Street Gang Football: July featured game
Street Gang Football is not your usual computer footy game. There’s no pitch, just cold, hard brick and tarmac, with plenty of virtually grazed kneecaps.
Well, it’s certainly no Sensible Soccer or FIFA but I have to say I took an immediate liking to this game. The idea behind this game is nothing short of brilliant on Code Masters part. It reminds me of playing football with my friends during the school holidays when I was young.
Gameplay
Much of Street Gang Football is your basic football game but on the streets (hence the name), therefore you’ll find obstacles in the form of gardens, walls, bins and parked cars. The gameplay is simple and plays very much like your average football game.
Goal scoring is fairly easy, there’s no real difficulty to that but… and here’s where the ‘gang’ part comes in… If your opponent disagrees with a goal you can end up, but not everytime, in an argument resulting in the match ending with the opponent refusing to play or a punch-up (tut-tut violence in computer games in the ’80s). The outcome of the fight feels random; either that or I’m not very good at that part of the game. Still, it’s an excellent twist to a genre swamped with ‘samey’ games. Default play time is a little short at a minute per game but thankfully that can be changed to 2, 3 or 5 minutes in the options.
There are three difficulty settings, easy, medium and hard, medium being the default. Knocking it up a notch to hard didn’t seem to make much of a difference in my opinion.
Street Gang Football is a fun little game and a great way to pass 1, 2, 3, or 5 minutes. It’s refreshing to see a football game that breaks the mold.
Graphics
Graphics are well done, everything is clear as to what is what and the game runs smoothly for the most part. Scrolling between screen pages is jerky but forgivable. Colours are limited but we are talking Sinclair Spectrum here so that’s to be expected.
Sound
The title music is of the ‘beep’ variety but it serves its purpose. A little ditty is played when scoring a goal; which I thought was a good touch. Other than that there’s no in-game music and the sound effects aren’t the greatest with the ball bouncing sounding like a short buzzer going off.
| Gameplay: |  (4.0 / 5) |
| Graphics: |  (3.5 / 5) |
| Sound: |  (2.0 / 5) |
| Final Score: |  (3.2 / 5) |
Publisher: Code Masters Ltd
Release Year: 1989
Players: 1-2 (Simultaneous)
Genre: Sport: Action
System: Spectrum 48K/128K
Controls:
-
- Keys
- Kempston
- Cursor
- Interface II (ports 1 & 2)
