Football has been a video game for almost as long as video games have been able to show two teams and a ball. The arcade cabinets of the mid-eighties squeezed an entire World Cup into a few minutes of play, the home computer era turned it into a proper genre through Match Day, Kick Off and Sensible Soccer, and by the early nineties the licensed simulations had arrived and never left. The sport translates unusually well. It runs continuously rather than in turns, it is played by two sides with clearly defined roles, and a single moment of skill or misjudgement can settle ninety minutes of everything else.
The genre splits along a line that has been there since the beginning. On one side sit the simulations, which model formations, player attributes, stamina and the offside rule, and which tend to live or die on their licences and the depth of their career modes. On the other sit the arcade games, which keep the shape of the sport and discard whatever slows it down, favouring short matches, exaggerated shooting and someone sitting next to you. Most football games land somewhere between the two, and share the same furniture regardless: a squad rated across attack, midfield and defence, a formation you commit to before kickoff, a tournament or league structure to work through, and a scoreline close enough that the last minute usually matters.
This collection gathers the titles in our catalog that carry the Football (Soccer) tag, from pixel-art kickabouts to full league simulations. If you have ever gone a goal down, looked at the clock and started pushing your defenders forward anyway, start here.
