Foreword

Rugby, a very popular sport in former territories of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, and in some eastern countries, particularly in Japan. The japanese videogamers saw for the, by then, really popular computer MSX a game of this sport, probably the second created.

A korean company, Panasoft, chooses to enter this market, with a game implementing the most basic rugby playability, and a bit fast for the time.

If you, dear reader, thinks that you have seen before the graphics of the game, is because we have already talked about another game from this company, and even if I have not been able to find out which one came first, I suspect the Football one was first, trying to get a hold of the european market, important stronghold of the MSX computers at the time.

Game

The similarities between the two videogame go beyond the colors and shapes. The controls are exactly the same, using the joystick to move the virtual rugbyer indicated in black, using one of the joystick buttons to do a lateral or backward pass, while the other button kicks the ball. We have to remember than in rugby, is valid advance kicking the ball over enemy lanes and trying later to recover it. A more than useful strategy to advance towards to score a try.

The virtual rugbyers are well defined and the pace of the game is the same as in the football game, which is quite good. It came to my attention that there are 11 rugbyers at the field per team, which can be a bit convoluted, because you have no idea where the rival defenders are, or worse, where are located your teammates trying to stop a rival attack.

Just like the Football game, the goal is taking the ovoid to the other edge of the field, which is called a try, while kicking the ball between the posts also adds to your score although less than a try, and in this game, it does not help that much, because the A.I. constantly looks for score a try, and it’s quite good at that. One recognizable sign of a rugby game are the scrums, and in this game are of course implemented, not the mauls.

Epilogue

If you want to learn the basics of this sport, this game is quite useful to understand mechanics like advancing or scoring. Between two human players, specially if both are neophites at the sport, it can be quite funny.

References

Sport Icon designed by Smashicons of FlatIcon licensed by CC 3.0 BY.

Console Icon taken from Retroarch.