20 Things Only 30-Something Gamers Will Understand

Long before EA Sports snapped up Lionel Messi for their FIFA title there was Emlyn Hughes OBE.

Captain of England and winner of 14 club trophies including four first division league titles and two European Cups with Liverpool, he was the obvious choice for Audiogenic Software's 1988 International Soccer title for the Commodore 64.

Unlike the world's greatest footballer, Emlyn Hughes had long since retired from playing by the time the title came out but still maintained a high media profile thanks to his regular appearance as a team leader on a popular BBC sports show, the name of which is on the tip of the tongue. 

EHIS broke new ground by offering gamers the ability to pass and shoot in up to five directions, that's more than most of today' England national team, but it wasn't the first title to be footballer-backed. 

Gary Lineker's Superstar Soccer hit the ZX Spectrum one year earlier but it wasn't rubbish, Peter Shilton leant his name to the dreadful Handball Maradona in 1986 and some moving dots on an Atari 2600 somehow passed for Pele's Soccer in 1980.

But EHIS was the first one that was half decent and as such paved the way for the daddy of them all, Sensible Soccer, a tremendous series which would feature black players for the first time with Dutch sexy football-sympathiser Ruud Gullit as their cover star.