Retrospective: ISS 64

But as for how many players there are on a team... It seems a bit shakier here. Brilliantly in the match set-up screen you can choose between 7 and 11 players, where 11 is described as "many". I'd argue that 11 was perhaps "normal", while "many" would be maybe 23 a side, and a game I'd watch.

Get into the game and things seem relatively normal. The controls are a bizarre jumble that is just complicated enough that randomly stabbing can often be effective. The basics tend to work too - A to pass, B to shoot. Then the yellow buttons promise complicated things they rarely seem to offer.

Tackling is a little random, players often gliding through opponents' (I keep wanting to write "enemies'") legs. Sometimes this can result in a foul, but more often it has the commentator (oh, we'll return to him) exclaiming in surprise that the referee (and thus the game) didn't react. It's like having live, disgusted coverage of the game's bugs.

It doesn't seem to have the first idea about how matches are timed. Hilariously so. Now, in my brief experience of watching soccer-ball, I'm aware how massively corrupt the entire system is with extra time. Despite a match not having a moment's pause, minutes can be added on at the referee's discretion. Have a countdown clock, you cheating bastards.

But ISS, despite instituting this obviously sensible idea, takes this to a whole new level of barking mad. The seven-minute matches can last almost double that long because of the completely arbitrary addition of time once the clock's reached zero.

And then, even better, it has no concept of what state the match is in when it randomly decides these bonus stretches shall come to an end. At one point my opponent had the ball literally rolling over the goal line as "TIME UP!" was declared, game over, goal unscored. It's delightfully bonkers.

The commentary is by far the maddest thing. Obviously limited unique lines could be stored on an N64 cartridge, and it was already bursting with the claimed 18,000 motion-captured animations you can't see the players do because they're so teeny. But perhaps some effort could have been put in to at least have the words not be the precise opposite of what happens on screen.

My favourite, by a stretch, is the frequent declaration in the instant of a kick off (is it still called that after a goal? I don't know) that "HE STILL HAS POSSESSION!" Yes, Mr Commentator, yes he does. Because the only way he wouldn't would be if he'd turned and run off in the other direction, pulling his shorts down and poking himself in the eyes.

Other highlights include booming that Scotland (or whichever) need to do something quickly to recover, while about five goals up on their opponents. Or screaming "THAT COULD HAVE DECIDED IT!" after a missed goal attempt by a team seven goals behind.

Also rather lovely is the way commentary gets stacked up behind the events. And this invariably happens during goals, such that after the ball's gone in the net you hear. "THERE'S A CHANCE HERE!.. AN EXCELLENT TACKLE!.. left... GOOOAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLL!"

(The inclusion of a quiet "left" at peculiar moments probably makes me laugh the most.)

Also, ISS rather famously didn't have any official licences, so instead opted for almost spelling players' names correctly, escaping getting in trouble with UEFA or FIFA or whoever. You can go in and edit them, but it's a lot more fun to leave things as a strange parody of player names you might remember from 13 years ago.