It’s time for another retro review of a football management game from years gone by. This one’s a bit obscure… but if you know it, you KNOW it.
The late 1990s was a golden age for independent shareware or freeware games – titles often made by nerdy (and usually amateur) programmers in their homes rather than by big studios. They might not have had as much substance or polish as those expensive major releases, but they could still be enjoyed by early online gamers for little or no cost.
Today, I’m looking at a freeware Windows game that I would describe as “an entry-level Championship Manager”. If you want a less intense experience than CM or Football Manager, with a healthy dose of nostalgia, this might be just what you’re after.
So, without further ado, let’s check out Simsoc 6.
BACKGROUND
I’ve written in previous reviews about my early days online, which I spent downloading various shareware or freeware football games that were made in the 1990s and early 2000s. New Star Soccer and Championship Soccer were my favourite free-to-play titles from this era, but I also sank several hours into the game I’ll be discussing today.
Simsoc 6 was a simple but addictive game developed by one man (John Pragnell) and released in 1998. When you open the program, a message from Pragnell reads, “Simsoc 6 is distributed as freeware – copying and distribution of this version of this program is granted to all soccer loving inhabitants of planet Earth.”
As the title suggests, this was the sixth iteration of the Simsoc series, which Pragnell began all the way back in 1993. Indeed, some of the files in the installation program are technically older than Harry Kane!
There was apparently one more game in the series – Simsoc 7, which came out in early 1999. This sadly seems to have been swallowed up by the wormhole of early Internet history. Besides, Simsoc 6 was the version I remember playing and enjoying as a teenager.
I first encountered this game while playing its MMO version – Simsoc Web Soccer – in circa 2005. After building Tranmere Rovers into Premiership and Champions League contenders in my online universe, I was delighted to find that there was an offline game where you really could build your own team up from scratch.
Unfortunately, the Simsoc website and online game are both long gone, but you can still download Simsoc 6 through the Internet Archive. Try as I might, I could not get this 16-bit program to even install on Windows 11, let alone run. You will need an older operating system installed on a retro computer or virtual machine – ideally Windows 98, though Windows XP will do just fine for the purposes of this review.
[NOTE: Just in case either Donald or Elon completely loses their mind and shuts down the Internet Archive for whatever anti-woke reason, I’ve provided an alternative download here.]
STARTING OUT
When you launch Simsoc for the first time, you get to choose any team in the Conference (the fifth tier of English football) to manage as your first club. You can also be a player-manager, allowing you to pick yourself for matches in your chosen position.
If you really fancy a challenge, the weakest team in the Conference is a fictional club named Hillesley United – Hillesley being a village in Gloucestershire, where I presume this game was developed. If you don’t want to manage a team of cider-drinking West Country bumpkins, it’s very simple to rename Hillesley after your local town or village. You could even rename your players after your family, friends, co-workers and/or dogs.
With some wise transfer business and team selection, you should be able to reach Division 3 within two or three seasons. As your managerial reputation grows, you might be offered a job by a bigger club – especially if you get a good result against them in the league or one of the cups. You can then choose whether to move on or stay put.
Everything in the game is done through windows and dialog boxes, while tables, statistics and editing tools can be found through drop-down menus. Maybe it’s the 90s kid in me talking, but I still find plenty of charm in independently-made games that do actually look like old-school Microsoft Excel.
WHAT I LIKED
Selecting your matchday squad is just a case of dragging and dropping 11 starters and 3 substitutes. While you could simply pick your players with the highest Skill attributes, you should remember that playing in matches will reduce their Fitness levels, thus making them less effective and more susceptible to injuries in future games.
Squad management therefore becomes VERY important throughout a long season. If you’re facing a much weaker team, it would be prudent to rest your best players and save them for tougher tests.
Building your squad also requires a bit of planning. Do you go all-out in the transfer market and buy some highly-rated players to try and surge through the leagues quickly, at the cost of higher wages? Or do you take things steady like me – and focus more on having sufficient depth in all departments?
Whatever approach you take, progressing through Simsoc is always a fast-paced experience. With no training or squad dynamics to worry about, you can play through a match in a minute or two – or even quicker if you forego the highlights and just go straight to the result. I completed my first season in about two hours.
Simsoc’s simplicity and quickfire experience also makes it very moreish. Just when I think I’m ready to finish off for the day, I get the “just one more match” feeling that I’ve not experienced since I was a kid playing Championship Manager 00/01. Fast forward half an hour, and I’m already midway through my second season!
WHAT I DIDN’T
The match engine and graphics look and feel rudimentary, even by late-90s standards. When you’re watching a match play out, you’ll see two teams of unanimated identikit players shuffling (and flickering) across the pitch like Worker and Parasite, while the ball fizzes across the pitch until it either finds the net or gets cleared. Then the next highlight begins in much the same manner.
There are no fouls and no red cards; appearances and goals are the only match stats that get recorded. You can, though, make substitutions in between highlights, in case any of your starting players get tired.
Like with many games made for Windows 95, you should expect a few bugs and crashes. When I tried to print off the Conference league table after leading my team to promotion in the second season, Simsoc displayed an error and crashed to the desktop. Luckily, Simsoc regularly autosaves, so I did not lose any progress.
Also, each installation of Simsoc will only support ONE save game. If you want to run multiple saves (perhaps your spouse or child wants to have a go too), you will have to run the Simsoc installer again – and install the game to another location.
WE MUST TALK ABOUT…
The database. It is rather patchy, at least in terms of accuracy for the 1998/1999 season.
Looking at the Arsenal squad, I found the then-recent signings David Grondin and Nelson Vivas… but also a defender named Dafydd Owen, who had left Highbury several years prior. Meanwhile, Jamie Day (a Gunners youth player who became a non-league journeyman in real-life) has a higher skill rating as an attacker than Marc Overmars.
As your save progresses and AI clubs start making transfers, things will only get wackier. It was quite amusing to see international stars like Ronny Johnsen and Gheorghe Craioveanu shacking up at Conference clubs, and inevitably ripping my own team to pieces whenever we played them.
Players don’t age, retire or regenerate… but their skill levels can randomly change between seasons, which at least freshens things up a little. If you’re lucky, your star striker might take his skills to another level, or an underrated midfielder might suddenly become more useful. On the flip side, my own player dropped from a 70 Skill rating to 69. Not nice.
SUMMARY
By any stretch, Simsoc 6 was never the most sophisticated football management game – not even in 1998. What it is, though, is a simple but addictive time-waster. Whether you are brand new to the genre, or you just want something lighter to enjoy on your coffee break, Simsoc is still a game worth trying out even 25+ years later.
If you happen to be reading this, John, thank you for making this game. I’m only too happy to share it with all soccer loving inhabitants of planet Earth.
FULLER FM RATING: 3* – Football League.
If you enjoyed playing Simsoc back in the day, or even if this the first time you have discovered this game, feel free to share you experiences by leaving a comment below. Also, if you know of a way to run 16-bit programs on Windows 11 (which would make this game playable on modern operating systems), please let us know.
Fuller FM 
Back in 2001 i was playing the online football manager Hattrick (still active today), and searching for offline football manager games (dial-up times). That’s the way i casually found SimSoc6 and i love it. I’m playing it right now, with a virtual machine with Windows XP.
I fell old… and happy.