Match Day
For 10 years, I've firmly believed the Match Day series was thus:
1985 Match Day
1987 Match Day II
1987 International Match Day
New evidence from the magazines seems to suggest the order was different, to support the 128K Spectrum at its Spanish launch in 1985:
1985 Match Day
1985 International Match Day
1987 Match Day II
Juan kindly translates an October 1985 advert in MicroHobby magazine about the world premiere of the Spectrum 128 at the Sonimag'85 meeting, in Barcelona:
"The Spectrum 128K comes along with two manuals and two complementary tapes which have been programmed as a demonstration by the well-known company Ocean. One of them is the well-known game Match Day. but you can hear the music, the sound effects, and the crowd roars at the same time."
He adds "As you can see, it doesn't explictly say that the new version is International Match Day, and the last sentence is misleading as the music doesn't ever sound during the game in International Match Day (except when the players go out of the locker room). However, it fits with the known fact that Super Test and International Match Day (both Ocean games) came along with the Spectrum 128 in Spain."
International Match Day is the only 128 version, as far as we know, so it might be this game they discussed, and indeed, the (Spanish) instructions displays 1985 on the back fold.
Does anyone know more about this rather intriguing story?
Does it mean International Match Day was indeed published in 1985 (and therefore 2nd in the series), or could there be a currently unknown 128K version of Match Day?
1985 Match Day
1987 Match Day II
1987 International Match Day
New evidence from the magazines seems to suggest the order was different, to support the 128K Spectrum at its Spanish launch in 1985:
1985 Match Day
1985 International Match Day
1987 Match Day II
Juan kindly translates an October 1985 advert in MicroHobby magazine about the world premiere of the Spectrum 128 at the Sonimag'85 meeting, in Barcelona:
"The Spectrum 128K comes along with two manuals and two complementary tapes which have been programmed as a demonstration by the well-known company Ocean. One of them is the well-known game Match Day. but you can hear the music, the sound effects, and the crowd roars at the same time."
He adds "As you can see, it doesn't explictly say that the new version is International Match Day, and the last sentence is misleading as the music doesn't ever sound during the game in International Match Day (except when the players go out of the locker room). However, it fits with the known fact that Super Test and International Match Day (both Ocean games) came along with the Spectrum 128 in Spain."
International Match Day is the only 128 version, as far as we know, so it might be this game they discussed, and indeed, the (Spanish) instructions displays 1985 on the back fold.
Does anyone know more about this rather intriguing story?
Does it mean International Match Day was indeed published in 1985 (and therefore 2nd in the series), or could there be a currently unknown 128K version of Match Day?
Post edited by mheide on
Comments
International Matchday was defo before Match Day 2 - I'm only going on memory and have no specific proof but I'm 99.9% certain
It makes sense really, International Match Day is very similar to Match Day - but with 128k sound.
If International Match Day was the third release, it would have made more sense to base it graphically on the superior Match Day II, IMO.
He seems to think Match Day was 1984, by the way.
Now this is weird... I can't read that Spanish page without thinking of Chanel 9 from The Fast Show... anyone see a resemblance?
well...it's highly debatable that Match Day II has better grafics...all the players look like those robot bears from thundercats...
And the players look better in Match Day?? Not from where I'm standing.
The cartooney graphics in MD II werent great but i preferred them over the Bear Bovver style footballers
(A friend of mine got Supertest 128 and Neverending Story 128, I wonder why there were different packages?)
International Match Day was late in 1985.
The amazing Match Day 2 was early in 1987.
I thought the best way to know the question was directly e-mail to Jon Ritman. He has his own web (www.ritman.co.uk) and has a 'contact' e-mail in it. So I wrote to him and he's just answered: :razz:
Juan
Good point, I had forgotten IMD even existed - IMD is simply Match Day (1)
with some extra music and screen shots. My memory is a bit cloudy here but I
think it was created to be released with the Spectrum 128 in Spain. It was
made at least a year before MD2 was programmed.
Cheers
Jon
So the question is confirmed.
Ah a link:
http://web.archive.org/web/20020802011443/www.cranberry.co.uk/frontend/exindexlw.html
It's just like watching real footie on the TV.
They are. I can't think of the sources but JR definitely admitted to using the BB sprites in MD.
Bloody hell, that's brought back some memories! Wasn't Super Match Soccer based on his famous "polar sprouts" technology? They were 3D sprites or something and I remember in a very early issue of Edge where he's bragging about them because of their speed compared to 3D grpahics. It was unfortunate that a few months later the PSX/Saturn/N64 were announced with unbelievable (for the time) 3D processing technology that made the "sprouts" redundant.
Didn't he also develop an arcade football game for Rare that never saw the light of day?
to Simon Day? lol yeah
co-sign chop983 , Emlyn is 'the one' IMO. Match Day's still pretty good though
Yeah that's right - he was developing it on their "RAZZ Arcade Board Technology" (I think that's what they called it) that RARE had developed in-house.
I wonder how far it got in its development cycle and if indeed ANY game was released using the RAZZ board.
I'm pretty sure that he also did a lot of work on development software while working for RARE as well.
Bernie Drummond didn?t start working with Jon Ritman until Batman I believe and had nothing to do with International Matchday.
He did do the graphics for Matchday 2 though.
Special FX got invited down to Ashby 'cos they wanted to get us to do something on that arcade board. It was okay, hardware wise (you could specify a pixel colour and one to four vectors for where to print the next pixel - you could draw a nice 'web', but knob all else), but the clauses they wanted to impose were just mad! You could spend a year on a game using their hardware and if they didn't like it then you were stuffed!
Computer says "no!".
Thanks for the warning. A correction was made.
The older one I saw was in a single cassette case.
that quote should be your catchphrase - how long exactly is a "ton"? and is it a metric or imperial measurement of time?
;-)
imperial presumably.
btw the unnoficial third game in the series was SUPER SOCCER ..... and it was EXCREMENT imo