This excellent piece from @superchartisland.com is the most complete chronicle I've seen of the travesty that was World Cup Carnival and its bizarre journey to the top of the UK sales charts. superchartisland.com/world-cup-ca...

*LMA Manager 2006* for PS2/Xbox expected you to call a pay-per-minute hotline to get "bonus codes" that were tied to your "unique ID." The hotline is gone, so are the cheats? No - I derived the RSA key that was used to generate them from the game data! 32bits.substack.com/p/under-the-...

I'm still amazed that this ran on the SCUMM point-and-click adventure engine. Charming game. It distils the sport down into something you can play with just the mouse whilst retaining the immediacy of directly controlling a player. And the characters have loads of personality.

I’m a sucker for a football game, and PES a key part of my career. As such, this was a brilliant present from Mrs M. But all credit goes to @bitmapbooks.com. The design (laces for a bookmark. Genius) and effort that goes into their books never fails to impress. Best in class those guys…

Kenny Dalglish Soccer Manager (1989) came about because Impressions founder David Lester thought football games are popular, and Dalglish is famous, so why not try calling him for a deal? Amazingly, it worked. Dalglish got a cut of the profits in exchange for naming rights and a quick photoshoot.

Didn't know I had this. (It's the mascot for USA '94, the first World Cup after the back pass was outlawed.)

Championship Manager Season 97/98 was released on this day in 1997 🗓 Developed by Sports Interactive and published by Eidos Interactive ℹ

PC Zone's review of the PC port of PS1 bestseller Adidas Power Soccer. They said it may be the "worst game ever" and awarded it a measly 6 out of 100.

Millions of people are familiar with the hit mobile game New Star Soccer, but few know of its roots as a series of excellent indie PC/Mac games.

Always nice to find a stash of old CM2 source code and data disks. These would’ve been backups I sent to Mum for safekeeping back in 1994!

EA trotted commentator John Motson out for a promotional interview with GameSpot UK (which did a whole "FIFA 2000 Week") for the release of FIFA 2000. web.archive.org/web/20000815...

An ad for Commodore International Soccer, one of the best (and most popular) football games of the 1980s.

Philips SV Eindhoven Manager was a late 90s Amiga freeware game by a couple of Polish guys who called themselves Frey United. It is like nothing else, with constant, creative sampling of pop culture to add sparkle to the dryness of a football management simulation.

You forgot to mention they don't have a whistle anymore. They bark.

ISS Deluxe has a cheat code that turns the match officials into dogs. It's adorable.

Zidane Football Generation (2001) had a toggle between three different perspectives and made impressive use of the Game Boy Color's meagre capabilities, but I was mostly amused by the fact it sometimes gave me a free kick when I fouled my opponent.

Some funny bugfix logs for the AI in EA's F.A. Premier League STARS from March 30, 1998, a bit over a year before the game was finished.

My favourite aesthetic: mid-90s football management game skeuomorphism.

When Paul and Oliver Collyer were looking for a publisher for Championship Manager (originally called European Champions), they sent demo builds out to all the major companies, including EA, which declined due to the lack of 'live action' graphics. This is their rejection letter.

Behind the scenes on Sony's FIFA/ISS killer from the late PS1 days, This is Football, which featured the legendary Clive Tyldesley in the commentary chair and is perhaps best remembered for its dedicated "dive" and "intentional foul" buttons.