Day 19 - when Roy Keane was knee-high to a grasshopper

Well, I had quite a lot going on today, including not getting home from work until around 7:30pm.  I didn't know what I was going to be up to this evening, to be honest.  But something drew me to YouTube, where I found a bonkers new instrumental track from guitarist Steve Vai.  That perked me up a bit.  Then I put the footy on.


I would have like to have seen the Republic of Ireland get a result, but Spain really did play the beautiful game.  And it inspired me.


So today, I've written about a couple of football games.  They were tricky things to get right in the halcyon days of the Commodore 64 and Spectrum... which you're probably well aware of if you played a reasonable number of them.  The thing is, we were so desperate to play football on the computer that we grabbed hold of any footy game eagerly, only to be bitterly disappointed soon afterwards in many cases.

Some people are on the pitch... well of course they are, there wouldn't be a match otherwise!

The limitations of the machines made it difficult to produce a good football game, of course.  But that couldn't excuse some of the pathetic efforts we had to suffer.  Still, that made it all the sweeter when somebody did get it right.  Then, we played those games to death.


It's interesting to relive those games in the light of EA's FIFA and Sports Interactive's Football Manager (née Championship Manager).  It should also be interesting to hear what the authors of our favourite old-school footy games think of the new breed (and I will be asking).  It's inevitable that we would have had those games now, but it's nice to think that the games of the Eighties paved the way.