Gary Lineker’s Superstar Soccer!!!! I remember first being introduced to this game by my mate and instantly falling love with it. I made my mum walk through the various shops for hours until we found it in WH Smith hiding behind a stack of Spectrum Games.
This game was crazy. There were 6 players on each side, with you controlling the ‘midfielder’ as it were. You had 2 full backs and 2 wingers either side of you and the opposition midfielder ran as fast as Jan Molby.
The graphics were poor and there was only one option on the C64 – play one game.
In spite of all this, it was absolutely amazing!!!! You could go for 80 yard dribbles and plant one in the bottom corner or press the button lightly to pass to the winger and ask for a return, only to bicycle kick it into the roof of the net. That’s right, you could bicycle kick and header as well as seeing the ball fly from your foot. I think I maybe scored one header in the entire time I played it.
The shooting bar went from top left corner to bottom right corner and timing was essential. You could play any team from all 4 divisions (and maybe
a few foreign ones) and the better the team, the faster your players were. Your player was easily noticeable because he had a different colour shirt to the rest of the team.
Another awesome option was the ability to play for a full 90 minutes – yes! 90 REAL minutes of this game. I once beat Cambridge 102 – nil. It got so boring, but I was determined to make 100 goals and kept going by seeing the different ways I could score, this made it all worthwhile.
There was also a two player option, where the second player was the keeper. This was insane as you could not see where the keeper was until the ball was flying to the goal. Sometimes you would be at the top left of the penalty area and have to do a despairing dive at the last moment.
Overall, this was the most playable football game of its time, only to be eclipsed eventually by ‘Kick Off’. Gary Lineker must have made at least £100 quid from this franchise! I can honestly say that, apart from FIFA Soccer on the mega drive, this is the most memorable football games of my childhood. And I loved it!!
