Sensible Soccer | Code Like It's 198x

“We’re out to top Kick Off,” Jon Hare told AMIGA POWER in the spring of 1992. Sensible Software had played Anco’s football game so much, Amiga Format reported, that they decided to write their own. The result, Sensible Soccer, used tiny players on a zoomed-out pitch and let the computer do the running to the ball, so the player could think about what to do with it. It went to number one in the charts and stayed there for four months, and two years later its expanded successor, Sensible World of Soccer, received the highest score AMIGA POWER had ever given.

Fast facts

Developer: Sensible Software, led by Jon Hare and Chris Yates.
Publisher: Renegade.
Released: mid-1992 on the Amiga, as Sensible Soccer: European Champions (£25.99), with an Atari ST version.
Reception: AMIGA POWER 93% (94% for the 92/93 update); Amiga Format 91%, Format Gold.
Updates: 92/93 Season (version 1.1), International Edition (version 1.2, 1994).
Successor: Sensible World of Soccer (1994), AMIGA POWER 95%.
Other versions: Super Nintendo (Sony Imagesoft, 1993), Mega Drive, PC and others.

Kick Off, rethought

In October 1991 ACE reminded its readers that Hare and Yates had already made what it called “the best 8-bit football game ever”, MicroProse Soccer (1988), and that they were now going after Dino Dini’s Kick Off 2. Hare explained what annoyed him about it: “When you run to the ball and miss it, and then have to go back for it, by which time somebody else has got it. Being able to get to the ball is such an obvious thing that it’s not something you should have to worry about.” In “SensiSoccer”, he said, the nearest player would run to the ball under computer control and hand over when he had it. Passes would not home in on a team-mate automatically, as they did in Kick Off. Instead, the nearest team-mate would run on to them.

The finished game plays from high above the pitch, with players only a few pixels tall. The moves were few. An AMIGA POWER reader complained in January 1993 that there were only “passing, shooting, heading, after-touch, sliding tackles, diving headers”, no visible referee and no cards; the editor asked how many moves he would like, exactly. Aftertouch, bending the ball with the joystick after it is struck, was not new: Amiga Format noted that Kick Off 2 had added “Aftertouch for banana shots”, and MicroProse Soccer had curved the ball with a joystick move made just before the kick. What reviewers praised was how the pieces fitted together. The first release carried 100 European club and national sides, let players build their own leagues and cups, and saved up to ten replays.

Reviews and the charts

Amiga Format’s Tim Smith reviewed it in July 1992 in a round-up of football games, where “historically Kick Off is the one to beat”. He called it a “self-confessed Kick Off adaptation” and found the players “a little too small”, but concluded that “Sensible Soccer still runs rings around most other football games”. His summary box read: “Lovely control system. Plays like a dream.” AMIGA POWER gave it 93%, and the game went to the top of the charts. In November 1992 the magazine reported that “for a record smashing fourth month Sensible Soccer tops the charts”.

Updates and editions

Sensible kept the game current rather than leaving it to date. The 92/93 Season edition (version 1.1) added red and yellow cards, suspensions, better goalkeepers, the new back-pass rule, extra nations and the season’s transfers, and owners of the first version could upgrade for £4.95 by sending in the first disk. AMIGA POWER gave it 94% in January 1993, and in the charts that month it stood at number four with the original still at eleven. The International Edition (version 1.2) of 1994 added an on-screen referee, 100 teams from around the world and World Cup competitions. By then AMIGA POWER had put Sensible Soccer at number one in its All-Time Top 100.

The game was also converted to consoles. Sony Imagesoft published the Super Nintendo version at the end of 1993, and versions followed for the Mega Drive, PC and other machines. It never reached the 8-bit computers: asked in October 1993, Commodore Force told its readers that “Sensible Soccer is NOT going to appear on the C64”, and there is no record of a Spectrum version in the period press.

Sensible World of Soccer

In ACE in 1991 Hare had described a management game on top of the football, with real players, transfers and a manager moving between clubs. Sensible World of Soccer, published by Renegade at the end of 1994, delivered it. Amiga Format’s review counted “more than 1,500 teams and 26,000 players” from leagues around the world, and a career that could last up to 20 seasons, in which the player managed clubs, bought and sold players and could be offered a national side. The football was the same Sensible Soccer underneath.

AMIGA POWER gave it 95%, which its news pages called “the highest ever AP score”, and its review opened by calling it “the greatest computer game ever created. It is, basically, Sensible Soccer … only with a whole load of management options”. Amiga Format called it “way better than any other football game. Ever.” Later editions updated the teams for the 1995/96 and 1996/97 seasons and for Euro 96.

Later releases

After Codemasters bought Sensible Software in 1999, the game came back several times. Jon Hare’s Tower Studios made Java versions of Sensible Soccer for mobile phones, published by Kuju Wireless, and in 2005 Radica put the Mega Drive version, with Cannon Fodder and Mega-lo-Mania, into an Arcade Legends plug-into-the-television controller. Codemasters then persuaded Hare to return for a new Sensible Soccer, released in April 2006 for the PlayStation 2, Xbox and PC at £39.99. Hare told Edge in 2005 what he thought set the original apart: “Sensi recreates football psychologically – the pace makes it more akin to football as a mental activity, as opposed to Pro Evo and FIFA which show you what it looks like on the television.” Sensible World of Soccer was re-released on Xbox Live Arcade in 2007, according to public sources.

Sources

ACE issue 49, October 1991: preview, “A Sensible approach” (MicroProse Soccer; Jon Hare on Kick Off 2, computer-controlled running to the ball, passing, and plans for management and real teams).
AMIGA POWER issue 14, June 1992: preview (Jon Hare, “we’re out to top Kick Off”).
AMIGA POWER issue 13, May 1992: Renegade advertisement for Sensible Soccer: European Champions (100 European teams, leagues and cups, ten replays).
Amiga Format issue 36, July 1992: football round-up by Tim Smith (Renegade, £25.99; Kick Off 2’s aftertouch; the quotes above).
Amiga Format issue 58, April 1994: the original’s Format Gold, 91%.
AMIGA POWER issue 15, July 1992: review by Stuart Campbell, 93% (score as cited in issue 38, June 1994).
AMIGA POWER issue 19, November 1992: charts (fourth month at number one).
AMIGA POWER issue 21, January 1993: 92/93 Season review, 94%; charts; readers’ letters (the list of moves). Issue 25, May 1993: upgrade advertisement (the version 1.1 changes, £4.95).
AMIGA POWER issue 38, June 1994: news of the International Edition (referees, World Cup competitions; number one in the All-Time Top 100). Issue 36 and CU Amiga, July 1994: upgrade advertisements (100 world teams, the referee).
Computer and Video Games issue 85, November 1988: MicroProse Soccer review (the joystick move before the kick, the “banana kick”).
Nintendo Magazine System issue 9, June 1993: Sony Imagesoft to publish the Super Nintendo version. SNES Force issue 6, November 1993: “Available November”.
Commodore Force issue 10, October 1993: no Commodore 64 version.
Amiga Format issue 61, July 1994: Sensible World of Soccer preview (Renegade, £25.99; FIFA Soccer on consoles).
AMIGA POWER issue 44, December 1994: Sensible World of Soccer review, 95%, and news of the record score.
Amiga Format issue 67, January 1995: Sensible World of Soccer review (1,500 teams, 26,000 players, 20 seasons).
Retro Gamer issue 15, 2005: Tower Studios’ mobile versions, published by Kuju Wireless.
Edge issue 154, October 2005: Radica’s Arcade Legends: Sensible Soccer Plus; Jon Hare on the game’s pace.
Retro Gamer issue 19, 2005: Codemasters brings Jon Hare back for a new Sensible Soccer. Issue 22, 2006: review (Codemasters, released 7 April, PlayStation 2, Xbox and PC, £39.99).
Wikipedia, “Sensible World of Soccer” (web, secondary): the later editions and the 2007 Xbox Live Arcade release.