Reviews

1986 Artic Computing (UK)
by J. Wilson

A good attempt of resurrecting Football Manager in the form of Rugby.
The big novelty here is the select arrow in the options menu, which for use with the Spectrum rubber keys is not the best option, but functions quite well. The game is a bit outdated for 1986, but it's still a good strategy game with the main features this sort of games has, mostly available.The match highlights are fun and reminicent of the ones in Football Manager (obviously inspired by).

This will be the reason for the Football Manager reviews recently. It's kind of vague trying to compare this to Football Manager if I hadn't even reviewed it yet. I can totally dig the appeal of a rugby management game as long as it works well, which this does not. It has an outdated interface for 1986 standards with a very primitive looking menu setup. The match highlights are reminiscent of Football Manager but not as good. Players just fall over when they are tackled and when your tackled the play is over, which is completely the opposite of how Rugby works. There's no passing, there's no scrums, there's nothing that resembles Rugby except running with the ball and getting floored. And fair enough, Football Manager didn't have much to shout about in the match highlights either, but the difference is that was 1982, this is four years later and so it looks really dated. Oh and there's conversions and penalties which are usually missed by the ball going UNDER the posts, something that is actually a bit of a rarity in Rugby, usually they are missed by going wide of the posts but usually never does it go under. Also, the only sound in the game is when there's a penalty or the half is finished. I suppose the only saving grace for this game is it cost only £2.99 whereas Football Manager cost more, but you still would have felt like you wasted your money in spite of the cheapo price. This could have been a worthy game to play but as it is it sucks just as much as the average bog-standard football management game does.