Commodore User


FA Cup Football

Categories: Review: Software
Author: Mike Pattenden
Publisher: Virgin Games
Machine: Commodore 64/128

 
Published in Commodore User #44

FA Cup Football

Apart from the success of the England team the 86-87 season will not be remembered for many good things. The league battle threw up few surprises, much of the football was dour and flat. Property developers moved in and play makers moved out. Liam Brady came home but couldn't lift my team from the mire they had fallen into. What better way to illustrate a disappointing season than with a disappointing game?

Virgin have re-released FA Cup Football, claiming that it has been updated with teams' form for the 1986 season to increase realism. There are also new managers' questions to test your abilities. Everything else about the game remains the same as when it was first released back in April last year.

You still end up guiding eight teams to the final if you're playing alone, which means, of course, that you often end up playing yourself in the final, or, worse still, managing Tottenham's Cup Challenge.

The news bulletins are still as inane and irritating as they were: "a boiler blows up and causes considerable damage to the changing rooms". I'm sure that would have a detrimental effect on Man Utd as they walk out for their Fifth Round tie against West Brom. Most of the goals still seem to get scored in the last three minutes, and your onyl real control over the game is to select a formation, change it (in later rounds) and make the odd substitution.

When you think what a good game this could have been, FA Cup Football is infuriating, whatever version you play. It also makes me despair about my job as a reviewer. Last month I looked at the Executive Edition of Leaderboard and said that Access had responded to criticism that the original game lacked bunkers, trees, etc, for variation. Virgin, it seems, haven't paid a blind bit of notice to what are valid criticisms of their game. Instead they go and adjust the statistics that produce the results in the game. They're so busy paying attention to the details of the game that they haven't noticed its major faults. This is a wasted effort to cash in on football without promoting it. CU 1 - Virgin 0.

Mike Pattenden

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