''Match Day II'' is a

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...

sports game part of the Match Day series released for the Amstrad CPC,

Amstrad PCW The Amstrad PCW series is a range of personal computers produced by British company Amstrad from 1985 to 1998, and also sold under licence in Europe as the "Joyce" by the German electronics company Schneider in the early years of the series' life. ...

, ZX Spectrum,

MSX MSX is a standardized home computer architecture, announced by Microsoft and ASCII Corporation on June 16, 1983. It was initially conceived by Microsoft as a product for the Eastern sector, and jointly marketed by Kazuhiko Nishi, then vice-p ...

and

Commodore 64 The Commodore 64, also known as the C64, is an 8-bit home computer introduced in January 1982 by Commodore International (first shown at the Consumer Electronics Show, January 7–10, 1982, in Las Vegas). It has been listed in the Guinness ...

platforms. It was created in

1987 File:1987 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: The MS Herald of Free Enterprise capsizes after leaving the Port of Zeebrugge in Belgium, killing 193; Northwest Airlines Flight 255 crashes after takeoff from Detroit Metropolitan Airport, k ...

by Jon Ritman with graphics by Bernie Drummond and music and sound by Guy Stevens (except for the Commodore version, which was a line-by-line conversion by John Darnell). It is the sequel to 1984's '' Match Day''.

Gameplay

The controls consist of four directions (allowing eight directions including diagonals) and a shot button. Each team has seven players, including goalkeeper and there are league and cup options available. The game is considered highly addictive due to its difficulty level, the complete control over ball direction, power and elevation (using a Diamond Deflection System), and the importance of tactics and player positioning over the field (barging if necessary), which makes it challenging to break strong defences. Was the first game to use a kickometer. Some versions of the game play the song When the Saints Go Marching In while the players are walking to their initial positions on the field at the beginning of each half. The ZX Spectrum version of the game went to number 2 in the UK sales charts, behind '' Out Run'', and was voted the 10th best game of all time in a special issue of '' Your Sinclair'' magazine in 2004.

Related games

The game is similar to a previous unpublished game by Jon Ritman, ''Soccerama''. Later, in 1995, Jon Ritman tried to release ''Match Day III'', but the name of the game was changed to ''

Super Match Soccer ''Super Match Soccer'' is an association football video game published by Acclaim Entertainment and developed in 1998 by Jon Ritman. The game was released for PC and PlayStation and it is the last game in the Match Day series. Gameplay ''Sup ...

'' to avoid any potential legal issues.

References

External links

*{{WoS game, id=0003070
Comment about Ritman, that allows his games to be distributed over the Internet''Match Day II'' playing video
at youtube.com

Crash - Issue 37

at c64.com
Match Day II
at thelegacy.de 1987 video games Association football video games Video game sequels Amstrad CPC games Commodore 64 games Amstrad PCW games MSX games Ocean Software games ZX Spectrum games Video games developed in the United Kingdom