Thursday, October 27, 2022

BRIEF: SoccerStar (1989)

 
Most databases put a space in the game name, but I default to the title screen.
      
SoccerStar
United Kingdom
Cult Games (developer and publisher)
Released in 1989 for ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, and Commodore 64
Date Started: 23 October 2022
Rejected for: No "characters," so no character development
      
SoccerStar is a sports simulation/strategy game, a lot like a single-player fantasy sports league. It's one of almost two dozen football-related games commissioned by Hertfordshire-based Cult Games between 1986 and 1991. The title is a bit of a misnomer. You don't play a soccer star, but rather a manager of soccer stars. A victory for the player isn't scoring a goal; it's making a favorable trade for a decent midfielder.
   
Listen to Chet using the sports terms! I'm well known among my friends for having little interest in organized sports. There are a couple of exceptions. It's hard not to have at least a vague interest in the Olympics, for instance. Between about 2007 and 2013, I did a lot of work in Trinidad, and if you're going to be taken seriously in Trinidad, you have to at least pretend to enjoy cricket. That pretense turned into a somewhat-honest interest, and I still check in now and again to see how the Red Team is doing. I like some of the statistics involved in sports; I thought Moneyball was a great book and decent movie. Beyond that . . . I admire athleticism, and am happy to occasionally watch sports highlights, but it seems to me that you spend most games just waiting, for hours, for something to happen, and then half the time you miss it when it does. I'm not interested in the personalities and rivalries and debates, and I've never understood why I should root for my local team when most of the players come from somewhere else. 
    
So the good news is that in the process of playing SoccerStar, I learned a lot about soccer. I spent more time on Wikipedia than I did in the emulator. Going into the game, I was aware of course that what Americans call "soccer" everyone else calls "football" (which raises the question of why a game made by a U.K. developer uses the former term), but I wasn't aware that the English invented the word "soccer" from the soc in "association football" (as distinguished from rugby football). I learned a little bit about the various divisions in the English football league system, although apparently they all changed in 1992, and this game is using terminology from several years prior. I learned that teams are "promoted" or "relegated" (demoted) through the divisions based on performance, and I learned that the four major categories of players are goalkeepers, defenders, midfielders, and attackers. I essentially quadrupled my knowledge of soccer in the last two days.
         
Setting up the game.
        
In the setup screen, you can give yourself a name (the default is "Bobby Robson," a real player and manager who at the time was England's national coach), a league name (the default is "Barclays"), and the name of the cup you're vying for (the default is "F.A. Cup"). You then choose from among seven Division 4 teams to join as the manager. The defaults are York City, Cardiff City, Rochdale, Crew Alex (short for "Alexandra"), Scarboro, Carlisle, Aldershot, and "Wolves." These were all legitimate Fourth Division teams when the game was being programmed; some have since been dissolved. My research showed me that "Wolves" is short for Wolverhampton Wanderers, which since the publication of SoccerStar has worked its way up to the Premier League (the highest level), so I figured I'd join a team on the rise.
      
Choosing which team to manage.
     
As the game begins, you have £45,400 on hand and a roster of 8 players. You need at least 11 to field a full team (another thing I learned!); your overall roster can have up to 15. You can take a bank loan of £250,000, but for a usurious rate of 24%. Fortunately, you can get some players as "free transfers." Their attributes are lower than players you pay for. The players' default names are drawn from real-life players, both contemporary and past, though you can rename them.
   
Each player has attributes for skill, fitness, and stamina. I wasn't able to find a manual for the game, so I wasn't sure exactly what the attributes do. "Skill" seems to be fixed; it never goes up or down. The cost associated with buying and selling players seems to be based mostly on skill--roughly £40,000 per point. Stamina and fitness fluctuate from game to game and can be trained in between matches.
     
In between matches.
     
Once you have your roster, you begin the season. You indicate which players are going to be fielded in each game. You see your total scores for each position. You can pay £8,000 for training, which has a reasonable chance of increasing some players' scores. You can also pay £100 for a "spy," who will tell you the sum of the scores for each of your opponent's positions. The idea is to assemble a collection of players whose combined scores (skill + fitness + stamina) exceed the opponent's for each position or, if that's not possible, for strategic positions. For instance, if the opponent has an "defense" value that's so high you can't hope to beat it, you might want to essentially give up on attacking and put everything into defense yourself. A draw is better than a loss.
       
My squad. Note the "defense," "midfield" and "attack" subtotals at the bottom.
   
When everything is ready, you start a match. Unfortunately, you don't actually get to play during the matches (or, if you do, I couldn't figure out how). The only choice you can make is to hit the "S" key to sub one designated player for another, but I'm not even sure when or why you would want to do that. You otherwise just watch as the 90 minutes (something else I learned!) roll by. The ball bounces back and forth between the two goals, propelled and resisted by random rolls against the two teams' respective scores for the positions. When the ball reaches one of the goals--which, as in actual soccer, it almost never does--the screen switches to one showing generic players on a field and one of them kicks the ball towards the goal. At that point, I guess the goalkeeper's skill alone determines whether the ball goes in or not. It usually doesn't.
        
You spend about 90 seconds watching this ball quiver back and forth.
      
The result of each game influences a "morale" percentage that must have some multiplier effect against the statistics. You make a certain amount of money for each match depending on the outcome and the number of fans who attended; teams performing better get greater attendance. In between games, you can adjust the roster (in particular if a player becomes injured), spend a decent chunk of cash on training, hire a spy for the next game, or pay a certain amount of money to rent a player from another team.  
     
Don't make the mistake of thinking you actually "play" on this screen. It's just a cut scene.
          
Tie games are common; wins are usually 1-0 or maybe 2-0. You play a dozen games and then get a final score for the overall competition. I think draws count as 1 and wins count as 2. For some reason, the game sometimes accepted a draw and sometimes forced me to "replay" the team until one of us definitively won. I assume there's a real-life rule behind this, but I couldn't figure out the pattern.
      
After several tries, I manage to eke out a win in Division 4.
        
It's an interesting numbers game, but I can't figure out the trick to it. After several tries, I managed to win the Division 4 championship and get promoted to Division 3, but once there, I was against teams with scores outrageously higher than my own. I tried using all the tricks the game offers to no avail. Training only adds a few points to your roster, and you can't afford to do it all that frequently. A £250,000 loan doesn't go very far--it buys maybe two decent players--and you end up spending each game's profit on the interest. The best I can figure is that you don't really want to advance quickly. You want to stay in your division for several cups, letting the money and training build, and move forward only when you can demolish the other side, not just eke out a win. Is there a real-life analog to this strategy?
       
I figure you have to win Division 1 to truly "win."
     
We've already had several debates as to whether a game without any combat could be considered an RPG. Those that say yes suggest that if an RPG's definition centers on character development, there's no reason that such character development couldn't take place in contexts other than martial ones. Even in RPGs with combat, they point out, character development is often directed into non-combat skills such as lockpicking, smithing, haggling, and charisma. In tabletop role-playing (less so in most CRPGs), non-combat skills are a valid alternative to combat, and improvements in attributes can help with scenarios like forcing open a door or dodging a trap.
   
It's a persuasive argument, and I think it works particularly well for sports games. Sports are contests, much like combat, in which the attributes and skills of the participants play a vital role. Someone wins and someone loses. Rewards go to the winners. Sports like fencing and boxing are essentially indistinguishable from combat, and even in games that feature combat, there are often sporting events that draw from the same skill set. Even in the early era, we saw CRPGs with horse races, dart- and dagger-throwing, balance beams, skeet shooting, arena battles, and other "sporting" events, all drawing from the same attributes as the battles.
  
So I'm open to accepting non-combat games, even sports games, as RPGs. But no, SoccerStar still isn't one. Come on. First of all, my definitions don't just require development; they require character development. A "character" has to be more than a name on a spreadsheet. You have to be able to play the character. He or she should be an individual with characteristics and goals, and if he or she doesn't have a personality in-game, the player should at least be able to project one. 
   
There are subtler issues, too. Nothing like "exploration" is technically part of my definition, but I think it's somewhat understood. And yes, we've had plenty of RPGs that have lacked a main quest, a story, a fantastical setting, a personal mission for the character, and personal inventories. None of those are inherent in my definition of an RPG individually, and yet there is an extent to which I don't think a game can be an RPG if it lacks all of them.
  
Thus, I think the first sports/RPG hybrid is further down the line. But I'm not sorry that I learned that Emirates Airlines sponsors the F.A. Cup or that it's the oldest national football competition in the world. Two weeks from now, I'll be rooting for the Wolves.


68 comments:

  1. "I've never understood why I should root for my local team when most of the players come from somewhere else."

    Glad I'm not alone.

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    1. Or in some cases the nearest "local" team is ~500 miles away...

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    2. As anon below says, the reason usually is proximity - it's often the first such game you see live as a kid with the impressive ambiance of a stadium crowd, mostly taken along by a family member who is already a fan. In many cases, this creates an impact, a fascination and a bond that is enduring. See e.g. Nick Hornby's 'Fever Pitch' for one of many examples recounting that experience.

      As they say: you might change almost everything over the course of your life, your partner, your job, your home - but not your club. Even if the team (already did or by now does) suck and you suffer and curse them every week. Human nature, I guess.

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    3. I used to be a Liverpool fan, because the coolest kid on the block said they were the best.
      I liked the football they played around 1976-1986. But now there's nothing left of that Liverpool but the name of the club. The players and playing style is different, and so are the owners. Today I think it's weird to root for something that is essentially just a name, and I assume people stay lifelong fan of "foreign" clubs just because people need to have some kind of hobby.

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  2. I suppose it makes sense if you plan on actually attending games live

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  3. Just 'Wolves', not 'the Wolves' :-)

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    1. That must lead to some fun headlines. "Wolves destroy Manchester." "Southampton threatened by Wolves."

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  4. Indeed, "soccer" is a British term. It's also very likely called football because it was played by foot, not because it's played with the foot.

    If you want to take a look at a few non-combat not-really-RPGs that feature a character, I suggest the shareware game "Rockstar!" from 1989. It's pretty simple and doesn't take long, and you'll learn not to take Heroin from your grandma. I wouldn't call it an RPG, though.

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    1. Particularly during the 80s soccer was used interchangeably with football or footie in the UK

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  5. I think this type of games were quite common in the UK (and the rest of Europe) for platforms like the Spectrum or C64, on the account of being relatively easy to program and develop, but still quite addictive if you are interested in the subject matter.

    I remember speding quite a bit of time with one of them on C64 (I don't remember the title), getting very excited wherever I was able to get my hands on Gary Lineker, which I had no idea of who he was at the time but he was one of the strongest attackers in the game.

    Even if they cannot be considered RPGs, they rely on a similar virtuous loop of improvement (play matches, get more money, get better players, etc...).

    The most successful series of this kind, Football Manager, it's still alive and well after 30 years, seeing annual releases that sell 1M copies a pop.

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    1. Just a few random information bits to illustrate the impact of FM and similar games:

      The beta version of FM23 was just released and in three days more than two million games have already been played/simulated on it
      (https://www.sportskeeda.com/esports/news-football-manager-2023-beta-writes-history-books-2-million-matches-3-days).

      This year someone concluded a virtual career of 416 in-game years in FM, making it into the Guinness Book - and showing that nothing is too random to be made into a 'record' of some kind...
      (https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/news/2022/5/longest-game-of-football-manager-lasts-416-years-to-break-record-702466).

      And it can even impact real life - some football clubs use FM for scouting purposes and FM players have used the skills honed through it outside of the screen (e.g. https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2588704-how-football-manager-changed-my-life).

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    2. The original FM, titled Championship Manager, is very similar, particularly the match's 'momentum bar' going left and right. This game may very well have been CM's inspiration.

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    3. Note the 416 in-game years are active playing. You can simulate the game almost endlessly, runs of more than 1,000 years are known, but it's best to choose a small country such as Iceland as because the result of every single game played is stored in the save, it gets very big eventually (and there is a 2 GB limit last I checked).

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  6. Clever - I guess you can take the argument further:
    A team is basiccally a party, consisting of different classes (i.e. positions - and a goalkeeper is basiccally a mage, since he can touch the ball by hand).with different stats. Instead of fights you have matches, eventually leading toeards a price.
    Yes, the analogue would be an RPG that just consists of a series of tactical fights with monsters and no exploration....

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    1. A recent (sort of) example is Dungeon Encounters which strips the exploration back to very bare bones -- the "dungeons" are a crossword-like grid, and instead focusses on party management and combat. Although you do have some direct control over the party members, so it's not quite as hands-off as most football sims.

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    2. I was thinking of the party mechanic of _Odyssey: The Compleat Apventure_ (game #99 on the Addict's list), which is similar: you have a party of warriors who all share a common set of attributes, as opposed to "playing" a single person. Almost seems like that game is even less in line with the concept of "character development" than SoccerStar... :)

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    3. The closest I can think of to "RPG that just consists of a series of tactical fights with monsters and no exploration" is the SRPG subgenre, which meaningfully started with 1990's Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light.

      Dungeon Encounters is pretty much just a Wizardry-style dungeon blobber if it was bad. The party management, combat, and dungeon puzzles are all quite limited. I say this having the platinum in it.

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  7. > For some reason, the game sometimes accepted a draw and sometimes forced me to "replay" the team until one of us definitively won.

    In real-life English football teams compete in two different tournaments: their Division, which is a round-robin championship, and the F.A. Cup, which has a knock-out format. Maybe this game is doing the same? It should give you some indication of which competition the current match is about.

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    1. Yes, in general league matches can end in a draw (and earn a single point in most leagues) but cup matches must have a winner.

      Depending on the rules of the tournament, this can mean extra time, a penalty shoot out, or replaying the match and taking an aggregate score. I'm sure there are other options too in the many football competitions around the globe.

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    2. At that time there were (in theory) unlimited replays in the FA Cup. Penalties were not introduced until season 1991/92.

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    3. Thank you, everyone. This was a really educational entry. Even if I don't care much about sports, it never hurts to learn more about them.

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  8. Very popular here in Germany, too. I have to admit beeing one of the (probably?) rare cases where being a gaming etc. nerd mixes with beeing a football fan. Though not fanatic enough to stay "in der Kurve" (not sure about the English expression) every weekend, I miss the days when I was young and had more time to visit my club's stadium more often. Now it's mostly enjoying a game behind the TV on a regular basis with some likewise interested friends.

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    1. I am not sure if nerds who love sports are so very rare anymore, certainly allot of the people into sports I know are also into video games (including me).

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    2. Even in the old days there was a stock cliche of the sports nerd who was in it for the statistics. I wonder if it's directly opposed to the video game nerd, though, since I feel like that cliche kind faded around the same time as video games emerged onto the scene - competition for the same niche, perhaps?

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  9. The soccer team of my hometown, the SC Freiburg, spent decades in the second league, training up new talents, and whenever they played a decent season, the core players got bought away by wealthier clubs, and that was a sort of neverending cycle.

    Now, they're in the first league and play their best season so far in a row (last year was glorious as well), competing with the best teams of Germany and Europe, currently holding place three in the statistics.

    This was unheard of before, a bit of a phenomenon, and yeah, it somehow makes me proud of the players.

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  10. "Is there a real-life analog to this strategy?"

    Yes, just yes.

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    1. I'm no more authoritative than The Addict on Soccer, but I understand you get quite a hefty bonus for being promoted, and a significant "parachute payment" for being demoted, such that it might actually be quicker to bounce around the boundary for a while than to bide your time in one division and then explode on the scene of the next division.

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    2. Of course, I have no idea if this is implemented in SoccerStar.

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    3. In less popular sports with semi-professional structures, teams often decline promotion because the costs of playing in a higher league are much higher than any additional revenue. With soccer (in the big soccer countries), the difference in TV money between the leagues is so big that you'll go for a promotion if you can, even if you have no chance to avoid relegation the next year.

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  11. Football management games are a huge genre, although I don't think they've made much traction outside Europe.

    (They haven't had as much success in jumping to other sports either, which is a surprise.)

    I tend to agree that they are not rpgs, although I do think they are related to a certain extent. I came to this conclusion when I was pondering why I dislike the recent trend towards "action" rpgs; I realised I preferred to tweak numbers and statistics than tray and fail to push buttons in the right sequence at the right time, then I further realised that the gameplay loop I liked in rpgs was not too dissimilar to that of a management sim. Effectively, the sort of rpgs I like are fantasy adventurer management games.

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    1. I had one for my Tandy 1000 back in the day that was pretty neat... I should look it up!

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    2. Horse racing management sims are a big genre in Japan.

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  12. Yeah, football manager games are exits very own simulation subgenre: whether they're called Premier League Manager, Bundesliga Manager, On the Ball, Fifa Manager, the currently ongoing (and inspiredly titled) Football Manager series or We are Football, they all have the same premise: Manage a soccer team (mostly roster, stadium and finances) and eventually build the strongest, most successful team there is. I wouldn't label these games "RPGs", but at some point they definitely introduced RPG elements... I think it was the German "Anstoss" series (starting with 1997s "Anstoss 2") that also allowed your "manager character" to have a life, Agenda and Stats of they're own - you could negotiate and become a manager for another team, earn a salary, buy luxuries for your private life, and - depending on how well you're doing - "level up" and increase certain stats (like your ability to motivate players, negotiation skill, training efficiency etc.). These have since become standard staples of the Football Manager Genre. Before 1997 though, you'd be hard pressed to classify anything about these games as "RPGs", they didn't really offer more elements than those you describe here.

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    1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  13. I don't care about sports at all, but there's a recent football RPG called Football, Tactics & Glory which I quite enjoy. It refers to itself as "Football meets XCom", which is a pretty accurate description. You hire players, play out games in tactical turn based football matches, they gain experience and can be leveled up.

    It's quite a lot of fun and definitely feels like it has proper RPG elements. Kinda like X-Com, which is tactics with an RPG-ish character roster. Except you have to kick a ball into your opponent's goal rather than shoot aliens.

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    1. Surprised to see another fan of Football, Tactics & Glory here, for such an obscure game with quite a small fan base. For me that game is the perfect combination of the three gaming genres I love the most, RPG's, turn based strategy games and football management games.

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    2. Jarl, they're not advertising FT&G with Lothar freaking Matthäus' endorsement, or are they?!

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    3. This actually amuses me a little bit, because back in the day there was another X-COM but sports title called Crush! Deluxe. Only instead of being based off a real sport it was a rugby-knockoff and it took full advantage of its scifi setting to include a bunch of aliens and equipment that was in-game illegal but highly desireable. Shame it probably doesn't work on Windows anymore because it was a really nice game.

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    4. You hire players, play out games in tactical turn based football matches, they gain experience and can be leveled up.

      That game sounds a lot like Blood Bowl (1986). In 1995 they even released an MS-DOS version, published by no less than SSI. If it's an RPG then it goes on the list.

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    5. There are newer Blood Bowl games that came out in the last 5 years too

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    6. Adding this one to my wishlist. Any idea why Steam's recent reviews went downhill from "Very Positive" to "Mixed"?

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    7. I have always loved hybrids - and sport / RPG hybrids are very interesting. Crush Deluxe is great fun - Blood Bowl has a terrific system and is very tense and fun ... though you have to study the manual of the boardgame to really grasp it.

      I'd also like to add the rather more obscure M.U.D.S from 1990 here. It is sadly less of an RPG than Crush and Blood Bowl where you can even choose skills for your players, but there is still ... something. Players come from various species which sometimes have a small specific specific special ability (one floats over mud puddles). Each player has specific statistics - also influenced by species - which can be enhanced by surviving matches. A bit rudimentary as a progression system, but it is there.

      M.u.d.s. is largely an action game - but just great whacky fun. You just have to admire a game for giving you the option to bribe basically EVERYONE. Including the ball and the enemy moat monster (another brilliant idea).

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    8. Oh, forgot to add Pyre - a great, though more modern title. Pyre is somewhat weird because it is actually focussed on its world and atomsphere. There are quite a few RPG elements - including conversations with various characters, skills to choose, items to buy and distribute among your characters - and, in a way, even 'quests' - or at least special matches that you have to win to get another character.
      Honestly, I think this might be the most RPG heavy 'sports' game I've ever seen.

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    9. BESTIE, as I said I don't really care about watching sports at all so I didn't even realize that's Lothar Matthäus on the ad banner, ha! But it appears that yes, indeed, they managed to get his endorsement.

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  14. A possible RPG/sports hybrid might be created from Scott Sigler's GFL (Galactic Football League) series, starting with The Rookie. One would play the main character, Quentin Barnes. There is a great deal of potential for designing in character growth, along with exploration, plenty of combat, and yes, a lot of football. I'm sure there are other examples, but tossing aliens, space travel, and galactic-level danger into the mix definitely adds potential for a good RPG/adventure game. Sigler even manages to make football interesting to me, when sports generally decidedly is not (same viewpoints as Chet has), and sports simulators even less so. Sigler is also excellent horror and sci-fi reading in general. Go check him out. :)

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  15. My better half just purchased a beautifully refurbed and recapped Spectrum for our anniversary... will have to see if I can find this one in its original form to try out!

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  16. The "manual" seems to be limited to a few instructions which can be found e.g. here: http://www.stadium64.com/manuals/soccerstar.htm

    This appears to be a rather poorly implemented example of the football/soccer or more general sports management sim genre. The April 1989 review in 'Crash' No. 63 (e.g. linked through mobygames) agreed that "even decent presentation would do little to improve [it]", calling it "dire", "unrealistic" and "poor" and concluding it "is a sure candidate for relegation", giving it a score of 28%. Already back then it sold for just GBP 2.99.

    Indeed, it does not seem to go much beyond what the first notable ancestor of them all, Kevin Toms' original "Football Manager", also on the Spectrum, already gave you in 1982(!) - though in the ur-FM, success might have hinged somewhat more on luck. By 1989 the improved FM2 had come out and was even receiving expansion kits plus there were other previous games like 'Football Director' (1986).
    And in the year following SoccerStar's release, 'Player Manager' allowed you to combine managing a team with playing matches yourself (on Amiga and Atari ST), garnering strong reviews.

    So it's a bit of a pity that of all the potential football managing sims to try, this appears to be the only one on your list and thus your first experience with the genre, just because somebody decided to check the box for "RPG genre" for it on mobygames. On the other hand, if many people had clamored for you to play FM, you might have grabbed this obscure one just as a stubborn reaction anyway ;-). And at least you learned quite a bit about football/soccer!

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  17. A lot of modern sports games have a career mode where you play as, train, and develop a single athlete over their time in the NFL or NBA. Sometimes they even have cutscenes and a narrative as well. It's interesting.

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    1. I've often felt that sports games don't have enough "Deal with star player's unfortunate drug/gambling/sex addiction" sidequests.

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  18. I'm in the camp that literal combat is not essential to an RPG, and any sort of conflict is good enough. Combat just happens to be the most typical expression on conflict in RPGs. But to me that difference is a matter of theme, not mechanics.

    And I feel the same way about characters. Again there should be some entity or organization that the player controls, and the most typical expression of this is a party of characters, but it really could be anything. That's again a question of theme and not mechanics.

    So specifically character based combat is no more a requirement for RPGs than that they have a swords and spells. You can supply the same gameplay experience in endlessly different settings.

    I think your subtler issues are much more important here. I have a hard time seeing a game as an RPG if it's nothing but a series of conflicts, or even nothing but a series of conflicts with brief interludes to upgrade your characters for the next conflict. Even if it's a classic party with character development and everything else, the game needs to be more than 50 consecutive combats to be an RPG. (Maybe RPG-lite would be appropriate?)

    So yeah, it's important that the conflicts alternate with periods of exploration or narrative or puzzle solving or something along those line. I think that's essential to giving RPGs their feel of going on a quest or adventure, otherwise it's just a battle-simulator with some RPG mechanics.

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    1. I think some degree of exploration is necessary. The classic RPG experience is wandering around in a dungeon trying to find treasure and fighting monsters.

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    2. Defining what is needed for a (C)RPG has been an issue that - not surprisingly - has come up quite a bit during the life of the blog.

      Without starting a research, my impression / unspecified recollection (might of course be wrong, though) is that there have been games covered on this blog where the PC wasn't (much) more than a name on a spreadsheet, with no more characteristics than a few numbers as the players have here (or even less, just hitpoints) and no more goals than "kill the baddie(s)" or "find the treasure or as much of it as possible". Which to me isn't that different from "win the league title / cup" as goal(s). And nothing stops you from using your imagination to project personality traits on one or all of your players. I even think quite a few people did so in these games, especially since they reflect(ed) real-life clubs/teams and sometimes actual players.

      Now, I'm aware that you have changed and tightened your definition. I'm not saying this is an RPG, but to me it shows again that defining those and deciding where to draw the line is difficult. All the more so if there are non-explicit factors like 'exploration'. And as for the elements you enumerate as all lacking, one could see the above-mentioned "winning titles" as 'main quest' / 'personal mission'.

      In the end, everyone has to decide individually, what is a RPG for you and since this is your blog, it's your definition and interpretation.

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    3. Sort of irrelevant to the original point, but lately I've found it to be very interesting seeing games that aren't really RPGs that feel like RPGs. Like for some reason there are quite a few first-person non-RPGs which play out like your typical dungeon crawler, even down to teleporters and spinners. That's the most obvious part, but there are also some games that just feel like titles someone excised the levelling elements of a RPG from an otherwise RPG-style game. Its an interesting contrast from a modern RPG-style game which tends to think that all it takes to be a RPG is to slap on a simple skill tree and everything is now better.
      (I'm not suggesting Chet play these kinds of games, its just an observation I've had)

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    4. ...So would you consider Final Fantasy Tactics, and similar games, to not be RPGs?
      The gameplay consists entirely of managing your roster and equipment (including changing jobs and spending JP to gain abilities for the former, and buying & selling for the latter), moving between set locations on the map (which open up at fixed story points), and fighting tactical battles.
      There's no exploration, but it's very clearly a medieval fantasy story, with fairly robust stat-based and class-based character development, inventory, and the ability to choose to grind as much as you want or push on aggressively with the story, depending on how hard you find the battles.

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    5. Yeah, I think they would more usefully be classified as tactics/strategy games. And this is probably a good category for SoccerStar as well due to it's singular focus on matches and preparing for matches. RPGs lean more into alternating their conflict phases with periods of exploration, narrative, puzzles, etc.

      I think this best gets at what makes these games feel different to play. You may just like one or the other or both, but it's a useful distinction.

      I was thinking if you modified Pool of Radiance and took out everything but the combats and menus to level up and equip new items, should it still be considered an RPG? I'd say it's become a tactics/strategy game. But if you modified it to instead be a tale about a traveling soccer team seeking out soccer matches, or any sort of wild surrealist theme you could imagine, it would probably be a worse game, but no less an RPG.

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    6. For what MorpheusKitami said about games that aren't RPGs but feel like one... my favorite game of all time, Thief, is pretty much that. It feels exactly like what being a thief in an RPG is like. And as an immersive sim, a genre born from RPGs (Ultima Underworld), it is pretty closely related.

      There may be no stats and no leveling, but the game sports one of the best dungeon crawls ever made: Down in the Bonehoard.

      And in the fan mission community, adding optional objective has become a pretty common trend... so basically side quests.

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  19. Thus, I think the first sports/RPG hybrid is further down the line.

    On consoles, there's an earlier one: World Court Tennis on the TurboGrafx-16, which was released in 1989 in the US, but had a Japanese release the preceding year. Though there's been some debate about its RPG credentials, in terms of presentation it's clearly "Dragon Quest with tennis instead of combat".

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    1. Final Lap Twin also has a RPG mode..

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    2. Right, that's discussed at the link I posted. Racing's identity as sport is more controversial than tennis or football/soccer; I state no opinion on the matter at this time!

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    3. I have no personal experience with it, but based on the article about the game on HG101 (http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/captain-tsubasa/), wouldn't "Captain Tsubasa" (Famicom, 1988) / "Tecmo Cup Soccer/Football Game" (modified US/European release 1992) be a potential candidate for being (one of) the first sports/RPG hybrid(s)? Though maybe more of a sports game with RPG elements.

      Instead of action game play, each 'encounter' on the playing field is handled through an option menu and the outcome (at least partially, it seems) based on the statistics of the respective players. If you win matches, these go up. And there is a story, with the 'main quest' consisting of two tournaments to win one after the other (plus apparently even a 'side quest' to get a specific player on your team).

      Looking at Chet's current tightened definition of CRPG on the FAQ, it seems the last element is probably not present or at least questionable ("Players must have some control over the rate or details of [character] development") - of course, it's a console game anyway. And 'exploration' also does not seem to be on the (I assume non-existent) map. Maybe someone who has played it (if there is anyone among the blog readers) can say more on the matter.

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    4. Having recently played both World Court Tennis and Final Lap Twin, their RPG modes are there, but terrible!

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  20. "I was [up/playing?] against teams with scores outrageously higher than my own. I tried using all the tricks the game offers to no avail. [...] You want to stay in your division for several cups, letting the money and training build, and move forward only when you can demolish the other side, not just eke out a win."

    If "grinding" was a necessary element of a CRPG, you could tick that box here, too ;-). Just think of the next higher division as a new area in which your adversaries are clearly too strong to successfully engage without further levelling.

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  21. This is adorable seeing the addict talk about Wolverhampton which isn’t far from me. The city is very proud of their wolf association and so there’s plenty of wolf symbols around there. But as someone said, it’s Wolves not The Wolves, since it’s an affectionate shortening of the city name

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  22. I just wanted to make a quick comment to thank you for the years of work that you’ve put into this site. I have always loved screenshot LPs, but they’re much harder to find than video ones. So, even if your articles aren’t quite as in-depth as an LP, stumbling upon this blog made me feel like a kid in a candy store. I’m only about half way through, but I plan to read every last review you’ve done. It’s been a great way to experience everything I missed being a “Macintosh kid”, or games I saw ads for but could never afford. Not that you need my encouragement, but please keep up the good work. I’ll join into the discussion when I’ve finished everything, so look out for me in the next six months or so. Again, thank you, this blog is awesome.

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    1. Thanks, Domus. I always appreciate positive feedback.

      Delete
  23. I was totally expecting this to be a joke post, then I realised how far out from April 1 it was..

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  24. "I think the first sports/RPG hybrid is further down the line"

    Streets Sport Basketball had stat point allocation for the different player positions which basically would become "party building". There were no stat improvements though.

    The first one with a semblance to a RPG might be New Star Soccer in 2003, where you start as a 16 year old kid and have to improve your stats and train and play to make it to win the World Cup

    As much as I love sports/RPG hybrids I'd definitely consider avoiding them. You don't want to be playing FIFA career mode 2005,2006,2007,2008,2009,2010...

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    1. I played New Star Soccer 2 a bit, and it at least probably counts as an RPG. The developer has also made New Star Cricket, but unfortunately it's a free to play mobile game and looks to suffer from the sins of such games

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