1992’s Sensible Soccer is one of the greatest video games of all time, but developers Sensible Software didn’t create their classic in a vacuum. They had to work to get there, by developing 1988’s Microprose Soccer first.
In almost every way the direct forerunner to Sensible, Microprose—released in the US as Keith Van Eron’s Pro Soccer—had the same top-down action and arcade sensibilities as Sensible, only instead of appearing on the Amiga and PC and blowing up in the early 90s, was released on the Commodore 64 and PC in the late 80s and…was also a hit, just not the cultural force that Sensible was.
Weirdly, despite the Microprose brand having come back from the dead, this is being published by Ziggurat, likely because the new Microprose is only interested in military games. It’s going for spare change on Steam.