Producer: CDS
Retail Price: £14.99
Author: The CDS Team

Well Brian, me and the lads got together, and well, there it was in the back of the net - something a bit different, a board game where the computer acts as ref.

Two to five players each take a team. The remaining teams are controlled by the computer, which generates a squad for each player. This consists of a goalkeeper, four defenders, three mid-fielders, three forwards and two versatile players. Versatile players can play in any position (however, their star rating is reduced to one if they play in goal). All players have a star rating between one and five, although initially, only footballers with values from one to four are issued. These are represented by cards which are given to the players. The remaining cards are then mixed together and placed in the middle of the board. Players also receive £20,000.

The computer now shakes the dice for the players in turn. Each player moves a counter round the board, landing on squares which either give penalties or bonuses. Players may also land on auction squares. When this happens, the top card from the stack of footballers is turned over. All players now bid. Sometimes players will land on a square which entitles them to only pay half price in the subsequent auction.

Footballers can be sold or loaned between players. When this happens, the squad is rear-ranged to give the same 1-4-3-3 formation with which it started. After all the players have made a move on the board, a round of matches is played. Players type in the total attack and defence strengths of their squads. The attack strength is the total star rating of the attack and midfield players; the defence is the sum of the defenders and the goalkeeper. After that, the computer works out the results of the matches. Players then receive gate money, depending on how interesting the fixture was.

Play then alternates between a move on the board and a match. Apart from adjudicating the matches, the computer holds a list of the cards for 'selection problems' and 'manager's luck'. Should a player land on one of these squares, the computer 'turns over' the next card, and the manager follows its instructions. Some represent cash penalties, so it's important not to overstretch yourself by bidding too highly in the auctions, or there may be insufficient funds to cover a penalty. If the penalty can't be met by selling footballers to other players, the manager is bankrupt and out of the game.

Players can check their current league position from the program's main menu, they can also inspect the last cards drawn and the last or the next league fixtures.

After the first season, managers enter European competitions. Here teams face tougher opposition, but the rewards are correspondingly greater.

Players decide at the start of the game how many seasons the game will last. At the end of this period, the manager with the greatest number of management points wins. Management points are scored by doing well in the League or Cup competitions. Players also score a few points for cash in hand at the end of the game - but this is a fairly minor factor.

COMMENTS

Control keys: menu selection, 0-9
Joystick: none
Use of colour: hardly any
Graphics: a series of menus and printed results
Sound: none
Skill levels: four
Screens: 20

Golly! Football Monotony with a computer to keep score. I was wondering how long it would be before something like this came along. I've played this a fair number of times over the last few weeks, and I think it's boring. The overall package is spoiled by the software (more than likely written in BASIC) which runs painfully slowly and looks 'unfinished'. I'm sure that the game would be as much fun it the whole computer idea was dropped and its job was replaced by a couple of dice, a set of chance cards and a score pad. For the price this may interest board games, but I wouldn't recommend it.
BEN

In the past CDS have always come out with some good thinking-games. However, Football Fortunes requires very little thought to play. It's just a case of whoever gets the first few half price auctions is well on the way to winning the game. The computer side of the package contains a very shabby bit of software. Overall I would say that Football Fortunes is too over-priced to enjoy playing for long. As a computer game it contains little appeal to validate the large asking price.
PAUL

Is this one for the board gamers or the bored gamers I ask myself. This is neither a particularly good game or a good computer program. The computer side of it runs very slowly. There seems to be far too much luck involved, once one person gets ahead it's almost impossible to stop them as success leads to more success. It might provide a bit of fun for an evening or two, but that's not much for this sort of price tag. Sorry Brian, I'm going to kick this one into touch.
MIKE

CDS
£14.95

This is unusual. A computer game for two to five players which comes complete with board, counters, lots of little cards and Bank of Toytown notes in £100,000 denominations. Has CDS flipped?

I don't think so. Zapping aliens is fine, but it's a lonely business. So it was onto the blower to enlist the aid of T'zer (On the 'ead, son) Maughan, Phil (Get stuck in there) South, Marcus (Are you blind, ref?) Berkmann and Rachael (Oo, err, is that the ball?) Smith.

Of course, BC's FF is a football management game, but that didn't stop Smiffy turning up in shorts and a number eleven shirt. Thank heavens nobody mentioned full team strip - she probably would have!

The aim of the game is nothing short of world domination - soccer style. At home there's a league to conquer and the cup to win. After the first season things get really exciting, because there are European competitions too. But success in these fields is only one step to acquiring management points. Teams start equal, but by the end of the game, one will be more equal than others. And the manager who's led it to fame and fortune is bestowed the title of Cloughie the Conqueror by the computer.

So it's off round the board, with the Spectrum shaking the dice. The squares you land on can help you supplement your squad, suck away your money, or crush you with the fickle finger of fate through chance events, detailed by the micro. The computer's got a more important role in the second stage of each round. That's when the matches are played. Each manager enters their team's defence and attack strengths, which are the sum of each player's personal ability points. You start by choosing from a squad of thirteen, including two utility players, who're good anywhere except in goal.

At first the teams rate much the same, but as the game progresses each player has the chance to build up their squad, or find it decimated by bad luck and face possible bankruptcy. Auctions are one way to acquire stars, but the real strategy and excitement lies in private deals.

Spend too much early on and you might well have to sell that extra striker to raise capital, especially if his transfer could result in another manager's FA Cup chances getting hammered!

The computer calculates results for all the teams in the league, whether they belong to players or not, and then works out the league tables. You can set the skill level of the micro teams, to give the miserable humans an even tougher time.

After all that, it was inevitable that Rachael (Over the moon) Smith would make us all as sick as parrots. But that just goes to prove that you don't need to know anything about footie to enjoy this - you just have to be good at wheeling, dealing, bargaining and backstabbing!

THE COMPLETE AND UTTER YS GUIDE TO SOCCER ON THE SPECCY

Footie games, eh? Where'd we be without 'em? There've been hundreds of the blooming things, with more on the way each month, and they always (always! always!) sell like hot cakes (even the ones that are crap). So with the World Cup lining itself up on the horizon, let's join the slightly less-than-enthusiastic JONATHAN DAVIES, as we lead you by the hand into the past, present and future world of the Spectrum soccer game.

Oh dear. How can I start? Um, quite a few phrases spring to mind. Like "They're all the same!" and "No, please, not another one!" and, erm, "Let me out of here!" The problem, you see, is that for every MicroProse Soccer or Matchday 2 there are six or seven World Cup Carnivals (US Gold's tragic 1986 attempt at a footie sim) to wade through. And I should know - I've just waded through them all. Quite frankly I wouldn't care if the colour green never darkened my Speccy again. I'm sick as a parrot. So let's just forget all about them, eh?

What? No. You like them? Cripes. (Better get going on this giant mega-feature thingie then, hadn't you? Ed) Er, yes. Right. Football.

Well, there are certainly lots of games. And no, they're not all the same. There are in fact a few basic types, and within each of these categories dwell a hundred and one subtle variations. Um, what fun...

IT'S A GAME OF TWO HALVES

That's right, one half management, the other half actually booting the ball around a bit. To kick off with we have the straightforward arcade simulation. This you should all be familiar with - a big green pitch (seen from above, or sometimes from the side), the roar of the crowd (well, the 'beep' of the crowd), lots of little men running around kicking the ball, and you up in the air somewhere above it all, doing your best to keep one or two of them (plus the ball) under control. What you don't have to worry about though is what any of the blokes are called, how much they're worth, or any other boring managerial-type stuff. Good examples of this kind of game are Matchday 2 and Kick Off.

The second main sub-division, the management game, is a totally different kettle of fish. No footie here at all (as such), apart from the results of various games flashing up on your screen every so often to tell you how you're doing. It's business acumen we're worried about here, with all sorts of weird and wonderful information popping up to confuse you - what your men are called, how tall they are, how skilful they can be and all sorts. A good example of this variety of game is, surprise, surprise, Football Manager.

The third, and crappiest, type of footie game is the pools prediction program. Now you may get really excited by the prospect of these (I don't know) but I find them so brain-blendingly boring that this is the only mention they'll get here, so enjoy it while you can. (Sorry and all that.)

Actually there's a fourth subdivision I've just remembered too - those games that provide you with an often quite bizarre mixture of action game and management, usually consisting of lots of lists of numbers with slightly dodgy bolt-on arcade bits thrown in. Some of them work quite well, but there's always the odd game that's simply too weird for words - like Roy Of The Rovers for example, part arcade adventure of all things and with a badly drawn Roy searching for his kidnapped team!

"Brian Clough's Football Fortunes is a football management computer board game suitable for two to five players." Or so it says on the cover - what more can I say? You get the computer program, a board (which expands out from the size of a postage stamp to that of a small ploughed field), lots of cards, some counters and loads of money. The program takes care of all the boring bits, like rolling the dice and sorting out league tables, and the players do all the slightly less boring bits, like moving counters round the board and shuffling the cards.

The software's a load of crap. It's written in Basic, with useless graphics and, oh horror, the Sinclair character set. It does its job though. It plays just like any other board game really (they're all the same, aren't they, Spec-chums?), except that you occasionally have to press buttons on the computer.

It's okay for soaking up the odd evening now and again, but you really have to like football to get stuck into it. Me, I'll stick to triv games.

Label: CDS
Price: £14.95
Memory: 48K/128K
Reviewer: Terry Pratt

At last! The real reason why Brian Clough was never offered the England job!

Lending his name to CDS' Football Fortunes shows a lack of managerial judgement on a par with neglecting to mark Maradonna in the World Cup Finals.

It's not that this computer moderated game is a particularly dire example of the various footballing games going the rounds, but it's very expensive, irritatingly fiddly (with its cards and counters), impossible to play on your own and definitely not championship material.

CDS' game puts the emphasis on the 'Fortune' and doesn't give an opportunity to show any tactical prowess.

As a former top-flight football manager myself (Welwyn, Hatfield & District Sunday League - division II), I was expecting my year of experience to pay off against the motley collection of Ipswich and Portsmouth fans I had selected to help review the game.

But after the first season, with my two stars Rush and Lineker lost to a car crash and Liam Brady sold off due to the computer telling me to fork out £300,000 to buy my home ground, my managerial rating was as miserable as my luck.

The game is for two to five players and the action is in two stages. Between each match your counter plods around a Monopoly-style board, landing on such squares as: Sponsorship (Take £30,000); Wages (you actually have to pay the rabble); Auction (a player comes on to the transfer market) and Selection Problems or Managerial Luck (pure chance).

Then it's the weekend and you pick the team from your squad, input two numbers (defensive strength and attacking strength), and find out if you've won, drawn or lost.

There's no game action. No note of who played well or badly. No tactical changes to impart at halftime. And no wonder Bobby Robson got the vote.

The computer must feel equally unfulfilled. It performs the most routine of tasks - rolling the dice, printing out results, compiling league tables and controlling the other non-player teams (these merely turn up for matches).

Us humans have to keep check of our own money and player cards. And the best bit is we can cheat like crazy - the computer is none the wiser.

The Spectrum prints up good news or catastrophe whenever a player's counter lands on Selection Problems or Managerial Luck and it prints up a random starting strength at the beginning of the season.

Oh for a game which requires a modicum of tactical thought or managerial strategy.

But if you want to know what really rankled - Portsmouth won the Championship! I ask you Brian!

Spectrum £7.99cs, £9.99dk
C64 £7.99cs, £9.99dk
CPC £7.99cs, £9.99dk
ST £14.99dk
Amiga £14.99dk
PC £14.99dk
BBC/Electron £7.99cs, £14.99dk
MSX £7.99cs
PCW £14.99dk. +4 £7.99cs
Apple II £14.99dk

Now this was good. Cloughie's footy was a board game come computer game. Several management options enabled you to manage your team in league and international competitions.

IS IT A BOARD GAME OR A COMPUTER GAME? FOOTBALL FORTUNES TRIES TO PUT A BOOT IN BOTH CAMPS.

CDS
£14.95

When popular board games have been adapted for the home computer they have often been a disappointment. Games that can draw people round a table like a magnet tend to lose their appeal when the monitor screen is the focus of attention.

Perhaps with this in mind, CDS have designed a game that keeps the appealing social aspects of board games (ie. it can get very competitive and there are plenty of opportunities to outsmart your opponents) while farming out all the donkey work - rolling the dice, statistics, tables, results etc to the computer.

Football Fortunes is an enterprising hybrid that been well thought out to exert maximum hold over the football fanatics imagination. If you've ever followed football you will definitely have put together your "dream team" with all your favourite players. With Football Fortunes you can try to do just that in your quest to carry off the league and Cup double. Success depends on assembling a strong squad from the available player cards, each card represents a well known player and gives his category (defender, midfield. etc) and a star rating 1 to 5.

If your favourite player has been left out there are blank cards provided so you can include them. The star ratings are bound to spark an argument or two especially if your particular hero is deemed to be only worth one star. The total star ratings for defence and attack are fed into the computer before each match to indicate your team's current form.

The game proceeds much along the lines of a conventional board game. Throw the computerised dice and proceed around the board, which is sizable (fitting it into the double cassette size box was a masterpiece of origami) to land on squares that may be to your advantage like sponsorship or send you sliding into bankruptcy. The manager's luck may be good may be good or bad, and result in a windfall or going seriously into the red due to a managerial crisis. "Selection Problems" is a square to beware of as the computer program chooses one of your players randomly who is either injured or retired causing you to frantically rejuggle the team.

Plenty of variety is built into the board game but to stop any chance of it becoming repetitious you can conduct transfer deals and haggle over players at any point in the game and if someone is selling off players to avoid bankruptcy the bargaining can get very fierce indeed.

There's an awful lot of enjoyment to be had out of Football Fortunes whether you enjoy football or not. CDS have brought back the human element and the more players you have (from two to five can play) the better the game. For a change the computer program plays a supporting role to the players and Football Fortunes is all the better for that.