1980: Hyper-Realistic COMPUTER FOOTBALL | Tomorrow's World | Retro Gaming | BBC Archive

Judith Hann and Kieran Prendiville demonstrate the a computer football game, featuring realistic graphics and gameplay. With ten players on screen at all times, how does the computer cope? Michael Rodd explains how programmers use "sprites" to smoothly and accurately simulate the intricacies of the beautiful game.
Originally broadcast 12 June, 1980.
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[@yaosio]

Graphics will never get better than this.

[@candjim]

For one moment I actually thought I was watching a real football match.

[@CarrotUK]

The little squeal Judith gives out at 1:47 when she tries to save the ball is hilarious.

[@ryanparker2696]

"I'm a gentleman, so I'll go first"

[@7by62]

Not a single monetization gimmicks in sight!

[@Larry]

Ah, wow, it's just like being at a real football match!!!

[@rjjcms1]

I'm pretty sure Belgium played just like that at the last World Cup. Can this game provide a representation of Romelu Lukaku half-trashing the dugout with a single punch in frustration after their last group match?

[@Klutch58Customs]

We mock now but I imagine that tomorrows kids are going to laugh at how crappy our next gen games consoles produce.

[@jeshkam]

Did you see that ludicrous display last night?

[@paleo2359]

The thing about Judith is she always tries to walk it in.

[@jeshkam]

@@paleo2359 That is true.

[@NeverStopRolling]

When did we stop "punching in" text? :( We need to bring that back...

[@fredo1070]

£1000 in 1980 would be £4000 today, ouch.

[@davedogge2280]

about the average price a kid with his parent's credit card spends on FIFA !

[@dgsatari4950]

And, remarkably, I bought a second-hand TI99/4A (the next model up from the one shown) just 4 years after this for just £70 including a load of cartridges. Tech was moving quickly then!

[@a1white]

just 4 years later you could buy a ZX Spectrum for £129 and Match Day for £7.95. The gameplay was a huge advancement over this. I remember having hours of fun on it!

[@rm71991]

Wrong it would be more

[@a1white]

According to the BOE inflation calculator £1000 in 1980 is worth £4,066.32 in July 2023 so it's pretty much correct. @@rm71991

[@BuckRolly1]

These graphics are AMAZING... when is it out?

[@AtheistOrphan]

Not for years yet, too advanced.

[@SummerDream3r]

I think it'll be coming out in like 43 years ago.

[@unnamedchannel1237]

Always amuses me comments like this. 40 years time they will be saying same about the games you play.

[@Liofa73]

It was out 40 years ago, you're too late....

[@bricktasticanimations4834]

@@AtheistOrphan And here I am playing Heretic and The Simpsons Hit & Run

[@cammaster50]

So realistic! I am immersed in its glory

[@badhamian]

Reminds me of so called 'computer club' at school in the 80s where we all just sat around playing JetPac on the ZX Spectrum. Great days!

[@OlafProt]

I was at a posh school in Guildford in 1983 and it had banks of BBC Micro (and one hallowed IBM bathed in light at its own desk that only 6th formers could touch). But the BBC was just immense. We all had the 5 1/4 floppy discs and played Aviator endlessly. Everything around the time of this TW programme to about 1995 was just huge steps forward into realms we couldn’t even get our heads around. Such exciting and hopeful times. The way internet has been allowed to develop though, has destroyed any sense of wonder. Hindsight is a wonderful thing but I think history might see Tim Berners-Lee in a similar light to Oppenheimer.

[@markstevens1237]

4:08 "Judith's just laid me out flat ,but she's still getting a right pasting here."😮

[@dronespace]

😂😂😂

[@Omegaspeedmaster69]

It makes my zx81 with optional 16k plug in ram pack look rather futuristic 😊

[@joebryant5722]

That looks very close to how Utd and specifically Maguire have been playing for the last couple yrs 🤣

[@MoodyWatters]

😂

[@swaneknoctic9555]

I don’t think anything has come so far in such a short space of time……..Video games.

[@taridean]

Aeroplanes did as well. First sucessful flight in 1903. 11 years later aerial dogfights and bombing runs were happening in WW1.

[@FoxInClogs]

@@taridean Real progress.

[@unnamedchannel1237]

Space flight

[@andygriffith5160]

Music technology in the 1980s.

[@MrFaceHead]

Looks quite fun as a two-player game, like table football.

[@videogamebookreviews]

"...and the computer analyses your tactics..." 0:37

[@starfleetbrat]

Texas Instruments! I had one of those when I was a kid in the 80s - a 99/4a, and Im pretty sure I actually played this game. There were some good games on that!

[@steven-vn9ui]

One of, if not the first machine I played on. Was a game called "Parsec" and I was utterly amazed

[@starfleetbrat]

@@steven-vn9ui Parsec was great! I can still hear the sounds from that one. also loved Tunnels of Doom (which needed the cassette player) and Hunt the Whumpus. Such simple games, but they were fun.

[@trevorlack6565]

Parsec and Alpiner were my favourite games especially with the speech synthesiser

[@TimelordUK]

I can't watch this without thinking it's a Victoria Wood sketch. She was so spot on with these kind of shows

[@wildthing72]

@1:14 when the computer can do 32 sprites but only time to draw 4 sprites per line so the red player has a ball sized hole in him.

[@adamweishaupt2846]

All those years that I wasted playing Kick off, Sensible Soccer, FIFA and Pro Evo. This is the football game I always wanted!

[@Larry]

You never played World Cup Carnival? That was like this. But slower.

[@adamweishaupt2846]

@@Larry That was a little bit before my time. The imaginatively titled 'Soccer' on the NES and the Italia 90 game on the Mega Drive were my first footy games.

[@djdrwatson]

FIFA '80?! 😂 Today's hyper realistic computer graphics have come a very long way since these humble beginnings. Quite a few dodgy decisions in the game. Where's VAR and goal line technology when you need it? (another 30+ years in the future).

[@w3bbi3]

Never knew the matrix filmed on this location

[@MrMann0123]

Couple of hours on Scratch and you couls knock that up now.

[@citizen..X]

Very realistic.. Everton's back line really does move at that speed.

[@PlanetImo]

Cutting edge stuff! 😆

[@shiroshine7227]

Oh gawd it's a TI-99.

[@SteveInScotland]

Looks like a TI99/4 (not 4A) computer. Power would increase rapidly and costs would fall in the same way. And look where we are, on the verge of the dawn of the VR/AR revolution.

[@TheFlixFiles]

FC25 on the PS5 Pro Early Preview.

[@_MaxHeadroom_]

0:50 Ah yes gentlemen first as the old saying goes

[@matthewtrow5698]

The words "Hyper-Realistic" are not mentioned anywhere in this recording. What is mentioned is the £1000 when it goes on sale. I'd want my money back, even in 1980, as the game clearly sucks. Lest we forget, in 1980 we had pacman, Donkey Kong, galaga, asteroids, frogger, defender and many more in the arcades. It took some time before consoles and personal computers could match the quality of those arcade machines. For £1000, I could've played 10,000 games at the arcade, at 10pence a shot. It's entirely possible that over the course of about 10 years I may indeed have spent that much in the arcades 😄 ... although there were sneaky ways and means of getting free credits on arcade machines in the 80's and 90's 😉

[@dsdgdsfegfeg]

Because I'm a gentleman I'll go first LMAO, ah the good old days💀

[@FoxInClogs]

And all the players were 'MEN'.

[@ok2760]

I can see why this "computer games" business never caught on!

[@RSimoes10]

Brilliant.

[@DavidDatura]

Is that a Texas Instruments micro? My Intellivision from that era had much better graphics (by early 80s standards of course) on its soccer game than this does. I loved watching Tomorrows World as a kid too! And remember two of the three hosts here so well! Are they even around anymore? I remember seeing them as if it were yesterday! And very clear picture quality too, for SD 4:3 aspect ratio, early 80s TV.

[@johnmshearing]

It's a Texas Instruments TI-99/4A from what I can see.

[@southwestkinema9149]

I knew this comment section would be golden 🤣Well done lads I needed a laugh.

[@Samiby]

Do I believe those crowd sounds are generated by the computer game or superimposed?

[@keithfulkerson]

Going by the other game sounds, those crowd sounds were definitely added later.

[@davedogge2280]

Almost certain that the crowd sounds were added later as I'm sure I saw this being played in the 1980s on a Texas Instruments TI 99/4 8-bit computer in a shop. The TI 99/4 DID have a speech synthesizer add on which could replicate very robotic human voice sounds and probably could simulate crowd sounds using special 'white noise' techniques but who knows. The C64 could certainly do crowd sounds like that and that came out around the same time as the TI 99/4.

[@mr.invisible3123]

Now A.I where we came from fascinating

[@Dj3ndo]

"And because i'm a gentleman, I'll go first" Ok then lol.

[@davedogge2280]

It's better than all the FIFA's and no DLC or extras to pay to win !

[@popo.poponi728]

Exelente vídeo y con una época maravillosa

[@NickSBailey]

this seems dated even for 1980, and Atari machines had sprites three years earlier, you did have to muck about with VBIs to get more of them moving on screen

[@videogamebookreviews]

The ball doesn't seem to slow down at all. 1:25 - 1:33

[@emanuel_soundtrack]

it is a whole different ontology

[@joiedevivre5119]

Thought I was watching Match of the Day.

[@wisteela]

Texas Instruments TI 99/4 with some kind of prototype/development device

[@darkalligator]

Real world graphics.

[@candjim]

My old IT teacher used ro punch the information into us students.

[@andydixon2980]

Wow, thought I was watching a real match for an hour.

[@shingitai5882]

I had a football game in the 80’s called football manager where you could buy and sell players and go up and down a league. I suppose the equivalent today would have you dealing with the media and handling the drug and sex scandals the players get themselves in.😂🤣

[@unnamedchannel1237]

This franchise is still going, up to football manager 2022 now

[@scottishwildcat]

@@unnamedchannel1237Not really directly related to the original Football Manager, though. The original was written by Kevin Toms, who has just released a new version for iPhone and Android.

[@Firkinnel]

"Kevin Toms Football Manager" was the original and was re-released on Android. It is slightly updated but still has the old school feel !

[@discharge2331]

I thought it was a video of a real football game .

[@dean6816]

The crowd sound effects aren't in the original game!!

[@SeymourClevage]

Clearly before the days of micro transactions.😂

[@scsutton1]

I take it all back, the new EA Sports FC looks good.

[@harryjones5260]

only thing 'hyper-realistic' was the foul 5 seconds into the game

[@popitastic]

'Hyper Realistic'!! Do the BBC ever tell the truth?

[@TheSnowdogsShorts]

It’ll never catch on. 😂

[@cunninglinguist-hu1dz]

I can't see it catching on

[@bonnetdedouche437]

Looks infinitely better than EA's Switch updates of FIFA every year.

[@johnmadison3472]

Laughable now, but state-of-the-art for 1980. Even the color televisions had only been around a decade or so.

[@Question3verything]

Still better than EA FC24

[@BenjyDale]

Will my RTX 3070 run this?

[@Traveller69]

Better gameplay than FIFA23!

[@flerge3000]

Better than FIFA 23 tbh

[@theendofeverything6356]

Is this what they used for the recent Indian moon landing?

[@marsspacex6065]

😂

[@digitaldobbie]

When we reminisce about these games we think of how much fun they were, when we are shown them again we realise by today’s standards how crap they were.

[@Keith2XS]

It’s all relative to what’s available at the time. People in the future will laugh at the way we play now. And not just the graphics but the controllers and our primitive tvs and monitors 😊

[@matthewtrow5698]

But this particular one really is crap. I get your point, that the game was in your own home - but the lure of the arcade was very strong back in 1980, for way better games with somewhat better graphics. I recall being bitterly disappointed when I first started up my ZX81 only to be faced with a blinking cursor. I typed "Play asteroids", it did nothing. I did eventually learn to code and that was amazing fun, but it was only when the ZX Spectrum came out we got games on a computer that could surpass the home consoles like the Atari 2000 and Intellivision - the arcades still ruled though, for a good 10 years or more!

[@atmakali9599]

The beginning of the end. We now like in a world of computer game drug addicted zombies

[@therexbellator]

Sir as a computer game drug addicted zombie I'll have you know we live lives of relative peace. Much better than the booze-soaked domestic violence that passed for recreation in the pre-video games world. HMPH! 😤

[@mr702s]

3 dimensional? Hahaha that's 2D

[@davidware9549]

lol he goes first cause he’s a gentleman if he was a real gentleman he would of put her name first how disgusting how he dares call him self a gentlemen

[@SteveInScotland]

Looks like a TI99/4 (not 4A) computer. Power would increase rapidly and costs would fall in the same way. And look where we are, on the verge of the dawn of the VR/AR revolution.

[@StuTube]

Did you see that ludicrous display last night?