Misplaced Pages

#691308

56-465: Although the gameplay is simple (eight directions and one fire button) a large variety of context sensitive actions can be performed without any predefined keys. In 1996 the game was ranked best of all time by Amiga Power . In 1996, GamesMaster ranked the Amiga version 36th on their "Top 100 Games of All Time". In 2004, the Amiga version of Sensible World of Soccer was inducted into GameSpot 's list of

112-456: A Canoe Squad movie; a feature entitled The Bum Line , based on The Bottom Line , listing other albums of interest; and an ongoing storyline (following on from the events of AP65) in which the AP team are restored to life by The Four Cyclists Of The Apocalypse, so they can attend a concert in their honor. As of August 2020, the album remains available to buy via the original Kickstarter homepage and

168-579: A 3D game were not successful. It became quiet about Sensible Soccer after Codemasters ' takeover of Sensible Software in 1999. In 2005 Sensible Soccer was released as a mobile phone game. Although the controls on mobile phones are usually a bit complicated, the game sold well enough to make new releases of the series possible. After a 2 Player Plug 'n' Play version, a small mini console with two controllers and TV-out (containing Mega Lo Mania and Cannon Fodder besides Sensible Soccer ), Codemasters decided to release Sensible Soccer 2006 right in time for

224-466: A Back Page feature but was soon thrown open to readers as a kind of competition and moved to the news section. Readers could send in floppy disks containing their In The Style Of drawn in Deluxe Paint , and every month Amiga Power would select the one they liked best and feature it in the magazine. This feature appeared toward the end of AP 's life. It was simply a table of recent games, and

280-596: A booklet featuring contributions from former members of the magazine's team. The campaign was successful, and in July 2020 the finished album was officially released. Most of the remixes were created by the original composers; among those who contributed to the album were Alistair Bowness, Allister Brimble, Fabio Cicciarello, Mike Clarke, Adam Fothergill, Olof Gustafsson, Jon Hare, Chris Huelsbeck, Carl Jermy, Barry Leitch, Jogeir Liljedahl, Alex May, Anthony Milas, Jason Page, Matthias Steinwachs, and Tim Wright. The physical album took

336-511: A cover", the purpose of the section being to dissuade their readers from subscribing to those magazines concurrently. According to Campbell, those magazines tended to score games along the pattern of "70%, 70%, 70%, 99%". Amiga Power ' s methodology proved controversial amongst game publishers, including, in particular, Team17 , who would withdraw their advertising and refuse to send them review copies of their games in advance. The magazine found that its competitors' reviewers were influenced by

392-421: A free update disk a few months later (SWOS v1.1). A PC version came later, in 1995, as floppy disk version and as CD-ROM (including voice commentary). Teams present included all European nations as well as (in this version only) 64 fantasy squads whose line-ups were references to and parodies of other concepts. Gameplay was noticeably easier than in subsequent versions, with computer opponents rarely able to tackle

448-499: A game and analysing its strengths and weaknesses. Usually, it takes the form of a work of fiction (often a screenplay ) which indirectly reviews the game through allegory . Amiga Power featured concept reviews on a regular basis. The term itself (never actually used in the magazine) was an ironic play on the "concept albums" released by prog rock bands of the 1970s. Competitions were also run in AP 's distinctive style, often challenging

504-487: A game that had initially been signed by Renegade Software (a Time Warner Interactive subsidiary) was dropped by their purchasers, GT Interactive (best known for Doom II , Duke Nukem 3D , Quake , and Unreal Tournament ), the owners were looking for a smooth exit. Though never finished, this final project was discussed in certain sections of the media outside of the game press. It was featured in an Independent on Sunday article in mid-1997. Two years later in 1999,

560-515: A hard disk installation was required which officially does not exist. There were some demo versions (Amiga) on several cover disks. One of the best known is "Sensible World of Moon Soccer" which allowed users to try in-game options. On pitch action was placed on the Moon, with craters on the pitch and Moon-like ball physics. The Amiga version received a fan update for the 2022/2023 season in 2023. Any attempts since 1998 to bring back Sensible Soccer as

616-451: A monthly basis. The community uses Discord to organize online play. SensibleSoccer.de is host of the "Sensible Days", an annual meeting of Sensible World of Soccer fans with international championships on PC and Amiga in the manner of a LAN party . Since 2008, the "Sensible Days" are acknowledged by Codemasters as the official SWOS World Cups. Since then the place of event changed yearly throughout Europe. Game developer Jon Hare visited

SECTION 10

#1733084645692

672-464: A part exchange deal. To be able to buy stronger players and to keep them it is necessary to earn money with success in the various competitions. Job offers from other clubs and also from a national team may roll in, depending on the success. "Goalscoringsuperstarhero" by Jon Hare (born 1966) and Richard Joseph (1953–2007), with vocals by Jackie Reed, was composed for Sensible World of Soccer . The original song published in 1994 only had one verse; for

728-468: A public-domain version of Pong ). There were two games that held an iron grip on the #1 spot in the list. The first was Rainbow Islands: The Story of Bubble Bobble 2 , a coin-op conversion platform game that the magazine controversially deemed their favorite Amiga game for the first two years of its existence. The second was Sensible Soccer , which took over the top position in the first AP Top 100 after its release (the game came out too late for

784-479: A sense of familiarity. Many prominent video game journalists, such as Kieron Gillen and Stuart Campbell used AP as a first step in their career. Gillen, now a successful writer for Marvel Comics, was one of several writers who started off as an AP reader and letter-writer (under the name "C-Monster") before being employed by the magazine as a freelance contributor. Another was Mil Millington (known to AP readers as "Reader Millington"), who would go on to become

840-417: A so-called video game "crime", followed by the "case for the prosecution", which is a section illustrating why the crime is a negative thing. The penalty was usually an execution. In reflection of the nature of a real kangaroo court , there is no "case for the defense". An "In The Style Of" is, as the name implies, a depiction of a game in the style of something else, most often another game. It started out as

896-423: A successful novelist, selling over 100,000 copies of his debut Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About . Throughout its 65 issues, AP went through several editors. The editors, ordered by time, were: Issues 56-58 were published with no designated editor. A concept review is a review conducted in an abstract manner - basically, any review which deviates significantly from the usual practice of describing

952-554: A variety of updates of both Sensible Soccer and Cannon Fodder . In 2006 the Sensible Software game Sensible World of Soccer was entered into a Games Canon of the 10 most important video games of all time by Stanford University , it was the only game developed in Europe to make the list which also included Spacewar! , Star Raiders , Zork , Tetris , SimCity , Super Mario Bros. 3 , Civilization , Doom , and

1008-514: Is also on the websites of C64Audio.com and 010101 Music. Sensible Software Sensible Software was a British software company founded by Jon Hare and Chris Yates that was active from March 1986 to June 1999. It released seven number-one hit games and won numerous industry awards. The company used exaggeratedly small sprites as the player characters in many of their games, including Mega Lo Mania , Sensible Soccer , Cannon Fodder , and Sensible Golf . Sensible Software

1064-707: Is notable on three accounts: it is the only game in the list developed in Europe, it is the only sports game in the list, and it is the most recent game in the list. The career game mode in Sensible World of Soccer enables players to manage a club through 20 seasons. Basic manager options include a transfer market (buy/sell players). Every team has a squad of 16 players, by default. Every player has individual skills (speed, tackling, heading, finishing, shooting, passing, ball control). Player prices are calculated relative to their skills. Players can be transferred from other clubs by offering an amount of money and/or own players in

1120-521: The Warcraft series. In 2013, the book Sensible Software 1986–1999 was released. This comprehensive retrospective on the history of the company was written by Zzap!64 games journalist Gary Penn in conversational style. It features 19 different contributors including extensive interviews with Jon Hare , plus luminaries of the era including David Darling (entrepreneur) , Dominik Diamond , and Peter Molyneux . Chris Yates declined to be interviewed for

1176-588: The UEFA Euro 1996 , the European Championship Edition (aka ECE or SWOSECE) was released. This version is equal to ' 95/'96 Edition, but included the actual European Championship as a preset competition with updated teams. This version was released for PC as well as for Amiga computers. The release of 1996 was the final version of the SWOS sequel, for Amiga (two floppy disks) and PC (CD-ROM). It contained

SECTION 20

#1733084645692

1232-548: The World Cup in Germany. The game seemed to be unfinished and had major bugs. About the same time they released Sensible Soccer Skillz , another game for mobile phones which contained just a few mini games such as penalties or corner kicks. Due to recent popularity of retro games , Codemasters decided to release SWOS on Xbox LIVE Arcade . It was originally planned for August 2007, but was delayed until late December. After its release,

1288-711: The "SWOS Witnesses" in Serbia and the tournaments of the ISSA (International Sensible Soccer Association) in Copenhagen, Denmark, both played on the PC DOS version of the game. The game is also very popular in Poland and Germany where tournaments take place on a regular basis (Amiga and MS-DOS). Since 2004 SensibleSoccer.de offers Sensible World of Soccer online play, and national and international tournaments and leagues are being organized and played on

1344-516: The 1992 chart), and never relinquished it (except to its own sequel Sensible World Of Soccer ) for the rest of the magazine's existence. In its later years, Amiga Power started advertising a fictional refreshment beverage called F-Max, the lightly sparkling fish drink , with the slogan an ocean of refreshment . In early 2019, an Amiga Power fan launched a Kickstarter campaign to create an officially licensed AP tribute album containing remixes of assorted Amiga game tunes , accompanied by

1400-595: The Apocalypse, the only minor deities committed to rigorous consumer testing; Doris Stokes , who returned from the dead as an even worse medium than before, and several others besides. One of the earliest Amiga Power features which appeared in True Stories was Oh Dear, a small monthly feature showcasing poorly rated Amiga games. Oh Dear was removed very early on in the Amiga Power series. A regular feature which presents

1456-590: The Cresswell brothers from England who collected data from several internet forums and created an unofficial update to '97/'98 for Amiga. During the 1998 World Cup in France they made a special update, which was based on ' 97/'98 and contained also some new graphics. This "World Cup 98 update" was officially supported by Sensible Software and released on the Cover CD number 24 of the magazine "CU Amiga". To use this update

1512-567: The Decade by Zzap!64 magazine). At the time, the pair's output was well known among gamers for its high quality and offbeat sense of humour. In 1988 Martin Galway joined the team, making it a three-way partnership. In mid-1988, it released Microprose Soccer , its first venture into association football games. By 1993 there were 6 staff members. Galway left in 1990 to join Origin Systems in

1568-641: The US, and over the next few years the company swapped the 8 bit machines for the more powerful 16-bit Amiga and Atari ST systems, where games such as Wizkid: The Story of Wizball II , Mega-Lo-Mania , the Sensible Soccer series, and the Cannon Fodder series became classics all over Europe, especially in the UK where various Sensible games were number one for 52 weeks of the 3 year period between June 1992 – 1995. With

1624-426: The advent of cheap 3D rendering abilities and games such as Actua Soccer and FIFA turned to 2.5D and 3D gradually shoving the Sensible Soccer series aside though belatedly converting the game to 3D in 1998. Sensible Golf , a simple golf video game (not a simulation), did not perform well in the market and with most of Sensible's staffing resources having been thrown into Sex 'n' Drugs 'n' Rock 'n' Roll ,

1680-470: The book. Half art book and half retrospective analysis, the book is the first of its kind to cover the creative, business, and technical issues that shaped the whole era of early games development in the UK and Sensible Software in particular. The historical importance of this book has been recognised by BAFTA which hold copies in both its library in Central London and its historical archive. In 2020,

1736-470: The classic mode. SWOS is the first XBLA game which uses the technology of Massive Inc. to show commercials within the game, updated over the network. The game's price is 800 MS Points. Meanwhile, there are packs of SWOS -related gamer pictures and themes, the price for both in each case is 150 MS Points and they could be downloaded on the Marketplace . Bugs in the online mode were reported by consumers in

Sensible World of Soccer - Misplaced Pages Continue

1792-465: The cost and in a third of the time if they're only going to get another 3% for doing it properly. Of course, the market will die much faster if people get continually stiffed by crap games, but hey - there's always another machine to move to and start the cycle again." Amiga Power had a section at the front of each issue listing other magazines' scores for games, some with a star next to them indicating that they "appear[ed] as an exclusive, cover disk or

1848-542: The final issue of the magazine: "Giving something like SWOS [ Sensible World of Soccer ] 95% is utterly devalued if you also give, for example, Rise of the Robots (a widely-panned fighting game, rated 5% by the magazine) 92%. Percentage ratings are meaningless unless you use the full range, and you can't give credit where it's due if you're pretending that everything's good. What encouragement does that give developers to produce quality? They might as well knock it out at half

1904-444: The form of a small hardback book, with two CDs attached to the inside of the front and back covers, and the 100-page Mighty Booklet sandwiched between them. The first CD – subtitled AP's Pick Of The Pops – featured remixes of music personally selected by AP team members (including former editors Matt Bielby, Mark Ramshaw, Linda Barker, Stuart Campbell, Jonathan Davies, Cam Winstanley, Tim Norris and Steve Faragher, plus others), nwhile

1960-533: The game had "hit some technical barriers" during its development. Sensible was not known to have worked on the PlayStation platform before, which may have made learning the console's problematic 3D libraries a huge issue for the inexperienced team. Sensible Software was eventually sold in 1999 to veteran UK games publishers Codemasters and since this date Jon Hare has maintained a close working relationship with Codemasters , designing many of its games, including

2016-517: The greatest games of all time. In 2007, Henry Lowood, Curator for History of Science and Technology Collections in the Stanford University together with game designers Warren Spector and Steve Meretzky , researcher Matteo Bittanti and journalist Christopher Grant compiled a definitive list of "the ten most important video games of all time" . This list included Sensible World of Soccer . Sensible World of Soccer ' s inclusion in this list

2072-444: The letters titles by taking excerpts of the letters' contents out of context, often by going across sentence boundaries or cutting in the middle of a clause. APATTOH, meaning Amiga Power All Time Top One Hundred, was a yearly feature. It originally started in AP issue No. 0 (a special "preview issue" of Amiga Power given away as an addition to an issue of Amiga Format ), and later appeared approximately in every issue whose number

2128-636: The magazine were Matt Bielby and Gary Penn , previously editors of Your Sinclair and The One , respectively, with Bielby being its first editor and Penn as a consultant. Early in the magazine's history, from its inception, Amiga Power supplied copies of each issue with a coverdisk containing a full game, distributed to the reader free of charge. Future Publishing pioneered the concept of attaching disks to covers of Amiga Format . However, software publishers complained that people were disincentivised from purchasing their games, and Amiga Power , along with other British computer magazines, soon abandoned

2184-469: The official forum and were also mentioned in critically acclaimed game reviews, but Codemasters said that there are no plans for patches, bugfixes or other SWOS -related releases in the near future. In regard to this the previously announced Windows Vista version was not released. Tournaments are mainly organized by the fans themselves. Events in the past were the World SWOS Tournaments (WST) of

2240-527: The online mode became the reason to pull the game from the Xbox LIVE Marketplace. SWOS saw its final release two days later on December 2, without any official announcements. The game is a straight port of the Amiga version of SWOS '96/'97 and uses some elements of the PC release. The graphics are enhanced (HD mode) and features the music from Sensible Soccer 2006 . During the game graphics can be switched to

2296-432: The percentage scores that they received from Amiga Power and the two main competing Amiga games magazines of the time: The One Amiga and Amiga Action . It also contained annotations on some of the games. While other magazines used at most a modest box (the " masthead ") to introduce their reviewers, Amiga Power dedicated a full page to their staff, with photographs and short sections for each member. Points of View

Sensible World of Soccer - Misplaced Pages Continue

2352-447: The player or create chances. Unique to the release was the choice of an "astro turf", whose conditions mimicked artificial pitches installed in the 1980s by some clubs. The ' 95/'96 Edition was an improved version for Amiga, with updated data, new menus and an enhanced gameplay (now with the possibility to do headers from standing positions and low passes with curling effect), which was also found in subsequent releases. In time of

2408-554: The practice in favour of "public domain" (i.e. free-of-charge) software, shareware , and demos. Amiga Power had several principles which comprised its philosophy regarding games. Like almost all Amiga magazines of the time, it marked games according to a percentage scale. However, Amiga Power firmly believed that the full range of this scale should be used when reviewing games. A game of average quality rated on this scale would therefore be awarded 50%. Stuart Campbell offered some rationale for this in his review of Kick Off '96 in

2464-473: The pre-rendered music videos – created for the game with animation by Khalifa Saber – were showcased within a feature piece on Ex Machina , a TV show covering the CG animation scene on .tv . Another cancelled game that was being developed during this final development period was a PlayStation action game titled Have a Nice Day , also known as Office Chair Massacre . Though screenshots have never been released, it

2520-492: The publishers' campaigns to offer incentives such as perks and free trips in exchange for marking their games highly. Amiga Power reviews were often written in a very personal, informal manner. The writers often used in-jokes, obscure references and running gags. Writers would sometimes embark on anecdotes of recent happenings in the AP office, or of their interactions with the other AP staff. This contributed to AP 's reputation for self-indulgence, but it also created

2576-587: The readers' wit or creativity. AP frequently provided strange additions to the usual competition rules, such as making peculiar threats to people who were ineligible to enter the competition if they tried to, or specifically disallowing reader Stuart N. Hardy from entering the competition. Like its spiritual predecessor, Your Sinclair , Amiga Power had several joke characters who would make irregular appearances in reviews and features. These included Uncle Joe Stalin, who made occasional Ed Comments in an attempt to erase Stuart Campbell from history; The Four Cyclists of

2632-572: The rise of the 16-bit home console market, Sensible's games were ported to a wide range of computing platforms , including MS-DOS , the Mega Drive , and Super NES . Though Sensible had a strong presence on the 8-bit and 16-bit machines that dominated the late 1980s and early 1990s, this success was not repeated on the 32-bit machines such as the PlayStation prominent in the mid 1990s. The trademark look of cute 2D characters had slipped out of vogue with

2688-476: The second CD – subtitled The AP Bonus Coverdisk – featured remixes inspired games and demos that appeared on the magazine's cover-mounted disks over the years. The Mighty Booklet contained detailed information about each of the tracks featured on the album, including interviews with the musicians, behind-the-scenes facts, anecdotes and asides from the AP team and full song lyrics; a special The Last Resort section written by Rich Pelley; adverts for F-Max and

2744-620: The tournament in Berlin in 2013. In 2023, the Sensible Days World Cup will take place in Wandlitz near Berlin , Germany on 5/6 August. Amiga Power Amiga Power ( AP ) was a monthly magazine about Amiga video games. It was published in the United Kingdom by Future Publishing and ran for 65 issues, from May 1991 to September 1996. The first issue of Amiga Power

2800-604: The updated data of the season and a new cover. It is also the base for the remake on Xbox Live Arcade in 2007. Also in 1996 an upgrade was released in a double CD case of SWOS '96/'97, for PC (CD) and Amiga (disks), upgrading an older version of SWOS to ' 96/'97 . Nowadays they are considered as rare collectors' items. Later there was also a White Label version containing the European Championship Edition, published by Virgin Interactive . After SWOS development ended in 1996, some fan projects tried to keep SWOS up-to-date, like

2856-465: The version of the games published in 2006, Hare wrote two more verses and he and Joseph re-recorded the song with original vocalist Jackie Reed who also appears with the Sensible team in the intro video to the game on some formats. The CD versions of the 2006 version of the game also include the 2006 studio recording as an audio track. The first release from 1994 for Amiga had some bugs which were fixed with

SECTION 50

#1733084645692

2912-478: Was a first-person shooter , inspired somewhat by the simplicity of Re-Loaded , a first generation PlayStation game by Gremlin Interactive . Jon Hare has spoken about the project in various interviews, but has never discussed the game's content and gameplay features in depth. Aside from the likelihood that it contained themes as controversial as Sex 'n' Drugs 'n' Rock 'n' Roll , in an interview with Total Video Game ' s Derek dela Fuente, Jon mentioned that

2968-508: Was a table summarising each AP reviewer's opinion of the main games reviewed that month, if they had played them. The reviewers had room to make a short comment and give their personal score from one to five stars. "Do the Write Thing" (an obvious pun on the movie Do the Right Thing ) was the magazine's letters page. One distinguishing feature of the letters page was that the magazine gave

3024-419: Was divisible by 12, plus 1. APATTOH ranked games depending on how the staff liked them. This meant that games that got good press at the time when they came out could end up very low (or entirely absent) on the list. A notable example is Frontier , which most other magazines of the time reviewed positively, but Amiga Power ranked #100 in their top 100 list (emphasising the point by placing it one place below

3080-703: Was formed in Chelmsford , Essex in 1986 by two former school friends, Jon Hare (nicknamed Jovial Jops) and Chris Yates (nicknamed Cuddly Krix). They worked for 9 months at LT Software in Basildon , and started Sensible Software in March 1986. Sensible initially released games for the ZX Spectrum and later the Commodore 64 , clinching market praise with Parallax , Shoot'Em-Up Construction Kit , and Wizball (later voted Game of

3136-451: Was published in May 1991 after Future Publishing decided, in response to feedback from readers of its magazine Amiga Format , to launch two further magazines with narrowed interests, the other being Amiga Shopper . Whereas the latter would focus on the "serious" side of Amiga computers involving programming and productivity, Amiga Power would be wholly tailored to the gaming audience. Joining

#691308