International Soccer (Commodore 64)
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In the early days of a new hardware platform, 1st part software support is often critical. The Commodore 64 was no different. For a time, it seemed that the Commodore 64 had more third party developers than there are stars in the sky. However, in the early days this wasn't necessarily the case and for the first few years of the Commodore 64's life, Commodore published a number of titles, including games and productivity software. One of these was International Soccer.
International Soccer, as you might imagine, is a soccer game. In fact, for its time, it was an excellent soccer game. Game play was pretty straightforward. Each player has a team of seven players. You control whichever player currently has control of or is closest to the ball. When you have the ball, you can run in any direction or pass the ball by pressing the fire button. Corner kicks and throw-ins exist but no penalties. If you are playing against the AI, there are 9 different difficulty levels. A game consists of two halves at a few minutes each.
Sports games often don't hold up the best over time but simple sports games that were good are an exception. International Soccer is sort of the Tecmo Bowl of Soccer. It's definitely worth checking out if you are a Commodore 64 fan, a soccer fan, or a fan of 8-bit sports games.
International Soccer is exclusive to the Commodore 64 and has not been rereleased. If you want to give it a try, you'll have to track down an original or use emulation. The good news is that it is cartridge based so no long load times and it's probably more robust that a disk in terms of longevity. Check out eBay if you are looking for an original copy.
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This, like a lot of C64 games, were a lot better than the console alternatives at the time. Although I never played this one, if i had access to it back in the day i'm quite certain i would have enjoyed it.
Yeah, when the Commodore 64 first came out, there was no console that even compared. A couple years later, the NES was available but I found that I always seemed to enjoy the games on the C64 more, including the ones available on both systems in most cases. Ultimately, the NES was technically superior but only because they were later able to upgrade the hardware via the games themselves.
I like the RPG aspects of the C64 and at the time we didn't have anything like those games. I don't remember how much it cost at the time but i am sure it wasn't cheap. Do you remember?
I liked RPGs like Dragon Quest on the NES but I agree that what the Commodore 64 had was so much better. I was a huge fan of the Gold Box D&D games but there were tons of others including the Ultima and Wizardry series.
The Commodore 64 was pretty expensive when it first came out (but cheap as computers went at the time). Something like $600 in 1982. But the price dropped quickly and by the time the NES came around I think it was around $200 plus another $200 for a disk drive give or take. I got mine pretty late, around 1987 I think, and by then it was down to something like $150 each.