League Challenge

The Good
It's got a certain comedy value, especially the in-match graphics.

The Bad
The squads don't distinguish between goalkeepers and defenders, and there's no reason to select a logical or realistic formation.

Players aren’t injured in training, and all injuries heal in one week, with players on maximum fitness - hardly realistic or sensible.

In match graphics feature generic kits, laughable measurement of pitch markings (the 6-yard box is about 2/3 the size of the 18-yard penalty box - get the tape measure out guys), chunky C64-esque players whose limbs don’t move properly, with no more than 5 players (including keeper – where did he come from?) on screen. There are only 4 different pieces of action, and all goals look to be offside.

The only real options are training and transfers, and these are simple one-keypress choices, so you virtually go straight from one match to the next.

The keyboard interface is ugly, though tolerable. Player abilities reset after each season, undoing all your hard training work and transfer spending, presumably as a feeble attempt at making the game longer.

The Bottom Line
At £1.99 in 1988, this got mediocre reviews on the Spectrum, and yet Atlantis thought people would pay 4 times that 3 years later to see it with slightly better graphics? Football management games were about to enjoy a massive resurgence in popularity, largely due to 16-bit-dedicated games such as BMP, Championship Manager and Premier Manager - the fact that titles like this had been ten-a-penny for years explains why the genre had faded. Even if you love football, you'll struggle to enjoy this for more than 5 minutes.