Kicking Off A New Era Of Football?

With the new football season well and truly under way, David Crookes talks to Jon Hare about reviving the spirit of Sensible Soccer with a new, more sociable offering that he hopes will avoid an own goal

- David Crookes

It’s a well-known fact that, for many fans, football began in 1992. The year heralded the dawn of a fresh new era, when the ball zipped freely around the pitch and the game became an exhilarating end-to-end spectacle that had scores of fans glued to their screen.

Yes, Sensible Soccer was a winner all right, debuting in the same year that the FA Premier League came into being. It provided a quick arcade blast of football pinball, putting it ahead of a thrusting forward line of past greats.

Indeed, Sensi, as it was affectionately called, played the 8-bit icons of Match Day and Emlyn Hughes International Soccer off the park, and it was even thought to have put a fair few balls past Dino Dini’s Kick Off on the Amiga.

Not bad for a title that eschewed realism and adopted a view that was not so much birds-eye but one seen from a plane at 30,000 feet. For Sensi sought and succeeded in capturing the essence of the beautiful game, and one of its key creators, Jon Hare, who followed up that success with the even better Sensible World of Soccer (SWOS) in 1994, is hoping his next venture will do it all over again.

RUNNING HIS SOCKS OFF

Many classics from yesteryear have been dusted down for a new audience as developers and publishers look to build upon once favourite franchises. Super Metroid from 1994 was revived eight years later as the Metroid Prime series, 1993’s Doom was given a 2016 reboot, and Shenmue III is appearing a mere 218 months after the second sequel.

Consoles have also enjoyed a revival. A new Atari VCS is in the works, Intellivision is returning some time next year, and Neo Geo (see ‘Retro News’ on page 116) is about to create a modern version of a console that everyone wanted but few could afford (games would set you back in excess of £200, and that was in 1991!).