Given its simplicity and natural charm, it is really hard to dislike this little blighter. Who could forget Kebab Shop FC, with the legendary Adana Kebab holding things together at the back, and Fresh Chillies and Small Doner as the charcoal grilled answer to Heskey & Owen? Thankfully OutOfTheBit had an eye on these shenanigans and as such your own team has a number of recognisable action movie monikers, and you face many chuckle-inducing approximations of real-life football legends and other bonkers stuff. One of the things people most fondly remember from Sensi universe are the madcap player names in teams based around a number of ridiculous themes. The sound has some genuinely brilliant snippets of crowd noise. Graphically things are dead simple, with cute player designs and amusing pitchside advertising hoardings, and everything moves smoothly. You can also literally move the goalposts! It makes playing with mates genuinely fun. The quick match mode also allows a bunch of crazed modifiers, so you could find yourself negotiating meteors raining onto the turf, sliding across ice, or even oil slicks. There are plenty of levels to work through, as well as online and local multiplayer options. You may need to retain a certain percentage of possession, score a set number of goals, or not concede. The conditions to earn stars on each stage are usually quite doable. But you can put a bit of curve on the ball, and I was able to hit a few lovely screamers from distance. You cannot hit those legendary arcing, looping efforts from the half way line. There is nothing sophisticated about the ball physics. This means it is very easy – particularly early on – to just slalom your way down the pitch and blast the ball into the onion bag. Unlike its forebear, the ball will quite easily glue itself to the feet of the player in possession. This also doubles up as a scything slide tackle when you are off the ball. Controls are simplified to moving your player and kicking the ball with one button. It’s essentially a watered-down version of Sensible Soccer. Each has a three-minute time limit, and three stars to unlock based upon certain conditions. Thankfully things transition from here straight into the meat and drink of the game, which is a series of quickfire footy matches. These exchanges set the scene, but are poorly written with Joe making several jarringly unpleasant fat-shaming digs at Martin, which are neither funny or appropriate in this day and age. In a nutshell, Martin agrees to purchase the club from the elderly custodian for the princely sum of a pound, and takes the reigns of the struggling team. You play the role of an everyman named Martin, who discovers during a chance encounter with legendary manager Old Joe (designed as an amalgam of a few real-life football management bods, in particular Ronnie Moran) that his beloved football team Balarm FC are on the bones of their arse and under threat from hated, monied local rivals Snakesfield. You are thrown into the action almost immediately, after the basic plot that underpins the action is introduced in a series of vignettes. Can it hold a candle to one of the all-time classics? Be prepared for lots of unavoidable comparisons. Super Arcade Football is undoubtedly influenced by the Sensible milestones, from the super deformed, pixel players, to the amusing player surnames and crowd chants. And even though it was ported and rebooted many times over the years, the home micro original has never been equalled or topped. It remains one of my favourite games of all time. In particular its astonishingly brilliant player/manager sequel World of Soccer, for the Commodore Amiga. The majority of my teenage years were spent playing Sensible Soccer.
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