Written by: Rik
Date posted: July 21, 2024

While my memory occasionally tries to tell me otherwise, it’s been a very long time since a major international football tournament prompted the release of an official tie-in game that wasn’t just a different version of one of the leading brands of the day. (By my calculations, it’s 30 years, and World Cup USA ’94 by Tiertex, a reasonable-looking top-down affair that I periodically revisit and then abandon, due to technical glitches that are probably not insurmountable but remain sufficient to put me off).

In early 1996, the best football game – according to most critics – was Actua Soccer. Developed in Sheffield by Gremlin Interactive, it saw off the challenge of big-budget rival FIFA, and seemed like the obvious choice for a European Championship tie-in with England as the host nation. (Euro 96 – perhaps you’ve heard of it? You will if you’ve met an English football fan of a particular generation, because many of us find it hard to stop wanging on about it).

Now recalled fondly as a glorious summer of brilliant football during which the home side recovered from a slow start to produce memorable moments both good and bad, accompanied by the sound of a feelgood tournament song that has echoed around the terraces ever since, this game was, of course, released before any of that happened. As such, it reflects a time when the general feeling around the England team was – as noted by Baddiel, Skinner and The Lightning Seeds – rather negative, with hopes for the tournament itself reduced accordingly. Spared the requirement to qualify, Terry Venables’ side spent their preparation time stuttering through a series of friendly games, before generating negative headlines on a boozy pre-Euros trip to China and Hong Kong.

A reminder of this comes pretty swiftly as you go to set up your team and realise that, even as an official product, with real player names, getting the final squads completely accurate in enough time to finish and release the game was a tough ask in those days. What we have instead is more of a ‘best guess’ type effort: tragic England hero Gareth Southgate is, for example, nowhere to be seen and replaced in defence by Manchester United’s Gary Pallister, who didn’t make the final squad. Neither did Robert Lee, who earns a place here in the starting midfield ahead of Paul Ince, alongside Jamie Redknapp. These anomalies aren’t unique to England, either, as the in-game commentary sent me scrambling to find out whether one-time Swindon Town goal machine Duncan Shearer made the Scotland squad, or ex-Arsenal winger Glenn Helder was playing for the Netherlands (answer to both: no).

In a game of this vintage, some of the visual trappings of an official licence are also slightly limited, with kits being broadly recognisable, and the official stadia – particularly the old Wembley stadium – being faithfully reproduced. Otherwise, it’s largely menu-based frippery that makes heavy use of the tournament logo and the official mascot, a cheery looking cartoon lion called Goaliath. There are also some static screens giving background information on each team, their management and personnel.

As for the on-pitch action, well, it’s – unsurprisingly – closely reminiscent of Actua Soccer. And here we reach a slight sticking point, given your correspondent’s struggles with that game and its current position towards the bottom of the FFG Football League. Still, when it comes to 90s football games, I’m nothing if not persistent/masochistic, and I did try, like my English counterparts, to cast off negative memories of previous bad performances and approach Euro 96 with some enthusiasm. In search of better results, though, I quickly had to also stop thinking like a fan of 90s football and start thinking like a fan of 90s football games. In other words: stop trying to play it like a modern footy game that actually works and start figuring out what its particular quirks and foibles are.

Scoring is deceptively difficult. No matter how badly or well the game is going, you’re usually able to find that space opens up for a shot or two, and the feeling persists that you might not be too far away from curling in a screamer from the edge of the box. You are, though, because the goalkeeper saves virtually everything. Neither does getting a bit closer help much: you can welly a shot at the top corner from inside the penalty area, too, and still have no joy.

Still, what this does mean is that the same goes for the AI opposition, and you have little to fear from them raining down shots from distance on your goal either. Taking notes from their successful attacks indicates, as was the case last time around, that dribbling in a haphazard fashion towards the corner of the six yard box and then curling in an unlikely shot or crossing for a teammate to score is their most prolific tactic. Trying to recreate it exactly is a little tricky, but eventually you do realise that it’s all in service of getting the goalkeeper out of position, or starting one of his dive animations in the wrong place, with goals most reliably scored using the hit-and-miss ‘first time’ option, which requires you to press the shoot button before the ball arrives at your player (your triangle icon will switch to a star) at which point he will execute a shot or header without any further input.

Most of the time, the ball will never reach him, either because an opponent intercepts or, equally likely, it bounces off the back of your player’s head, body or ankles and rolls away to safety. And when it does work, you don’t feel as if you’re the player who’s actually scored the goal, merely the one who assisted it. If one of those shots from distance ever actually went in, it would be much more satisfying.

It all makes for rather defensive, cagey football, based around not conceding and hoping for some luck when trying to fashion chances of your own. Matters aren’t exactly helped by the fact that the ‘shoot’ animation is always based on a powerful strike and therefore, in the case of a goalmouth scramble, you’re prone to missing close-range tap-ins by panicking at the sight of a rare chance and blasting it wide. You may also get lucky and be awarded a penalty if your AI opponent makes injudicious use of the slide tackle facility (I’d advise against doing the same if you want to keep all players on the pitch), the system for which isn’t as baffling as it might be and at least gives you a decent chance of a goal.

It could be argued that, as with our last visit to 90s licensed tournament fare, tense and cautious matches that need to be managed carefully are completely in line with a short competition, in which the winners will need to play, in this case, a total of six matches. I even found myself upping the match length to 10 minutes from the default 5, figuring it gave me more opportunity to nick a goal, even if it did make some games a bit of a slog. Unfortunately, though, as with real football, it all rather falls apart when you play a really good team: once you’re 2-0 down, it’s a long way back. Plus there are some oddities around mid-game tactical management: substitutions and formation changes must be made separately, while the former option is frequently unavailable for some unknown reason. It’s not the easiest system to negotiate, and I ended up replacing one of my tiring forwards with the reserve goalkeeper Tim Flowers at one point.

At the time, Euro 96 was criticised in some quarters, like many subsequent tie-ins, for being rather too similar to its parent game. There’s no doubt that it is extremely similar to Actua Soccer, but I certainly found it a bit easier to get on with. In particular, your goalkeeper no longer seems as prone to letting in easy goals, while the death loop of him repeatedly saving shots then immediately rolling the ball out to the opposition attackers until they eventually score seemingly now fixed. It is still possible to be hemmed in, but your ‘keeper will at least now kick the ball downfield, as instructed, to offer a chance of relief. Pressing the pass button while out of possession now provides a speed boost, and there’s now a pitch radar available, both of which also help in this regard.

A word, too, for the estimable Barry Davies, who once again provides the commentary. Back in the day, I was always more of a John Motson fan, but I always felt that Motson’s appeal and style of commentary was something unique to him rather than a style to be copied, which is what the next generation of commentators appear to have done, and only serves makes them sound like interchangeable Alan Partridge clones. It’s nice to be reminded of a different approach, and you can see in places that the script has clearly been tailored to match Davies’s slightly schoolmasterly tone. There are new, tournament-specific lines here, although some from Actua Soccer also reappear (‘ten out of ten for power… lucky to get one for accuracy’ – a personal favourite, and arguably the signature line of Actua, particularly when accompanied by a jeering crowd – has been retained).

Overall, though, most of the previous frustrations remain, with a lack of control or precision when it comes to passing a particular bugbear, and the lack of satisfying goalscoring action meaning the most basic form of joy that can be derived from playing ancient footy games is also absent. A hunt for assistance online did unearth a manual for Actua Soccer, which wasn’t, incidentally, made available with my purchase of that game on GOG, and claimed a whole range of possible moves with various combinations of the two available buttons. I must admit to not trying to execute too many of these, given that the basics of passing and shooting are already fairly unpredictable, but I think it’s a stretch to suggest that there’s an extra layer of sophistication here that I’m missing.

And so, I must once again admit defeat, even if I did scrape my way into the semi-finals (before being hammered by Germany at Old Trafford). It’s a more forgiving experience than Actua Soccer, with some improvements, but it’s still one that I’d struggle to recommend to others. Aside from some warm feelings of tournament nostalgia, the odd chuckle at Barry Davies, and wondering about the historical veracity of some of the celebrations (the ‘chicken clucking/walking on knees’ one is puzzling, although it does also appear in FIFA 96, but did anyone ever really celebrate a goal by doing what appears to be Vic Reeves’ thigh rubbing gesture from Shooting Stars?) there’s not a great deal of fun to be had here. Even assuming a healthy appetite for wonky old football titles, it remains a bit of a tough ask.