Written by: Rik
Date posted: November 7, 2015

I first played Manchester United Europe on an Atari ST which, as any Amiga owner would delight in telling you, generally makes for an inferior experience. (I guess if the two systems were football teams, the ST would be Leeds, and the smuggy-smug Amiga would be Manchester United.) Speed and graphical detail are the two main sacrifices, with the pitchside graphics being abandoned altogether, leaving players on the subs bench squatting in mid-air (left pic).

As with many 90s football games, a number of different iterations were released under different names. John Barnes European Football (right pic), which came to ST and Amiga in 1992, gave players a chance to sample international football, re-using many of the graphical assets from MUE, but offering a slightly zoomed in and significantly faster (but not necessarily better) experience.

Sega Megadrive owners got European Club Soccer, which – again – was faster and better-looking than MUE, with a wider range of teams and options, but without representing much of an improvement overall. There was even a version for Atari Lynx, a technically impressive achievement (although the ball was flat like a frisbee), but hampered by the general crapness of the core game – I seem to remember (for I was a Lynx owner, too) that the only reliable way to score was to lump it high into the box at every opportunity and attempt to head or volley straight into the net.