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No one seems to quite know why the arrival of Sensible World Of Soccer on the Xbox 360 live arcade was changed from a date that already passed earlier in the summer to one that is now simply listed as "unknown". It could be that almost nobody actually cares about the title.

Sensible Soccer’s origins go all the way back to 1992. It took a birds eye view of the action, a vantage that was fairly new to soccer games at the time - moving on from the previous style of side-on action.

Sensi, as it’s affectionately known, changed the way soccer games were made and played. First of all, it was fast. It did away with trying to look remotely realistic (which given the hardware’s limitations of the time, was a losing battle anyway), and instead took the graphical compromise hit to make the action fast. And smooth. So smooth that passing the ball with one touch between two, three, four or more players felt as natural as though Eric Cantona himself was picking up for the final volley.

Being produced originally for the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST meant that control was limited to an 8-way joystick and a single fire button. But Sensible squeezed enough functionality into that lone trigger to facilitate a quick short pass, a long ball lob and even a banana kick – a system that modern soccer game require half a dozen or so buttons to come even close to accommodating.

Originally released in a fairly vanilla flavour of straight action with no league system to really speak of, and with only a couple of updates over the immediately proceeding years to capture a couple of actual rule changes in the real sport, the biggest update came in 1994 with the release of Sensible World Of Soccer.

The core game at its heart was exactly the same as before, but SWOS brought the option for player-management to the table. There had been soccer management simulations before – Championship Manager for one, a series that continues to be the greatest sports management simulation with each seasonal update to this day. But those games don’t allow you to play the game itself; instead they stick to strict hands off vantage. SWOS found the perfect balance of statistical management and arcade action. It was this juggling act that won Sensible its right to be listed in the top ten most important video games ever in a recent poll undertaken by the American Library of Congress, just as they do for movies.

Eventually however, with the advent of the Playstation and the N64, two
dimensional games fell quickly out of favour, and EA, who for most of the early to mid 90s had been playing catch up with their isometric viewed FIFA series – eventually making the evolutionary step to a third dimension and in doing so stealing the fashionable soccer gaming crown away from Sensible. But in doing so started a trend for over complicated control schemes forever chasing realism, often at the expense of fun. Some recent editions have even included quasi player-management options, but never quite found the balance that Sensible had.

Thankfully, retro gaming is becoming more and more accessible and somewhat awkwardly fashionable with the likes of Nintendo’s Virtual Console on their Wii, and Microsoft’s XBLA, so much so that it doesn’t seem to matter to people that a game like Sensible Soccer looks its age – as long as it plays well.

One wonders if once it finally hits the marketplace, there just might be a backlash against the ultra realistic but impossibly complicated modern soccer releases, in favour of some old fashioned one-two-banana-kick no nonsense arcade soccer action. If it was good enough for the likes of Roberto Baggio, Marco Van Basten and other soccer greats from the early 90s, it’s good enough for me.

About G4 in Canada
G4 Canada (formerly TechTV Canada) launched in September 2001. G4 is the one and only television station that is plugged into every dimension of games, gear, gadgets and gigabytes. Owned Rogers Media Inc., the channel airs more than 24 original series. G4 is available on digital cable and satellite. For more information, see www.g4tv.ca.

Tech News on G4

Sensible reclaiming the soccer crown

September 27, 2007

By Andy Barratt - G4 Canada