Remember football back in the Eighties? Liverpool won everything in sight whilst wearing painfully tight shorts, Pundits and Managers alike wore tasteless sheepskin coats, All the London players sported dodgy highlights, and Manchester United were so reliably crap? Wasn’t it great back then? And wasn’t it perfectly captured by one of the Commodore 64’s earliest cartridge offerings, International Soccer?

Well, maybe not. But it was certainly ahead of its time. Almost a decade before the release of the immortal Kick Off 2, Commodore fans were hurling terrace abuse at each other over this nugget that has since become a nostalgic gem, and rightly so.

So what if the referee never blows for a foul? Admittedly this means you have as much chance of being awarded a penalty as the entire Holland squad have of scoring one, but it matters not when you can become involved in a midfield battle that can be as engaging and frustrating (particularly on the higher levels) as any football simulation you might tackle today.

There are some curiosities for sure, which are uh... curious to say the least:

Curiosity 1 - The incredible heading abilities some players seem to possess at random intervals.
No, it really does take an enormous amount of skill to run the entire length of the pitch, bobbing the ball up and down on your head whilst managing to outrun your opponent.

Curiosity 2 - The completely disinterested team-mate.
Remember playing football at school? Remember the rebel who just stood with his back turned by the corner flag smoking a fag? Ever wondered what happened to the useless lump? Well, he’s right here.

Curiosity 3 - The schizophrenic goalie!
Nothing gets past this guy! He can impede virtually any well-measured strike! He can thwart any point blank assault! Try walking the ball into the goal, and he’ll frustrate you every time! He even saves with his head! Unstoppable! Find his blind spot and he’ll… er just stand there and watch it trickle in. Tap in a diagonal effort and he’ll… er limply jump into the air making it easier for the ball to access its way into the net. Wonder if David James used to play this?

There was a crude but extremely funny version of this game where the players were wheelchair bound and the goalies were on crutches. What wouldn’t we give to see David Beckham play like that?

The Wheelchair is also worthy of your curiosity!

Submitted by Christopher Sharpe (07 August 2000)

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