Reviews

As a Newcastle United fan, why I decided to spent 3 quid on a Man Utd game I'll never know. It's not great at all, joins a long list of crap footie games on the Spectrum, it's something the developers never seemed to get right.

The actual gameplay of playing a soccer game is pretty much the same as the original which I played much much later, although I do think it's worse here, the original seemed to have more control whereas here it was very difficult to control. Also passing was a nightmare, it's pretty much kick the ball without aim and hope for the best. This appears to be a step backwards from the prequel.

It's much more fun running it as a management game and simulating the matches rather than playing it. The best thing I enjoyed was being able to change the team (as I'm not a Man U fan), I was able to include my Newcastle heroes or completely make a new team from scratch altogether, that was the most fun I had...which just about sums up this game frankly. Yeah it's pretty rubbish, even Man Utd die-hards will have a hard time enjoying it.

And then Manchester United had themselves a sequel for when they won the old Cup Winner's Cup. This is much less of a football management game as all you do is select your squad and you can't sign any more, so it's more favourable to the arcade style of gameplay. Before each game you can choose your cup, either the aforementioned Cup Winner's Cup, UEFA Cup or European Cup, I chose the latter. Our first game is against Derry City from Ireland and we are in red this time, they actually got the colour right unlike the first game. It now says the name of the player with the ball which is a very nice feature, I find it particularly funny that Derry's number 7 is called Bus, so never mind Derry parking the bus against us they PICKED a bus against us. The giant scoreboard is gone and we have an larger screen for the pitch, plus you can now see on the pitch where your free kicks are going rather than use the radar from the first game, but other than that it's the same game. But I managed to score a goal, in fact I won both legs 1-0 (2-0 on aggregate) and now play German side Nuremberg in the next round, so I'm pleased with that at least. I think this is the better game, it's a larger screen, it's in the right colour and I was able to score a goal. Not great, but a step up from the first game in the very least.