| smbhax [sys=PC; cat=Sports; reg=EUR] |
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Trying to get the hang of Sensible World of Soccer '96/'97 on PC! 'p'
Seems to be regarded as the height of a popular British game series which, as a US Amiga owner, I always saw mentioned in revered tones in my dwindling magazine but never encountered in the few stores carrying Amiga games in my major metropolitan area. Charming match presentation and appealingly simple controls, but your AI team mates are clueless about off-the-ball movement and no character short of a world-class striker can keep the ball at their feet while turning, or kick it past a goalie.
So, get a team with a world-class striker, ping-pong the ball up-field to them via lightning-fast tap passes--hoping your players happen to be lurking in roughly orthogonal positions--and fire a solo shot upon which the opposing team's goalie AI may or may not elect to pounce. Opposing team attempts same vs your goalie AI; repeat until whistle. A "90 minute" match shoots by in 4 minutes of real time.
The passing seems to be key but the very fleeting exchanges and heavy reliance upon one-note AI aren't encouraging of further practice. After a few hours vs the CPU, I could win if I played a world champion team vs a third-division team from a smaller country, so I guess I've pretty much mastered it. [_[
Career mode is handy for providing a succession of matches--I started by trying to work my way up in the Albanian league, which went very poorly--but aside from the matches--messy ping-pong affairs with very non-world-class players, in my case--it consisted mainly of swapping out injured players, a tedious and confusing chore I wish I could have opted to automate. Minimal feedback on player status is provided, with the game seeming to assume that you have memorized every shortcut key, abbreviation, and largely identical tiny player. I was a terrible coach.
The game is $2-6 from gog.com and runs in a 640x480 DOSBox screen (640x400 active area). I couldn't get it to recognize my Windows-compatible Hori Real Arcade Pro V PS3/PS4 arcade stick, so I used the Windows 3rd-party "JoyToKey" utility to map the 4 movement keys and single action key to the stick, and that worked fine. |
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| | | Using settings I worked up for Links 386 Pro (entry 2034), except, although this also runs at 640x400...or wait maybe 386 doesn't actually. Anyway this one does. Anyway I have to use a different width (it seems to ignore height)--so in dosbox_SWOS.conf:
fullscreen=false
windowresolution=1800x1054
output=openglnb
Just one button. I tried setting joystick in the DOSBOX initial menu selection thing but the only joystick option is two-player and anyway when I save that the game just goes to a black screen. So as with 386 I'll use JoyToKey to map inputs (just arrows and A button, which I set in the game's DOSBOX initial keyboard config). |
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| | | Oh and when setting up a friendly, have to click on team twice to toggle to P1 control ("PLAYER-COACH").
And yeah I still have to play like best team vs worst team to have a chance at scoring a goal. |
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| | | The command line the GOG desktop shorcut has is like (replace "[my game path]"):
"C:\[my game path]\DOSBOX\DOSBox.exe" -conf "..\dosbox_SWOS.conf" -conf "..\dosbox_SWOS_single.conf" -noconsole -c "exit" |
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| | | | Even some Real Madrid players can't keep the ball when they turn so still a bit tricky, and gotta just get used to the whole aftertouch thing after kicking--it also controls how your teammates in the vicinity of a pass will react, whether they'll be moving toward the pass or waiting, at least that seemed to be what I skimmed in the manual quickly said (GOG has a manual pdf to download but it's a pretty janky scan, probably similar or same as you could find just online). |
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| | | It seems it wants to run at 1688 pixels wide, not 1800. ; D (I set 1800 and it just ran at 1688, I mean.)
fullscreen=false
windowresolution=1688x1054
output=openglnb |
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| | | | The "Goal Scoring Superstar Hero" music video at the start gets a copyright claim on it. 'p' |
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| | | From Arcade Attack podcast interview with Sensible artist Jon Hare (10/15/20):
- Sensible's 8-bit (C64) "Microprose Soccer" based on Tecmo's "Tehkan World Cup" arcade trackball-controlled game--which was adapted (per Wikipedia) from their Gridiron Fight (American) football arcade game, which also used trackballs
- Sensible was playing a lot of Dino Dini's "Kick Off 2" ("Super Kick Off" on Steam collects console Kick Off (1) ports; Dini had a later acclaimed game "Goal!" which came to Genesis as "Dino Dini's Soccer," similar tiny men overhead game) while waiting around for Mega-Lo-Mania (Amiga; came to US Genesis as "Tyrants: Fight Through Time") builds
- The KO2 play inspired Hare to put soccer jerseys on the Mega-Lo-Mania tiny men; eventually they made a prototype soccer game running on the Mega-Lo-Mania engine; Sensi is faster and more zoomed-out than KO2--Hare said they wanted to make sure you could see far ahead enough to plan your passes |
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5:26 - Juve vs various
21:37 - vs Ilirua F-Kruje
28:08 - corner kick!
1:07:52 - I score a decent goal??
1:08:39 - penalty kicking?
1:12:44 - another decent goal???
1:18:07 - making Zidane a striker?
Well it's a weird and really hard little game but I guess I kind of like it. ^_ ^
(Drat I'd foolishly shrunk my layout by 1 pixel in OBS and caused the capture to be slightly blurry here, gargharglebargle.) |
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