Al-anwar Newspaper English news in Australia
From matchstick men to movie quality graphics, the football video game has come a long way in 37 years.
BBC Radio 5 live has taken an in-depth look at the history of the genre in a special programme called the Beautiful Gamers, which you can watch on the BBC Sport website at 19:30 GMT on Thursday.
And to mark the occasion, we’ve picked our eight most important football video games of all time.
John O’Shea, the curator of a football video game exhibition at the National Football Museum called Pitch to Pixel, has told us why each game was so significant.
Think we’ve missed one out? Tell us by joining in the debate on our Sportsday page.
The Intellivision system looked more like an air conditioning unit than a home computer console – and it was a fetching beige colour too. Released in the same year Trevor Francis made his British record £1m transfer from Birmingham City to Nottingham Forest, Intellivision Soccer (also known as NASL Soccer) is considered the first football video game. And yes, it was just matchstick men marching around a pitch, but who knows what would have happened without it?
“At the time the marketing slogan for Intellivision was ‘the closest thing to the real thing’. And it basically was. It’s very playable but it didn’t become a huge success.”
