I don't have much to say about 5200 Realsports Soccer. I feel that most older sports games
are pretty much worthless -- they never age well, it seems. But 5200 Realsports Soccer was a great
soccer game back in its day. You had 4 players on a team (plus the goalie), low and lob kicks (short,
medium, and long options too), and true analog movement. These kinds of enhancements added
to the sophistication that sports fans craved. Yes, John Seghers did a good job on the game, and I spent many hours playing this in the 80's.
But it's hard to get very excited over playing this game today. It's pretty
easy to annihilate the computer AI. In fact, when the screen scrolls, the players
"wrap around" the screen to the other side. Talk about being able to cheat!
There is a strange control oddity in 5200 RS Soccer, where sometimes the game
will not allow you to move vertically up the screen! This happens now and then, and you deal
with it by switching characters, or just waiting for a while.
5200 Realsports Soccer has high-rez, low-color graphics. Each player's shirt is a
different color from his pants. The ball is animated nicely and the isometric perspective was
a fresh one back in the early 80's. The "Goal!" melody is a pleasant one, but mostly the sounds
are barren and dull.
Frankly, I'd only recommend 5200 Realsports Soccer to collectors. The gameplay
is too dated and flawed to provide much entertainment in the one-player game; perhaps you may
enjoy the 2-player mode more, but Realsports Soccer's checkmarks in the 'plus column' have unfortunately faded away over the years.
