In 1984 the best football game on any home computer was Commodore’s International Soccer for the C64, and Spectrum owners had nothing to match it. Distributors kept telling Jon Ritman and Chris Clarke, then both at Artic Computing, that the Spectrum needed one. The two left Artic to write it, sold it to Ocean, and Match Day arrived before Christmas 1984 at £7.95. The reviews ranged from 86% to 50%. The readers who voted in CRASH’s chart were less divided: they kept it there for more than three years.
Fast facts
- Authors: Jon Ritman and Chris Clarke. Publisher: Ocean.
- Released: before Christmas 1984, for the 48K Spectrum, at £7.95. Amstrad CPC and Commodore 64 versions followed.
- Best CRASH chart place: number 2, April 1985.
- Sequel: Match Day II (1987), by Ritman and Bernie Drummond, number 1 in the CRASH chart in 1988.
Making it
Ritman and Clarke had barely started when, a week in, Artic released its own World Cup Football. “We weren’t too worried, once we had seen it,” Ritman told CRASH in 1986. He recalled telling Ocean’s David Ward at a show that his game would be much better, and Ward phoning eight months later with an advance of £20,000.
The two worked separately. In Ritman’s account, Clarke wrote the front end, the menus and options, and Ritman wrote the graphics and the game itself. He did not set out to copy International Soccer: he had mostly seen it running in shop windows, and “when I finally played International Soccer some time later, I found it to be very different to play”. The gameplay took nearly all the time. “I build the gameplay first and then fit a story around it in the last week,” he said. “We ended up spending nearly all the time getting the gameplay right on Match Day.”
On the pitch
You watch the pitch from above and to one side, in perspective, and the screen scrolls to follow the ball. You control whichever of your players is nearest the ball or best placed to tackle, and you know which one he is because his socks change colour to match his shirt. The ball bounces and casts a shadow that grows and shrinks with its height, and trapping a high ball means watching that shadow. Corners, throw-ins and goal kicks have three strengths of kick. Before the match the teams run out to a version of the Match of the Day theme, while the heads of the crowd bob along the back of the stand.
The options were the other half of the game. You could play halves of 5, 15 or 45 minutes, choose one of three skill levels against the computer, rename the teams, recolour the strips, the pitch and the border, and run a knock-out cup for up to eight players.
The press could not agree
CRASH gave it 86% in February 1985. One reviewer called it “the definitive football game for the Spectrum”, and another thought it “surely going to be as big a seller as Daley Thompson’s Decathlon”. Your Computer’s reviewer wrote that International Soccer had been unchallenged for over a year, and “Now the Spectrum is back in the running.”
Others were cooler. Personal Computer News gave it 7/10: Mike Gerrard found the options “almost overwhelming” and the action “a little slow”, and ended where he began: “no-one has yet managed to produce a piece of Spectrum soccer software that is a serious rival to Commodore’s International Soccer.” Sinclair User gave it a Gilbert Factor of 6 in March 1985. Clare Edgeley thought the program “a worthwhile attempt at reproducing a live game”, but said the sound during play was more like “a happy budgie than the grunts of the players”. Sinclair Programs gave it 50% and advised: “Go outside if you want a good game of football.”
The readers’ game
CRASH’s Hotline chart was voted by its readers, not compiled from sales. Match Day was at number 9 in March 1985 and number 2 in April. It kept coming back: number 3 in July and September 1985 and in February 1986, number 5 in March 1987, number 7 in February 1988, and still number 19 in August 1988. Buyers were keen from the start: Personal Computer News’s games chart for 26 January 1985 had it at number 2, behind Ghostbusters.
In October 1986 CRASH admitted that not giving it a Smash, its award for the best games of the month, had been “a mistake”, and that readers still wrote in to say so. Ritman believed the game sold more than 50,000 copies at full price. Retro Gamer reported in 2005 that it sold as many again when it was reissued on Ocean’s Hit Squad budget label.
Other machines
Ritman had no part in the conversions. “The Amstrad version was OK, the C64 less so,” he said later. The Amstrad CPC version was out by the end of 1985 at £8.95. The Commodore 64 version first appeared on Ocean’s compilation They Sold a Million II in 1986, where ZZAP!64 called it “a graphically crude football simulation, which sorely lacks the addictive qualities of the Spectrum original”.
Match Day II
Ritman came back to football after Head Over Heels, this time with Bernie Drummond on graphics. Match Day II was a new program, not a revision. Each side now had seven players. A “kickometer” let you set the strength of each kick, and the “Diamond Deflection System” worked out how the ball rebounded off a player from the angle it struck him, his direction of movement and its own. You could volley, back-heel and head the ball, play league or cup competitions, and save a competition with a code to finish later. Guy Stevens wrote the music.
CRASH reviewed it in its Christmas Special 1987, reminding readers that the original was “famous as the one we didn’t Smash!”. It gave the sequel 91%. Paul thought “Jon Ritman has excelled himself with this outstanding follow-on from Match Day”, and Robin called it “the definitive football game”. Ocean’s advertising for the Commodore 64, Amstrad and Spectrum +3 disk versions called the original “a game which has remained in the readers charts for 3 years”.
Match Day II reached number 1 in CRASH‘s readers’ chart in March 1988 and again in August 1988. In April 1988 both games were in the top ten: the sequel at 3 and the original at 9.
Sources
- CRASH, issue 13, February 1985: Match Day review (authors Jon Ritman and Chris Clarke, £7.95, 86%).
- CRASH, Hotline Top 30 charts, issues 14–21 (March–October 1985), 25 (February 1986), 38 (March 1987), 49 (February 1988), 51 (April 1988), 55 (August 1988) and 56 (September 1988); issue 2, March 1984, for how the chart was voted.
- CRASH, issue 33, October 1986, pp. 84–85: “The Jon Ritman interview” (distributors, World Cup Football, “before Christmas two years ago”, the missed Smash, gameplay first).
- CRASH, issue 48, Christmas Special 1987: Match Day II review (Ritman and Drummond, £7.95, 91%).
- Personal Computer News, 8 December 1984: Ocean advertisement and mail-order listing; 19 January 1985, p. 41: review by Mike Gerrard (7/10); 26 January 1985: games chart.
- Sinclair Programs, January 1985: news of the release; February 1985: review (50%).
- Sinclair User, issue 36, March 1985, p. 35: review by Clare Edgeley (Gilbert Factor 6).
- Your Computer, February 1985: news of the Amstrad conversion; March 1985: review by Toby Wolpe.
- Amtix!, issue 2, December 1985, and Amstrad Action, issue 2, November 1985: the Amstrad CPC version (£8.95).
- ZZAP!64, issue 13, May 1986: David Ward on the They Sold a Million follow-up and the Commodore version of Match Day; issue 25, May 1987: compilation round-up.
- ZZAP!64, issue 35, March 1988, and Amstrad Action, issue 30, March 1988: Ocean’s Match Day II advertisement.
- “The Ritman Report”, Retro Gamer, issue 14, 2005: Ritman’s recollections of Clarke’s front end, International Soccer, the conversions, sales and the Hit Squad reissue, and Match Day II. Recollections, told two decades later.
- Chris Wilkins and Roger M. Kean, The History of Ocean Software (Revival Retro Events, 2013), pp. 207–211: Ritman on meeting David Ward and the £20,000 advance.