Football Games and how they've evolved part 3

Playstation 1
Addidas Power Soccer
My first football on the playstation 1 was Addidas Power Soccer. I recall there were some long delays in the game, if memory serves me correctly the awarding of a free kick would just kill time, but I enjoyed the graphics as it was the first major step into what I considered arcade quality graphics in the home.
I found the following on Youtube which gives you an idea as to how the game played.

 

Actua Soccer Series

I never owned Actua Soccer 1 on the Playstation 1 but was lucky to own Actua Soccer 2 and Actua Soccer 3.  These games were simply seen as the closest you could get to being in a real football match. On reflection the graphics are a little dated compared to what you get these days but at the time one would simply drool at the quality of the graphics and gameplay.

 

At the time around 1996 the Actua game series were serious competitors to EA sports in the sports games market. Games such as Actua Golf, Actua Tennis and Actua Ice Hockey were released in the series.

Pro Evolution Soccer Playstation 2

 The pro evolution series of games took soccer games into a new realm, they had it all, graphics, gameplay, speed, and realism. I discovered this link on Youtube which is a homage to all the PS2 pro evolution soccer games. Enjoy!!

Football Games and how they've evolved - Part 4

Electronic Arts through EA Sports published the official FIFA licensed football game as far back as late 1993. There was a lot of competition in football based games at the time where games such as Sensible Soccer dominated. Personally I always felt (incorrectly I might add) that the FIFA series was a poorly developed franchise and that it would never gain a proper foothold among gamers. As Sensible Soccer fell to one side the PES series from KONAMI took over and seemed unbeatable.

 (above video credited to nintexs uploaded to youtube on Sep 10, 2011)

I had played some of the FIFA games on DOS based systems and on the SNES but it wasn't until I played FIFA 10 on the XBOX360 where I realised they had overtaken the Pro-evolution soccer series in terms of playability. One gripe I do have....EA appear to shut down the ability to play online within two years of the games release, for example FIFA10 no longer supports online play where's I purchased a second hand copy of PES 6 and I can still play online. I don't feel I have to fork out 50euro every two years in order to play football online with EA sports.

War Games
My first introduction to war strategy games was on the ZX Spectrum when I purchased a two player game called Confrontation published by a company called Lothlorien. The game was based around the standard war board games where you move pieces on the board and then when you attacked an enemy unit the environment, what forces were nearby and the relative attacking and defensive strengths were taken into account and the computer would determine if you suffered losses or defeated the opponent.
Confrontation was not the sort of game you'd play for half an hour, it would require undivided attention for hours.

Moving on from Confrontation the next big war game I played on the spectrum was a fantastic game called Apocalypse which was published by Red Shift under license from Games Workshop. Apocalypse was very much like the board game Risk but up to 4 players could play the game which as I recall was played out in western Europe and covered the tensions of the cold war - which was of course a real issue at the time. Nuclear weapons were an element to the game only I recall they caused a great degree of tension among players, it actually resulted in non nuclear treaties between players, or agreement during the game on non use of nuclear weapons. I have fond memories of Apocalypse.

Following Apocalypse I was hooked on war games and what appeared to be the most impressive war game on the spectrum was a Games Workshop game called D-Day. This was a war game with large bright graphics, when tanks fired there was an action animated element to the game where you could follow the missile to target. With four detailed scenarios it allowed for great gameplay,