#21: Microprose Soccer (Sensible Software/Microprose, Amiga, 1989) 

I remember playing an awful lot of different football games in my C64 and Amiga days, but most of them, not for very long. Microprose Soccer was, for a time, the only exception. Because while the others strove for realism above all else, Microprose remembered that, first and foremost, games are supposed to be fun.

Besides which, in its total lack of referees or any concept of fouls, and the fact that goals are largely scored by a single player dribbling around all the defenders and smashing the ball past a hapless goalkeeper, Microprose Soccer actually hews a lot closer to the reality of football as it was when I was a child. Not the football of overpaid professionals in huge stadiums, but the football of school playgrounds and public parks with jumpers for goal posts. Which is the way it should be, really. Don’t run before you can walk; to bring the world of football into video games in a way that worked, they needed to get the basics down first. Anything else just wouldn’t be… sensible.