close behind. Then in the second half of the voting period, FIFA: Road to World Cup 98 rapidly gained in popularity, and in the final hours before the deadline picked up enough crucial votes to tie for first place with Football Manager. Championship Manager missed out on a three-way tie by just one vote.

Here are the total number of votes cast:

Group A

Sensible Soccer (1992, CA/AST) - 21 votes

Sensible World of Soccer (1994, CA/PC) - 13 votes

FIFA Soccer 95 / FIFA 95 (1995, SMD) - 10 votes

Emlyn Hughes International Soccer (1988, C64/ZXS/AST/CA/AMS) - 4 votes

Match Day (1984, ZXS/C64/AMS/BBCM) - 4 votes

Tracksuit Manager (1988, ZXS/C64/CA/AST) - 1 vote

Group B

FIFA: Road to World Cup 98 (PC/NGB/SMD/SNES/PS1/N64) - 15 votes

Football Manager (1981, ZXS/ZX81/BBCM) - 15 votes

Championship Manager (CA/AST) - 14 votes

Kick Off 2 (1990, CA/AST/AMS) - 6 votes

Kick Off (1989, CA/AST) - 2 votes

Actua Soccer (1995, PC/PS1) - 1 vote

(Total responses: 54)

With 'FIFA 98' and Football Manager sharing top spot in Group B, we decided to go completely retro by tossing a coin to decide who should reach the Final. Then we realised that this was an outdated and highly unsatisfactory method and opted instead to count the votes gained by both titles in the previous round. It's not just UEFA that can lean heavily on a co-efficient system, you know... ;-)

Having totalled up all the previous votes, we found that FIFA: Road to World Cup 98 picked up 10 while Football Manager scored 26, so it's Kevin Toms legendary management simulation that goes through to meet Sensible Soccer from Group A in the Final.

And that's what's coming next on The Football Attic - the grand finale that will decide the Greatest Retro Football Video Game Ever! Watch this space for details of how to vote soon!

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The Greatest Retro Football Video Game Ever: Semi Finals

Welcome back to the Greatest Retro Football Video Game vote-off where we find ourselves at the semi-final stage!

We had a great response to the First Round of our competition, so thank you to everyone that took part. The results were as follows:

Simulation: 1970's/1980's

Kick Off (1989, CA/AST) - 16 votes
Emlyn Hughes International Soccer (1988, C64/ZXS/AST/CA/AMS) - 14 votes
Match Day (1984, ZXS/C64/AMS/BBCM) - 10 votes
Microprose Soccer (1988, PC/CA/AMS/AST/C64/ZXS) - 9 votes
Match Day II (1987, AMS/C64/ZXS) - 8 votes
International Soccer (1983, C64) - 6 votes
Peter Shilton’s Handball Maradona (1986, ZXS/C64/AMS) - 4 votes
World Cup / World Cup Carnival (1986, C64/ZXS/CPC) - 4 votes
Gary Lineker’s Superstar Soccer (1987, C64/ZXS/AMS) - 3 votes
Peter Beardsley’s International Football (ZXS/C64/CA/AST) - 2 votes
Pele’s Soccer (1980, ATA) - 2 votes
‘Football’ (1975, BIN) - 2 votes
NASL Soccer (1979, INT) - 0 votes
World Soccer (1987, SMS) - 0 votes

Simulation: 1990's Group A

Kick Off 2 (1990, CA/AST/AMS) - 16 votes
FIFA Soccer 95 / FIFA 95 (1995, SMD) - 13 votes
Actua Soccer (1995, PC/PS1) - 9 votes
International Superstar Soccer (1995, SNES) - 7 votes
Italy 1990 (1990, ZXS/C64/CA/AMS/AST) - 7 votes
Manchester United Europe (1991, ZXS/AST/CA/AMS/C64/ARC) - 4 votes
Super Kick Off (1991, SMD/NGB/SNES) - 2 votes
World League Soccer ‘98 (1998, PS1) - 2 votes
Gazza’s Super Soccer (1990, C64/ZXS/AMS/CA/AST) - 2 votes
Dino Dini’s Soccer (1994, SMD/SNES) - 1 vote
Super Soccer (1992, SNES) - 1 vote
European Championship (1992, PC/AST/CA) - 0 votes
Olympic Soccer (1996, PS1) - 0 votes

Simulation: 1990's Group B

Sensible Soccer (1992, CA/AST) - 27 votes
Sensible World of Soccer (CA/PC) - 25 votes
FIFA: Road to World Cup 98 (PC/NGB/SMD/SNES/PS1/N64) - 10 votes
FIFA 99 (WIN/PS1/N64) - 6 votes
Multi-Player Soccer Manager (1991, ZXS/C64/AMS) - 4 votes
FIFA International Soccer / FIFA 94 (PC/CA/SNES/SMD/SMS/SGG/NGB) - 4 votes
Actua Soccer 3 (PC/PS1) - 3 votes
World Cup Soccer - Italia 90 (1990, ZXS/C64/AMS) - 2 votes
Michael Owen’s World League Soccer ‘99 (PS1) - 2 votes
Striker (1992, CA/AST/SMD/SNES) - 1 vote
Champions of Europe (1992, SMS) - 1 vote
John Barnes European Football (1992, CA/AST) - 0 votes

Management / Hybrid

Football Manager (1981, ZXS/ZX81/BBCM) - 26 votes
Championship Manager (CA/AST) - 19 votes
Tracksuit Manager (1988, ZXS/C64/CA/AST) - 9 votes
Footballer of the Year (1986, ZXS/C64/AMS) - 7 votes
Premier Manager 2 (1993, PC/CA/AST) - 7 votes
Player Manager (1990, CA/AST/PS1) - 5 votes
Footballer of the Year 2 (1989, ZXS/C64/AMS) - 4 votes
The Boss (1984, C64) - 3 votes
Brian Clough’s Football Fortunes (1987, ZXS) - 2 votes
Kenny Dalglish Soccer Manager (1989, ZXS/C64/AMS/CA/AST) - 2 votes
The Double (1987, ZXS/C64) - 1 vote

(Total responses: 45)

And so to the Semi Finals where the top three from all of the above sections have now been drawn into two new groups - A and B. Your task, should you choose to accept it, is simply to pick your favourite video game from both groups. Once again, you have five days to cast your votes, after which the most popular video game from Group A and Group B goes through to our Grand Final.

Here's the voting form - now it's over to you... Good luck! :)



Key:
AMS - Amstrad CPC; AST - Amiga ST; BBCM - BBC Micro; C64 - Commodore 64; CA - Commodore Amiga; N64 - Nintendo 64; NGB - Nintendo GameBoy; PC - Personal Computer; PS1 - PlayStation 1; SMD - Sega Mega Drive; SNES - Super Nintendo; ZX81 - Sinclair ZX81; ZXS - Sinclair ZX Spectrum.

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The Greatest Retro Football Video Game Ever: First Round

How do you like your video game football? Do you like the excitement of scoring goals out on the pitch, or do you prefer the cerebral challenge of managing your team to glory?

Either way, the world of computer soccer has offered much in the way of fun, thrills and spills down the years, from the basic battyness of Binatone's 'Football' to the ultra-realistic games we know today. But what's so fun about manipulating a not-quite-right version of Robin Van Persie when you can immerse yourself in the retro world of blocky pixels and badly synthesised music?!

Yes, where The Football Attic's concerned, the less realistic it is, the better we like it - a sentiment we're sure you'll agree with... And that's why we've decided to find out which retro football video game is the best with the launch of our cunningly-titled 'Greatest Retro Football Video Game Ever' vote-off!

Over the last two weeks, you've been telling us which retro football games you think should make our starting list, and with thanks to all of you that did so, we can now begin Round 1.

We've arranged 50 titles into four groups: One for playing simulations of the 70's and 80's, two for playing simulations of the 1990's and one for management simulations. What we'd like you to do is to choose up to three favourites from each group. You've got five days to make your choices, and at the end of that period, the most popular three titles from each group will go through to the semi-finals. At that stage we'll have two groups of six where the winners will go through to the Final - more of which in due course...

For now, just pick up to three favourites from each of the groups below, and we'll fill you in on who's through to the next round in five days' time. Thanks for taking part!

Key:
AMS - Amstrad CPC; ARC - BBC Archimedes; AST - Amiga ST; ATA - Atari 2600; BBCM - BBC Micro; BIN - Binatone TV Master; C64 - Commodore 64; CA - Commodore Amiga; INT - Intellivision; N64 - Nintendo 64; NGB - Nintendo GameBoy; PC - Personal Computer; PS1 - PlayStation 1; SGG - Sega Game Gear; SMD - Sega Mega Drive; SMS - Sega Master System; SNES - Super Nintendo; WIN - Microsoft Windows; ZX81 - Sinclair ZX81; ZXS - Sinclair ZX Spectrum.

POLL NOW CLOSED
Thank you for all your votes in the First Round of our Greatest Retro Football Video Game vote-off. Here's how the voting went...

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The Greatest Retro Football Video Game Ever!

Way back in August 2012, on our second ever podcast, we covered the subject of football computer games and it was a whole heap of fun!

Chris and I were discussing the subject again recently while also observing it's been a while since we had a decent vote-off here in the Attic. Put 2 and 2 together and you get 4... which is a nice bit of maths for you, but nothing really to do with computer games... To that end, we decided we simply had to decide once and for all which retro football computer game is the best ever!

Now, that word 'retro' is there for a very important reason and not just because we happen to be a nostalgia website. No, it's there so we can apply some kind of cut-off in history, lest the poll be overwhelmed with embryos who never got to experience the thrill of three minutes of gameplay after half an hour of epileptic-fit inducing load screens, and for whom the best game ever just depends on which version of 'FIFA' we're on.

For us, to make the cut, the games have to have a large degree of unrealism! 'FIFA' may have realistic player faces (and indeed names) and may look so real as to be almost indistinguishable from a match on TV, but we don't care about that! Where's the charm in realism versus the delights of a blocky sprite going by the name of Alun She-Ra? It's all very well being able to score a screaming volley and watch it back from 30 different angles, but don't we all pine for a simpler time, when goals could only be scored one of two different ways? No? Oh ok... maybe not that last one!

My own personal journey through retro video games starts with one of the worst ever... Arctic Software's 'World Cup'; a truly awful game, but it makes the cut because it's my first... and we're running the poll ;-)

So what else makes the list? Well, that's where you come in... We want your suggestions and if you feel so inclined, a justification of why you think your nomination deserves a chance. And you don't have to limit yourself to your favourite as that's what the vote-off's for. You can nominate any game you've ever played... once we've got a good list, we'll set up the vote-off and let the games begin!

Right - as hinted at, there are some rules... not many though.

1)  The cut-off point - we had to pick a point in time to decide between retro and modern and the point we've chosen is right before the PS2 was released. Why? The PS2 introduced the first batch of almost-realistic games. Sure, the PS1 had 'FIFA' and Actua Soccer which were almost there, but they're blocky enough to shade that degree of unrealism.

2)  That's about it...

So, get nominating on the form below... and keep an eye on the list of games on the Vote-Off Candidates page.

Enjoy!

Rich (& Chris).




See also:
Our video game reviews...

• World Cup Soccer (ZX Spectrum)
• Heads Up (Soccer Football) (Vectrex)
• World Soccer (Sega Master System)
• Super Action Soccer (ColecoVision)
• NASL Soccer (Intellivision)
• Nintendo World Cup (Nintendo GameBoy)
• Pele's Soccer (Atari 2600)
• Striker (Amiga/ST/Megadrive)
• World Cup (C16)
• Football Manager (ZX Spectrum)

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Videoblog 5: World Cup Soccer (Macmillan Software)

If you thought all football computer games were about moving pixelated players around a pitch and scoring goals, think again. Back in 1986, one piece of software tried to entertain and educate kids with a two-in-one offering that was ambitious, if a little timid in its overall quality.

The title was World Cup Soccer and its combination of football statistics, team management and mini-game action caused one magazine reviewer at the time to liken it to Don Johnson with a wardrobe limitation.

To find out exactly what this means and to see whether England are capable of winning the World Cup, join Chris O as he brings you The Football Attic's fifth videoblog review.

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Heads Up (Soccer Football), Vectrex, 1983

Once upon a time, arcade games ruled the Earth. Space Invaders, PacMan, Frogger - these titles and many more cropped up everywhere from your local pub to the fish-and-chip shop at the end of your road. Bright colours, synthesised music and quirky sound effects were the alluring qualities that invited you to insert a 10p coin and immerse yourself in an alternative reality.

The explosion in the popularity of video games was extraordinary. New home consoles such as the Atari 2600 and the CBS ColecoVision quickly appeared and merely had to be hooked up to a TV to enjoy an arcade experience of sorts, but one system went even further with a portable all-in-one system that had its own TV built in.

The Vectrex console was originally launched by American company GCE in 1982, but Milton Bradley (makers of children's games such as Operation, Guess Who? and Twister) soon took over the running of GCE and consequently made the games system its own.

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World Soccer, (Sega) 1987

My mate Martin and his older brother Darren loved video games and video game consoles. The spare room in their house was like an Aladdin's Cave of computer-based entertainment, and I loved paying them a visit every weekend just to wallow in the splendour of it all.

Their shelves were packed with title after title - good, bad and downright peculiar - and yet strangely only one in particular has stuck in my mind after more than 25 years: World Soccer for the Sega Master System.

There's no reason why it remains so memorable with me other than the fact that the cartridge case was often displayed front-on rather than showing only the spine.

That minimalist cover with the grid and a cartoon-style leg obviously had enduring qualities in the way no manufacturer would dare emulate nowadays. I don't even remember playing the game either, although it's entirely possible that I did. Certainly the evidence that YouTube provides has stirred one or two long-dormant memories in the back of my mind.

So what about the game itself? Essentially this was arcade fare - bright, zingy colours, low resolution and squeaky synthesised music, but par for the course back in 1987. On boot-up, a cheery title screen preceded the playing options which offered the choice of either a regular game of football or a penalty shoot-out competition.

Choosing the former prompted a further screen in which you chose the nationality of your own team and that of your opponent. There were eight countries to choose from covering a wide range of credibility, depending on your viewpoint. Alongside the international heavyweights of Brazil, France, Italy, Argentina and West Germany were the USA and Japan (neither of whom had made any real impact on the World Cup at that point) and Great Britain, a team that didn't actually exist in football terms.

No matter. By selecting the two countries desired, you were treated to a Casio-keyboard rendition of the anthems for both - a nice touch, and one that certainly showed the attention to detail that the team strips lacked. West Germany in yellow shirts?

With the teams picked, it was on with the action as the two sets of six small players ran onto the pitch. The roar of the crowd was as confusing as it was loud. If you've ever held a rolled up newspaper to your ear and listened to a toilet flushing, you'll probably get fairly close to the sound that greeted the teams' arrival.

Once the game was under way, the players scurried around in an appealing fashion, chasing a nicely animated ball that give a simple depiction of rotation and movement. Unfortunately the bounce of the ball was so minimal that you'd have been forgiven for thinking it was filled with concrete. On the positive side, however, it was unlikely you'd have kicked the ball into touch, no matter how hard you'd kicked it.

Unlike the games of today, there weren't many special moves that the players could make other than dribbling, passing, shooting and slide tackling, but there was the possibility of executing an overhead kick in front of goal if you'd timed it right and if you were optimistic enough to think you could score from it.

If you did score, however, the crowd went wild!

(Sorry - 'a bunch of kaleidoscopic ants behind the goal did the lambada.' Well, it amounted to the same thing, really.)

You'd also get to see a digital scoreboard showing the current tallies for both sides, and just as well because the score didn't appear permanently on-screen during the match. The provision of double figures to display both teams' scores was rather redundant too, as the close interplay on the pitch was hardly likely to see one team score ten or more.

Upon completion of a game, there was a lovely little sequence showing a member of the winning team joyfully holding the World Cup trophy aloft while one of the losing team walked up to offer a gentlemanly handshake.

Drawn games were decided by a penalty shoot-out competition, but if you couldn't engineer the score to suit your needs, you could also play the penalties in isolation via the main menu screen. The same setup applied - pick two teams, enjoy the national anthems for as long as you could stand them, then try to plant the ball past the opposition goalkeeper more times than they did it to you.



In this instance we saw the players in all their full-size glory as you controlled either the kick taker or the goalkeeper. Again there was some nice (if basic) animation sequences in which the kicker was seen either sinking to his knees when his shot didn't go in or elatedly doing star jumps when they did.

And that was about it, really. All in all, World Soccer offered simple, easy fun. It wasn't perfect, that's for sure; the pace of the game could've been a little quicker and the ball ought to have rolled and bounced more than it did, but the graphics were vivid and the game was easy to play.

We therefore doff our hat to the imperfect qualities of World Soccer - a good arcade football game that used its charm to win you over in the end.

Check out our other football video game reviews:

• Super Action Soccer (1984)
• NASL Soccer (1979)
• Nintendo World Cup (1990)
• Pelé's Soccer (1980)
• Striker (1992)
• Football Manager (1982)

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Super Action Soccer, 1984

The Colecovision games console was much prized for its near-perfect arcade titles back in the early-1980s. With games like Donkey Kong Jr, Zaxxon and Q*Bert, you could be entertained by great graphics and top sounds in your own home just like the coin-operated classics.

Unfortunately when Super Action Soccer was published in 1984, little of that quality seemed to remain. Oh sure, the graphics were better than we’d seen in other games on other consoles... but only just.

Having booted up your Super Action Soccer cartridge (I wonder why it was never known as ‘SAS’, by the way?) you were quickly greeted by the sight of two teams lined up and ready to play. The players, for their part, looked like the symbols off a Gents toilet door - one team coloured light blue, the other in a shade of yellow we shall henceforth refer to as ‘Smoker’s handkerchief.’

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NASL Soccer (1979)

There is, in my view, a curious ratio that applies when you’re a child. It states that no matter how good the Christmas presents are that you receive, you will always be envious of those your friends received. This was the case back in the early 1980’s when I, as the grateful owner of a Sinclair ZX Spectrum, paid a visit to the home of my schoolmate, Trevor. At some point in my stay, he unveiled the prize offering from his festive haul – an Intellivision video game system. No contest.

The Atari 2600 console seemed to have been and gone by the time Intellivision arrived in the UK. Intellivision seemed incredibly modern and comprehensive by comparison. True, we still had a token piece of wood panelling to provide a supposed touch of class, but the Mattel-made system had strange hand-held controllers like telephone handsets connected to their mothership via a curly cord. Strange stuff indeed.

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Nintendo World Cup, 1990

We're delighted to say that Matthew Wassell is back in the Attic, and this time he's reliving a football computer game in glorious technicolour...

With it being yet another snowy afternoon in deepest Norfolk, my thoughts turn to the joys and heat of summer and in particular, the World Cup. Released in 1990 for the NES and Game Boy, Nintendo World Cup aimed to bring the excitement and glamour of the world’s most popular football tournament to the monochrome, handheld screen and having received it as a present from my grandmother 22 years and five World Cups ago, I've decided to try it out once more but this time on my trusty and significantly more modern, Gameboy Advance SP.

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Pelé's Soccer, 1980

At what point does the human brain reject the hopelessly inadequate images of our youth and demand something with more detail and clarity?

This question is most apposite when discussing classic video games. Take Pelé's Soccer, for example. Here was an arcade football game created for the Atari 2600 which should have proved that technology had moved on from the days of ‘pong football’. The reality, however, saw you moving players around on your screen that looked like pixelated blobs. Quite honestly, they could have been anything.

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Striker: Raging Against The Machine

Today we welcome Terry Duffelen from The Sound of Football podcast and Bundesliga Lounge who today brings us a wonderful guest post all about his favourite footy video game...

Steve Earle’s Copperhead Road, Socialist Worker, Ernest Hemmingway’s Men Without Women, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Lethal Weapon Pinball, Selhurst Park, Guinness and Super Nintendo (SNES). If you were to evacuate my conscious mind in the early Nineties and reassemble its elements as some grotesque Mental Pinterest then those fragments of ephemera are what would be displayed. But if I were to place an extra large pin on one of those elements to give it extra significance it would be the Guinness. However, I’ve not been asked to write about Guinness. I’ve been asked to write about an old video game, so for the purposes of this tortured preamble, I’ll say it would be my SNES.

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Arctic Software's World Cup (C16 & Plus/4)

THIS is the game I talked about in the podcast! Turns out it was the game that US Gold utilised for World Cup Carnival, which Chris mentioned (and the fantastic 200% article he mentioned is here).

The C64 version doesn't seem to be too bad, but this is what I had to put up with...

Football computer games...screw you!

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The Football Attic Podcast Episode 2: Computer Games

Welcome back for Episode 2 of the Football Attic Podcast!

This week we delve into the uber-nerdy world of football computer games and discover that Rich seems to be bitter about almost any game he's ever played, except for Sensible Soccer

So...prepare for reminiscence and rants as Chris and Rich relive their geeky pasts ;-)

Download it here - (or right-click and 'Save as' to save your own copy)

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Football Manager (1982)

I was a Spectrum kid. Aged only eleven, I became the proud and grateful owner of one of Clive Sinclair’s first colour computers. My parents didn’t earn much money, but they put some aside whenever they had it and when Christmas came around, they usually treated me to a special present or two. In 1982, they surpassed themselves by handing me my first ever home computer.

I’d like to think I repaid their huge expense by using my ZX Spectrum regularly, often spending hours on end typing in a long and ultimately error-ridden program from a magazine. Yet as we know, most kids are mainly interested in games rather than programming, and in the early 1980’s I was no different.

Despite the limited graphics and processing power on offer, most of the titles available seemed quite exciting back then, so when Football Manager came along, it went straight to the top of my ‘must have’ list. Written by Kevin Toms and published by Addictive Software, this was a game that asked you to pick a team, select the right players and guide them all the way to glory in the FA Cup or Division 1. A shrewd footballing brain was required to do so, let alone a bit of luck and a tape recorder that didn’t mangle up your most recently saved game.

Choose your weapon...

There was no fancy title screen to welcome you into the game. Instead, you were invited to choose your team, and by that it should be noted that you were picking a team name, not necessarily the players within it. As a West Ham fan, my game would always begin by typing in 16, after which I'd list my players with a swift press of the rubber key marked 'A'. Luckily for me, the default squad did feature some West Ham players but essentially this was a random selection of professionals from all teams that needed sorting out over the course of a season.

Kenny Sansom - pack your bags...

All players had a skill level from one to five, an energy level of one to twenty and a monetary value. As manager of your team, the first thing to identify was those players that were making up the numbers. Kenny Sansom - sorry, but a skill level of one and an energy level of seven just wouldn't cut the mustard. Luckily, such players could be sold, although whether you were prepared to accept a derisory offer from another team would be for you to decide.

Blackpool - lacking morale

With that out of the way, you were ready to begin your first match in Division 4 – the starting point for your initial league campaign. As advanced warning of what was to come, you were shown the head-to-head ratings for your team and your opponents. Here you could assess the strengths or weaknesses in defence, midfield and attack, along with the energy and morale levels of both teams. If things looked a little shaky, you could tweak your starting XI to make sure you had the optimum score in all areas. There wasn't much you could do about the Morale rating, though, save for winning a few consecutive games.

No goal - and no ball either

There was only so much tweaking you could do, however, and inevitably the match would have to go ahead. Having decided which colour your team would appear in for the season (only black or white, I'm afraid), you were ready to sit back and watch the action. Yes, it was primitive by today's standards, but in 1982 the sight of some crudely-drawn players animated jerkily on a bright green pitch was enough to induce huge amounts of excitement and stress in equal proportions.

One-nil to The Hammers!

The thing to bear in mind is that during the often lengthy match highlight sequences, there was a considerable element of randomness that added a frisson of apprehension to even the most one-sided games. You were never quite sure how many shots on goal either team would get (let alone how many would go in) and on a few rare occasions a shot that seemed to be going off target might be deflected in by one of your other players.

Sure, you weren't told who was taking a shot or who had scored, but somehow that wasn't important. You merely wanted to see whether your team had scored more goals than your opponents, and it wasn't until the final score was displayed that you could finally breathe a sigh of relief that it was all over.

Plenty of goals at Gresty Road...

Having cast an eye over the other results from around the country and assessed your place in the league table, it was back to the drawing board to begin the whole process again. As well as league games, there were also occasional FA Cup matches thrown in for good measure and with a good run of form these could increase your club's income so that you could buy more players or pay off the loan you'd taken out, depending on your financial disposition.

Never mind, Hull - plenty of
games left

Come the end of the season, what with all the buying and selling of players and selection of teams, you probably felt as though you'd had quite an insight into the world of football team management. Naturally enough, it barely scratched the surface of what things were like in the real world – or even the video game simulations that we know nowadays – but the game was a masterpiece of coding and simple gameplay. It caught the imagination like wildfire back in the day and it's a testament to Kevin Tom's work that the title was still on sale many years after it was originally launched.

West Ham promoted!

As an 11-year-old, I loved playing Football Manager and my classmates at school did too. I know this because for one brief period, several of us would compare our results and league positions daily having written the important details down on bits of paper. How's that for video gaming with a social network element?

Football Manager was the first in a long line of computer games aiming to recreate the struggle to succeed as the boss of a top club, and it deserves all the adulation it's received over the last 30 years. In an 8-bit world of simple sprites and basic sounds, it still owns a place in the hearts of those of us that played it, and for that, Kevin Toms can feel rightly proud of his pioneering work.

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