NASL Soccer (1979)

There is, in my view, a curious ratio that applies when you’re a child. It states that no matter how good the Christmas presents are that you receive, you will always be envious of those your friends received. This was the case back in the early 1980’s when I, as the grateful owner of a Sinclair ZX Spectrum, paid a visit to the home of my schoolmate, Trevor. At some point in my stay, he unveiled the prize offering from his festive haul – an Intellivision video game system. No contest.

The Atari 2600 console seemed to have been and gone by the time Intellivision arrived in the UK. Intellivision seemed incredibly modern and comprehensive by comparison. True, we still had a token piece of wood panelling to provide a supposed touch of class, but the Mattel-made system had strange hand-held controllers like telephone handsets connected to their mothership via a curly cord. Strange stuff indeed.

The allure of an Intellivision system seemed almost too much to bear for my 11-year-old self. All those amazing games I could play like Zaxxon and Donkey Kong… Sadly I never got to own either, but at least now at the ripe old age of 41 I can console myself (sorry) with the thought that these are now considered two of the worst games ever made for the Intellivision. Had I owned the console, however, there was one other game I may have been tempted to purchase: NASL Soccer.

Released in 1979 (at the peak of the North American Soccer League’s popularity), we see an ambitious attempt to portray the game using the side-on view - always a challenge for games makers everywhere. Everything appears to be in order, and impressively so at first sight: two teams, one in yellow, the other in magenta, both featuring players with clearly delineated heads, chests, legs and feet. Though we’re never in danger of seeing an actual kit design, this is obviously easier on the eye and more realistic than, say, Atari’s Pelé's Soccer.

As with that game, both sides have three outfield players and a goalkeeper, but here the players can move independently on the pitch. The players nearest the ball are indicated in different colours (orange for the yellow team, blue for the magenta team) and the colours are similarly applied to the scores shown intermittently at the top of the screen. Even the ball has a pixelated Adidas Telstar look to it, despite looking distinctly non-spherical.

All in all, one might say ‘so far so good.’ Unfortunately the game falls down when you try to play it, which is unfortunate to say the least. To begin, the act of kicking the ball sends it into an interminable roll which can only be stopped when another play gets in the way of it. Furthermore, the ball never actually leaves the ground which, if nothing else, should appeal to the anti-Sam Allardyce contingent amongst you.


When the ball does gain enough momentum to cover a long distance without stopping, the screen pans to follow it. A tick in the box for emulating real TV coverage there, but curiously the players that scroll off the side of the screen at the time re-emerge on the other side so as not to be lost in gameplay. A tricky one to get your head round if you plan to send a 60-yard pass down the wing to find your star striker upfield.

Being a soccer title of American origin, the gameplay instructions are wonderfully worded. On the subject of scoring a goal, we’re told: "Your opponent can only move his goalie in lunges' between goal posts. Move quickly to fake him out." For 'lunges' read 'dives' and for 'fake him out' read 'send him the wrong way.' And if the ball goes in? "IT’S A SCORE! Your score increases by one point…" How very helpful.

Perhaps the most inflexible aspect of this game is that it was made for two players only. Not that that was a technical limitation – the Intellivision system had two controllers after all – but without a fellow human to play the game with, the team in magenta would remain motionless throughout. A digitised Aston Villa, if you will.

A bit of a shame really as this wasn’t such a bad game to play back in the day. The players were a bit slow to manoeuvre but it was simple enough really. Sadly you get the impression that this lacked some of the razzmatazz that the NASL seemed to embody and for that reason this has become an overlooked video game through the passage of time. Still and all, it deserves to enter the Football Attic video game archive, taking its place early on the developmental curve that ultimately brought us Pro Evolution Soccer and the FIFA series.

The Scoreboard: A display of practicality

I’m embarrassed to say it, but I used to have a bit of a thing about scoreboards when I was younger. Stadium scoreboards, game show scoreboards, cricket scoreboards… you name it, I loved it.

There was something about those static signs  with changeable numbers that had me transfixed as a kid. If someone scored a point in a football match or on a TV quiz show, I’d wait with eager anticipation to see the scoreboard update the total, be it manually or digitally. It’s ridiculous, I know, but I loved the magisterial sense of purpose that a scoreboard possessed.

This blog doesn’t take TV nostalgia as its subject, else you’d be spending the next 15 minutes reading about It’s a Knockout or Family Fortunes. Instead I shall turn my attention towards the humble football scoreboard, and they don’t come much humbler than the one installed at Wembley Stadium around the time of the 1966 World Cup.

Essentially this was a single-line display showing the two competing teams and the score. Being very much old-tech, the scoreboard was literally just a printed  or painted sign with white characters on a black background along with those all important changeable numbers. And those numbers needed some effort to change as the full set were available as individual tiles that had to be lugged around and slotted into place by a couple of men in white coats whenever anyone scored. It was simple, but it worked.

After a while, Wembley put in place an electronic scoreboard which, compared to its predecessor must have seemed like it had arrived from another planet. Using a vast array of light bulbs switched on and off in distinct configurations, rudimentary characters could shine out from the inky black background to tell the crowd what the score was and also who had scored. Such electrical wizardry can't have been lost on a generation eager to see technological advancements improving their game-viewing experience.

Around the UK, scoreboards of all kinds had appeared at football grounds right from the very early days but they never really had the 'wow' factor, nor did they become a universal feature. Scoreboards (old-fashioned or new) were high-maintenance and often expensive so only the most committed clubs went out of their way to get one.

Sheffield Wednesday’s Hillsborough ground got an electronic one around the time of the 1966 World Cup, but like so many of their day, it had its faults. Blown bulbs and faulty mechanisms meant text was displayed with letters missing or even shown on a different area of the scoreboard. After a while, fans got used to the garbled messages and even grew to like them as a distraction from the action taking place on the pitch.

Fully digital scoreboards like Wednesday's were slow to make an impact and venues hesitantly looked for a compromise. Despite the 1970's beginning on the crest of a scientific NASA wave, the greatest tournament on the planet was still relying on name cards and a handful of bulbs to tell people what they needed to know. If it wasn't for the opportunity to raise some money from the advertising space it provided, many scoreboards probably wouldn't have even seen the light of day.

In the end, our first sight of a new-age scoreboard didn't arrive in England or South America, but from the one place most people least expected it. Over in the United States, the occasional blown bulb wasn't going to stop NASL clubs making a song and dance about the new-found sport they were purveying.

With players like Franz Beckenbauer, George Best and Pele in town, fans needed to be reminded about the razzmatazz they were witnessing, or at least reminded who it was they were watching.

In addition to the basic electronic scoreboards already resident at some NFL and baseball stadia, bigger, more advanced displays cropped up at a small selection clubs across the country. Many of them not only displayed the score and scorers but also entertained the fans with animated imagery and messages.

With such extravagance creeping into the world game, it was hardly surprising that Subbuteo updated their own scoreboard accessory to a more modern version in 1978. The World Cup that year reinforced the notion (at Buenos Aires at least) that a new technological age had dawned, yet actually the rate of progress was still painfully slow. Even in Spain four years later, the old hand-painted name plates and tiles were still being used.

It would ultimately be up to the major stadia of the world to lead the way where modern scoreboards were concerned. At seemingly every major Cup Final on every continent of the world, scores and scorers were illuminated for ticket-paying supporters with great efficiency and clarity. Huge matrices arrived to give displays better clarity and definition, to say nothing of bigger text. Yet just as soon as they'd reached the peak they were always destined for, traditional scoreboards were starting to see the writing on the wall. (Or should that be 'board'?)

By the mid-1990's, Sony's Jumbrotron system was appearing at some of the world's major musical and sporting events, affording spectators the chance to see real-time video on enormous screens. The ability to provide people not just with text-based information but moving pictures and action replays left the traditional scoreboard looking rather old-fashioned and redundant all of a sudden. Even down-at-heel football clubs across the UK saw the potential to attract fans, even if it meant snapping up cruder, cheaper versions of Sony's big screen.

And so we find ourselves in 2012, an age where virtually every Premier League ground seems to have a big video screen tucked away in at least one corner of the ground. For all that, however, some clubs have remained true to the old virtues, believing that a simple scoreboard should not be a big distraction to the things happening on the pitch. Therein lies hope for the future - a reminder that sometimes we can learn a lot from the things we learned in the past. Video screens are all well and good, but the scoreboards of days gone by told us exactly what we needed to know in a beautifully simple way.