Match Day

Copyright : Ocean Software | Reviewed by : Ritchardo

A conversion of the hit Spectrum football game, coded by John Ritman of Head Over Heels and Batman fame, Match Day is viewed by many as the first really classic footy title on the Amstrad,.

A key title for Ocean, Match Day was one of the biggest sellers of 1985 and firmly cemented the company as a big player in the 8-bit market.

Graphics

Although Ritman wrote Match Day for the Spectrum, he had no involvement in the CPC conversion and as a result the game looks quite different to it?s ZX cousin. The graphics, drawn in a neat mode 0, are chunky and colourful holding a real charm that lasts strongly to this day.

The animation of the players and ball, although slow, is good as well although the goal keepers? dive - often a bane of side scrolling football games - is faintly ridiculous. There are plenty of options that allow you to change strip colours and generally tailor your game to fit your own needs and tastes.

One minor grumble is that the games tend to look like bounce matches for the Nazi Under 19?s league due to each of the players fitting the blonde hair and blue eyes template.

Sound

A nice rendition of the Match of the Day theme tune plays at the beginning of each half, accompanying the players lining up on the field. During the match, sound is restricted to the bounce of the ball and the referee?s whistle to indicate a goal, corner etc. The only other sound is the roar of an appreciative crowd when a goal is scored.

Far from revolutionary sound effects, the theme tune raises the sound here from average to very good.

Gameplay

Although state of the art at the time, Match Day has sadly dated more than you would have hoped. The speed at which the game plays is painfully slow and clunking. Your players seem to take an absolute age to get from one side of the pitch to the other and the ball moves equally as slowly which is as frustrating as it is unrealistic.

A big plus point for Match Day over its predecessors like World Cup is that it is the first to use the proper rules of football in terms of corner kicks, throw ins and goal kicks. Still no sign of offside bit maybe that?s being a bit hopeful for 1985!

It?s perhaps unfair to compare Match Day with the games that came out after it because it was most certainly an influence on the vast majority of them but it is an undeniably simplistic affair. Technically limited in as far as the players can only run and kick rather than jump to head the ball or slide into a tackle, kick and rush (or crawl in this instance) is the order of the day and passing tends to be an afterthought rather than a clearly defined tactic.

There?s a real knack to playing the game and although it can be tricky to get to grips with trying to get the ball away from your opponent, practice really does make perfect and you?ll soon be racking up cricket scores thanks to an area of the goal that if you hit your shot correctly towards then you?re guaranteed to score.

And that?s about all there is to say about it. Match Day is an important step in the development of football games for the home computer but it has been surpassed in each and every way since to the point that it?s not really worth playing more than once in a blue moon.