Games That Weren't^®

1993 Renegade

Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System

We all like (good) surprises, and hopefully our next entry into the Games That Weren’t archives will be just that. Back when Enigma Variations were porting Sensible Soccer to the original Game Boy, unbeknown to us all – Mark Greenshields was working on a NES conversion too, using the original Amiga code as reference.

Although the conversion progressed very well after around 6 months of work, Mark reveals they didn’t feel that the conversion was good enough for the market and so work was abruptly stopped. By 1993, the platform was in the very early stages of decline (at least in the UK, even though as AmigaJay points out – it was still very popular), so that may have been a factor for not trying again to convert the title from scratch, but does seem odd. It can’t be recalled, though it is plausible that Renegade decided to drop the conversion completely and just focus on a Game Boy release.

Surprisingly – the game was essentially complete, but had some glitches and bugs still to iron out before it was in a state to release. Unfortunately, as a result of the cancellation the title would lay dormant for around 32 years.

As far as we can tell, there may not have been any press release about a NES title being in the works – so news of a conversion may come as a bit of a surprise to fans of the Sensible Soccer franchise. However, if anyone finds a preview/news snippet – please let us know and we’ll add to the page.

In 2025, Games That Weren’t was tasked with doing some disk recovery work – and within a set of disks was the final code backup for the game. After some work (with thanks to Martin Pugh and Paul Hughes for advice), we have managed to finally get the game up and running, and you can now check it out for yourselves via the downloads. It was a magic moment to see it all come to life, especially as I grew up with the Amiga original.

Overall, I’m impressed with how close the graphics are to the Amiga original, even with some obvious compromises due to the palette limitations. The footballer sprites feel very close and authentic. The menus are all functional, and there are even the in-between screens.

It is lacking some final polish. SFX is a bit weedy and no proper crowd noises, palette tweaks may have been needed, no crowd/panel graphics, and the CPU needs a bit of further work for example. However, crucially the game is fully playable and I think its a shame that it wasn’t decided to persevere and finish it.

All I need to top it all off is to discover that a C64 conversion was under way too – we know it wasn’t, but I can live in hope! We’ll hopefully get to learn more in time from Mark and Darren about the development to update this page, but for now – check out a piece of history for yourself and a Sensible Soccer game lost for 32 years.

We also have a YouTube video showcasing the game, with some commentary at the start.

With a huge thank you to Mark Greenshields and Darren Melbourne for arranging the recovery and to Martin Pugh and Paul Hughes for advice and AmigaJay for input.

Download

• Game_SensibleSoccer

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