Soccer

TIL: there was an 80's game about Maradona's Hand of God

Adding salt to the wound but in video game form.

I found this on a Route None video about player-endorsed football games. Peter Shilton’s Handball Maradona was a football sim released in 1986 for the Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum. As you might have guessed, the title references the infamous “Hand of God” goal that Diego Maradona scored against England at the 1986 FIFA World Cup.

The unique feature of the game was that you played from the perspective of the goalkeeper and instead of a full match, you played through some preset plays. Despite the name, Peter Shilton didn’t feature prominently in-game so it was likely called Peter Shilton’s Handball Maradona to cash in on the controversy. Reviewers didn’t care for it either with one calling it “vastly overpriced and not really worth buying”. Here’s my favourite excerpt:

The program includes “speech” (although it sounds like a Dalek with Laryngitis) and assaults the ear with such gems as ‘petashiltunhanballmaradona’ (to tell the world it’s loaded), and ‘goal’ and ‘save’ to inform any blind spectators of the proceedings.

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