Scorchio
In this ten-part (for now) series, Ian King and Edward Carter go back to the 1980s and 1990s in order to reappraise – or in some cases appraise for the first time – the football video games of the past. The results aren’t always pretty.
Podcast 220: Scorchio, Part 10 – International Superstar Soccer
In this week's season finale, Edward and Ian play International Super Star Soccer Deluxe, the plucky cousin of the Winning Eleven Series of games that have long since cornered the market along with their FIFA counterparts. Much resolution is reached, too, with the...
Podcast 219: Scorchio, Part 9 – FIFA 20 & Football Manager 2020
This week, Edward and Ian forgo the usual rigmarole of playing old video games and instead have been playing brand new ones. Ian has been gawping in wonderment at all that FIFA 20 has to offer, leading him to curate an increasingly impressive selection of balls,...
Podcast 218: Scorchio, Part 8 – Striker
This week, Edward and Ian have been playing Striker on the Mega Drive, one of a number of Striker games that were available during a period of the early-to-mid-1990s now known to historians as The Striker Era. It's an all-encompassing arcade-style football game which...
Podcast 216: Scorchio, Part 7 – Fantasy Games
This week on Scorchio, Edward and Ian give their thumbs a rest and their brain holes a workout, each coming up with some football video games that they would like to see made. Chiefly because they would like to play them. What happened next was potentially...
Podcast 214: Scorchio, Part 6: World Championship Soccer 2
This week, Edward and Ian continue to be cockteases of the worst possible kind, playing a football game programmed by Sensible Software that isn't Sensible Soccer, while you all sit around on tenterhooks. Vinegar strokes or no, World Championship Soccer II on the Sega...
Podcast 212: Scorchio, Episode 5 – Match Day & Match Day II
This week on Scorchio! Edward and Ian have been playing Jon Ritman's seminal Match Day series, perhaps the first football simulation game to prove that they don't all have to be just garbage, absolute garbage. As they thrill at its pioneering advances in game physics,...
Podcast 210: Scorchio, Part 4 – Super Soccer
This week on Scorchio!, Edward and Ian venture behind enemy lines in the console wars to assess the lasting cultural impact of the SNES game Super Soccer. Both of our heroes have a variety of fruity and completely groundless thoughts and feelings about the Super...
Podcast 209: Scorchio, Part 3 – Why Did Video Games Hate The World Cup So Much?
The FIFA World Cup is such a beloved global carnival of soccer funtimes that there's simply bound to be a series of downright mercenary, dismal and shonky video games devoted to it. Or so you might think. And you'd be right. This week Edward and Ian look at the first...
Podcast 206: Scorchio, Part 2 – FIFA Soccer
This week on Scorchio, Edward and Ian have been battering their B buttons as they got back to grips with FIFA Soccer 95. In many ways it is the first modern FIFA game, in that it came out a year after the previous one and a year before the next one and if you didn't...
Podcast 204: Scorchio, Part 1 – Football Manager (1982)
Hello everybody, and welcome to the first episode of Scorchio, our new series revisiting the football video games of the past. Every week, we'll be tearing down a different game and delivering the results to you. Apologies for the slightly rough and ready nature of...