Retro gaming and childhood youth, this in in itself no doubt filled so many kids of the 90’s evenings and weekends with hours of fun.
All forms of computer platforms have passed through my even pre-teen and teenage years, also, although less frequent as a 31 year old, still play the odd game of FIFA, could even class myself a veteran of the footballing franchises, a complete gaming geek, the Ryan Giggs of the gaming world, I just get better with age, although… my loyalty to one particular franchise is that not incumbent of ol, Giggs’y loyalty to United… more of an Anelka type, moving from club to club (game to game) as soon as the better offer came along..
Anyway, moving on my first memory of a football game was on the old Commodore 64. International Soccer.. A joystick needed to control the players, if you can call these pixels, players. There were 6 teams on the game, they weren’t even named. They were just colours, and it was 6 a side.
Of course as a young kid I named these teams in accordance to colour red was, without doubt Man Utd, yellow was Norwich, blue was Chelsea, white was Leeds, grey was Wimbledon and the final colour, purple was Aston Villa. These teams I never changed, there were no leagues… no cups… just matches, the clock wasn’t even 90 minutes, there was a countdown of 200 seconds.. very random indeed.
This game, my very first console, my very first forage into the footballing world of gaming would trigger an addiction and fascination and tremendous appetite for football. Football as a gamer, football as a kick around and football as the avid fan I am today…
More about International Soccer can be found here.
You can relive the game in all its glory here
And a download of the ROM is apparently available here (we accept no responsibility for the authenticity or content of the download!).
