Footy - ZXKerl

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 FOOTY by ZXKerl

Ah, the beautiful game. Kids in the park, jumpers for goal posts. Wait, what am I saying? I don't know anything about football. Isn't it obvious? 

But, when I was a kid, my parents friends gave me a Subooteo set. It was an old one from the 60s. Probably worth a fortune if I had looked after it. But it was amazing. The figures were very high quality and the whole thing had an aura of dusty mystique about it. 

Shame was, I could never figure out how to play it!  The rules didn't make any sense and you needed two like-minded people to play it in any case. When, with that experience, fresh in my mind, I played FOOTY by ZXKerl.

The beautiful game? Certainly the loading screen is wonderful!


FOOTY

Is a game for two players for the CGC. I am told that the graphics are made by Raul Piqueras (and what graphics they are!).

There is no score but the first team who scores the 'golden goal' is the winner. During game play, every kick moves the ball 5 spaces and you need to making passes between players in order to progress.

What we have here is a sort of Subooteo for the ZX Spectrum!


The instructions make perfect sense, although I needed to have them handy in game. Basically, you take it in turns to give your players instructions and then the player do some stuff. I think they are doing what I ask. Mostly. 

Sometimes its hard to understand what is going on, mainly because players can occupy the fame space and when black 8 and white 2 are in the same location one UDG deletes the other. So you have to remember where your players and indeed THE BALL sometimes are!


But my criticism is half-hearted and minor. I do very much love this game. It's my kind of football - slow, tactical and avoids all forms of exercise. While FOOTY does has some crap credentials, it is very nicely made and I hope ZXKerl keeps working on this as it could be a fun little game.

Whats to love?
  • Graphical loveliness
  • Well thought out control system
  • Smooth gameplay
  • Nice beep tune - possibly the best I've had this year.
  • What is 9 all about??
Possible improvements:
  • If the goalie could kick the ball farther than everyone else, that might be cool?
  • Or fixing the issue so that UDG can't hide the ball and other players.
  • 1 player mode
  • Explain what 9 is all about

Final thoughts

Like so much of the later games, this is well worth a look. lovely graphics and decent game play. It's almost too good to be here. It has minor limitations, but then that has never stopped me. 






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