Reviews

While this is nominally a football game, Jon Ritman's admitted he knew nothing about football when he wrote it. While this may sound like a bad thing, it isn't: it's now designed to be a very playable game, rather than an accurate simulation of football, and succeeds incredibly well at that.

Match Day was great when it first came out, Match Day II was even better.

Playing 2 player co-operative was brilliant, the computer was much tougher and the league/cup were a great challenge on the hardest level. You could now backheel the ball and the gameplay was much better than the original.

Saying that its still quite slow but for fans who first played it back in the day its still a great game.

This sequel does a fairly good job of sorting out the flaws of the earlier game, but it's still some way off the mark as far as computer football games go.

Yes, it's amongst the most popular ones for the Spectrum, but against near contemporaries such as Microprose Soccer on the C64 and Kick Off on the 16-bits it's decidedly pedestrian.

Ball control is a bit more intuitive and the computer opponent isn't a complete dead loss, but realistically you're going to need a human opponent on hand to get anything much out of the gameplay.

About as good as football games got on the Spectrum, but that's not really saying much.

I always preferred the original to this one, but to be honest both are now showing their age badly.

I know this a particularly unfair comparison but you only have to play Pro Evolution on one of the latest platforms to realise how far we've come and how little MD 1 or 2 resembled proper football.

Magazine Reviews: http://zxspectrumreviews.co.uk/search.aspx?wosid=0003070

The best football game on the Spectrum along with Emlyn Hughes International Soccer - in spite of the facts that the action is not fast, there are only about eight players in each team, and they, as my 12 years old cousin puts it, seems to wear a nappy.

On the other hand, you can peform a good variety of kicks, and you can carry out precise tosses and, hence, compose a satisfying web of passages - an effort that in other Spectrum's football games resolves easily in a chaos. So, this is an important quality to the game.
Anyway, that's a feature that Match Day II inherited from his previous incarnation, which, however was, slower.
and the players looked like bears.

Quite good.

The aptly named Match Day II (sequel to match day !) was released early in 1987 to rave reviews and a crash smash (making up slightly for the cock up of never smashing match day).

The game was basically an arcade game simulation of a game of football , but they way it was done was second to none on the spectrum (Im looking you right in the eye Emlyn !).

The newly introduced diamond deflection system really made a difference with the ball flying off in the right directions with the right velocity everytime , it really made a difference and felt just right .

The pace wasn't electric , but due to the scale of football - make it too quick and you get games looking unrealistic , make it too slow and again boredom would set in , i think it was just about right .

The gameplay was easy to pick up and especially on the harder levels , very hard to win , the kickometer played a part as well , you couldn't just hoof the ball every kick , it had to be timed or you could end up loosing possession.

It also had a game editor , so you could change all the Ritman Uniteds etc and produce your own premier league or La Liga if you so wished , this was a great feature and added extra spice to the games .

The usual league / cup / single game option were available to play on , but the other option of two player (either together on the same team or against each other) , opened up the chance to show your mates who was the boss !

Overall its a magic game , far and away the best football game on the spectrum , its so enjoyable , well paced , uncomplicated and whether or not some Emlyn fans may disagree , we can't all be right.

1987 Ocean Software (UK)
by Jon Ritman, Bernie Drummond, Guy Stevens and Ivan Horn

Some people claim this sequel to be better than its predecessor. They are right. But I simply hate the players graphics, and never got used to them. Sure you now can jump and play with your head, or use a backheel move, or defende with your goalkeeper, which was an essential addiction, but I still prefer the normal looking sprites on the original Match Day, instead of this midgets with no neck that seem to be wearing diapers.
A great game spoiled by the artistic execution.

4,5 points

Every big game needs a sequel and Match Day was no exception as a couple of years after the 128K upgrade of the original Match Day, Match Day II was released, and my god was it impressive. New graphics, new gameplay, new sound and new teams. This really was a proper sequel in its own right though I'm really not sure which is better as I love the both of them equally but the both of them haven't aged well.

I'll leave it like this, if you want to play soccer on the ZX Spectrum then the Match Days and Emlyn Hughes are your games to play.

I love Match Day and I was really excited with the chance to play its sequel Match Day II, as much as I liked it I can't prefer it over the first one.

It does look a bit nicer than Match Day, the player sprites are small but look a bit better. Some do prefer the older graphics and older sprites and I like them too, but I was fine with this change.

The biggest change comes from the gameplay though. Unlike Match Day where your shots were the same unless you weren't moving in that it effectively became a pass, Match Day II's shots are determined by a "kickometer" which can be altered in the options. As well as forward kicks you were given the option for it to read all kicks, including backward ones, so imagine a situation where you were through on goal with one minute left and went to shoot only for the ball to travel backwards.

I can see they were trying to add to the gameplay but this for me kind of ruined it, but I accept it's just an option and so I normally play with either Kick II or Kick III to give it that Match Day feel instead.

Match Day II is a good sequel but I do prefer the first game, its gameplay is just more effective to me compared to this.

A step further back for Ocean . . .

3 / 5 .

The Match Day series has always been a bit of an enigma to me. They're extremely popular games but I don't know why.
I love football and I love the spectrum so I should love Match Day, shouldn't I?
The thing is Match Day and Match Day 2 control like pigs and are no fun to play. However I seem to be the only person who thinks that!

Thankfully not the same game for a third time. The game is a bit cleaner but now with smaller players, probably because they look so small depending on where you're sitting at the ground I suppose. And this time we have a Kickometer which determines the power of your passes and shots and with a variety of setups, including all kicks which means you can backheel it the other way, which is funny when you are shooting. And you can have computer goalies which kind of defeats the enjoyment of the game for some but for me it's good because I dislike the manual goalie. Also different in this game is the addition of a Matchday Cup and League. So onto the gameplay and instead of the Match of the Day theme from the original we have When the Saints Go Marching In, which is a bit hilarious for me being a Southampton fan. For the gameplay, the kickometer will often work against you and the crowd noises can get annoying really quickly. But saying that it is the same Match Day gameplay, only with varied kicks and the ability to jump when the ball is in the air. Is it a playable football game, yes, absolutely, hence the 4 rating. Is it better than the original Match Day? Hell no. For me the original still holds up.

I loved Match Day but it doesn't look too well today sadly, Match Day 2 on the other hand looks great still today. Smaller graphics they may be but much more nicer looking. The Kickometer for me added a new element to the game as now you could do soft kicks for passes and hard kicks for shooting. This also had a full league mode as well as a cup mode which added more to the game.

But both are great football games on the Speccy, which is rare because a lot of them were crap, but Match Day 2 stands out for me as one of the very best. Loved this game! :)