Sensible World of Soccer (commonly known as SWOS) was the sequel to one of the biggest British games of the early ‘90s and was bigger still. Yet Sensible Software have never released a follow-up with any kind of reach, and the online Xbox 360 version of SWOS was probably the series’s biggest moment since. As far as sequels as a dead-end go, it outdoes even Sonic 3 x Sonic & Knuckles ft. Knuckles and Sonic of Sonic 3 & Knuckles. This was influenced by the same things as Cannon Fodder 2, but SWOS takes the sequel-as-iteration model and runs it into the ground, through the Earth and out the other side to soar majestically.

The football matches in SWOS look and play pretty much identically to those in Sensible Soccer. Even a couple of further smaller iterations on, by SWOS ‘96-’97 – the version I played for hundreds of hours and only ever thought of as SWOS until it came to this post – players being able to head the ball from a standing position and curl passes along the ground was as big as differences got. The game remains the same timeless frenetic fun, with all the same methods of goalscoring that come right back to me. Run up the middle of the pitch towards one goal post and curve a shot from the edge of the area towards the opposite post, for instance.

That lack of change is what made going anywhere different with the game after SWOS even more difficult. Another game on from Sensible Soccer doing the same thing meant that thing was even more definitively what Sensible Soccer was. There could be no real place now for something more 3D that called itself Sensible Soccer. What made SWOS such a success, though, was that instead of change it offered incredible expansion.

First, it lived up to its name by featuring club teams and leagues from a vast number of countries across six continents (as well as some very silly custom teams ready for editing to your school team or whatever you felt like). Second was the stroke of genius that was career mode. In the original SWOS this was not quite the absorbing thing of wonder that I remember, but the key parts were certainly there. You manage a team of your choice, doing the carefully chosen minimum of team selection and transfers rather than getting too stuck into the detail of management. You either play the matches or just see the results from them (being able to choose this on a match-by-match basis, stepping in to play out the big matches, is the most crucial addition to later versions), At the end of the season you get an offer to stay for another year and/or some alternative offers from other teams. This goes on for twenty seasons, including the possibility of moving up to managing an international team. Looking back over twenty years of results, with little graphical representations of the cups you won in each season, was always a special moment.

The tension lent by the overarching narrative and its prospective record makes big games feel properly tense, especially when facing up to the relentless pace of the best teams when any fraction of a second of hesitation could be disastrous. The scope of SWOS and the career mode also makes the whole world feel within reach. If you’re playing in the lower divisions in England but don’t like any of the transfer options there, you can turn to anywhere else with players within price range – Japan, for instance. At the end of each season the game works out the league tables for each of its leagues across the world and shows them to you. I remember this being a twenty minute long process and sometimes acting as just a good chance to take a break from the computer, but sometimes I’d read them all, and the way everything is joined up is great. The whole world really is open to you.

In one memorable career, after being sacked from Gillingham (as I recall, it was rather harshly for narrowly avoiding relegation the season after promotion) I received a job offer from Domagnano of San Marino. I had never heard of them but took them on. Once I managed to narrowly win the San Marino league, the fact that SWOS is very much centred on the person playing it kicked in, and Domagnano got automatic Champions League qualification. We weren’t ready to compete with the big names of Europe yet, but the prize money was enough to buy up strikers several orders of magnitude better than any other player in San Marino, and I then led Domagnano to multiple invincible seasons sweeping all before me domestically. The fact that Domagnano play in Roy of the Rovers-style red and yellow added a little something to the fantasy too. San Marino was not somewhere I would ever have dreamed of starting, but the career mode, broken edges and all, turned it easily into a fantastically entertaining story.

image

Gallup home computer chart, Computer Trade Weekly, 9 January 1995 (chart for week to 24 December 1994)