A Football Fantasy & Soccer Done Sensibly
My friend was adamant that Sensible Soccer was better than FIFA. One day after school, he invited me over to prove it. It would've been around 1995, and I think we played it on either his Mega Drive or Amiga. I grew up in England, so everything was played on a Sega or a personal computer. None of us were cool enough to have a PlayStation that early - they were for ravers and older boys - but we were all cool enough to not have a SNES. To be honest, Sensible Soccer didn't make much of an impression. I can't even say for sure whether I'd tried a FIFA game up to that point, so I wouldn't have been able to make any meaningful comparisons between the two. Besides, I was 11 years old and did not yet have the tools to formulate nuanced, critical takes. I remember far more about my friend's enthusiasm for Sensible Soccer than I do the game itself. He'd committed to defending it and would not allow its good name to be besmirched by the FIFA crowd. We were of that a