SMS is probably the most realistic football strategy game available for any home computer. This is because SMS is purely and simply a strategy game, it doesn't try to be an arcade game or a graphical masterpiece. The CPC market is flooded with football manager games that sacrifice realism and strategy to appeal to arcade game fans, or limit gameplay by wasting memory on detailed graphics to catch the eye of reviewers. SMS uses sound and graphics only where they are necessary leaving more memory for important things. SMS lets you manage any of the 92 clubs in the English League or one of the 38 in the Scottish League. All the clubs are realistic representations of their real counterparts, each has its own ground capacity, level of support, and degree of ambition. Every club has a first team squad containing 17 players, most of whom were present at the end of the 1989-90 season. All the Divisions contain the correct number of teams and play the correct number of league matches each season. The League and FA cups are included as are the three European competitions. In addition to the 130 British clubs there are 100 foreign clubs, so that there are over 3800 players to buy and sell. The players in SMS have the following attributes - age, form, position, and overall skill which is made up of the following abilities - ball control, passing, shooting, goal scoring, tackling, work rate, and speed. There are ten player positions, goalkeeper, and left-right-central defence, midfield, and attack. The manager can use any formation he wants and can tell his players which positions to pass to. Very briefly, other features of SMS are concise manual, disk not copy protected, save/load facility, league program, record of league results, financial accounts, youth squad, substitutions, two-leg matches, intelligent opposition, etc. AA (ADVERT) |