2002-12-30 - Updated the links pages a bit, removed the dead sites from the new links page, and added a link to the new SWOS Mania website, check the links page. Also added some more info to the XMAS Challenge page, you can now enter the first round to claim the remaining points, so do this by Friday!
2002-12-21 - The new 3.11 update is out get it now! I'm hosting the Purple Sensi Xmas challenge at the moment, because www.purplesensi.co.uk is down - please have a go at it, Phil needs some more players, and trust me - its great fun! Click here to play!
2002-12-12 - The new 3.10 update is out get it now!
2002-11-02 - The new 3.08 update is out get it now!
2002-09-24 - The new 3.07 update is out get it now!
2002-09-01 - The new 3.06 update is out get it now! It includes so many new transfers - including RONALDO at Real Madrid! You got it here first! The Hairdown Challenge results are up and this webmaster is in second place!! It really is a fun tournament and its not too late to join, so go there today!
2002-08-25 - The new Season 2002/2003 3.05 update is out, get it here! Don't forget that this years SLOL 4 is free! Also play the Hair Down Challenge as a warm up!
2002-08-18 - The site has had a makeover! I've changed the colouring and ditched the frames as they got on my nerves. So now the new SWOS 24/7 is looking brighter and better than ever - I hope you agree! Look out for some new content coming soon!
2002-08-17 - The new Season 3.04 update is out, get it here! I've also added a new SWOS 2003 patch which is for use with my updates to stop them crashing - this just updates a few things such as the number of teams, in Scotland, Spain and Ukraine, the number of subs in England etc. It doesn't update the whole world. It's just in time for the kick off of the new English Premier league season - so get playing and look out for SLOL 4 which I will be taking part in!
2002-07-22 - The new Season 3.03 update is out, get it here!
2002-07-14 - The new Season 3.02 update is out, get it here!
2002-07-08 - The new Season 3.01 update is out, get it here! Loads of new websites added to the links pages, yet more Polish webpages - SWOS is booming right now all over Europe there are new pages opening up, I think at this present time we have a record number of open SWOS web pages!! Another good thing is that there is a new remake of SWOS being made, its called Super Soccer, check it out on the links page.
2002-06-27 - The new Season 2002/2003 update is out, get it here it has loads of new additions and is really worth downloading! Please be aware there are still a few blanks as some teams dont have 2 goalkeepers yet! Also updated the links, Eastern European swos websites are really booming - especially Poland! Enjoy!
2002-04-17 - A lot has happened in the two weeks since the last update - there is a new campaign to bring out a new SWOS for 2002! So far a petition has been signed by 180 people, this is disappointingly low in my opinion, so please keep signing it! For a while now LOWRENCE of SWOS Witnesses has been spear heading a campaign to bring Codemasters attention to the fact that we still want a new SWOS, and thus many many messages have been posted to the Codemasters forum - all we got from that was telling off for spamming the newsgroup, fair enough due to the fact that it actually was just a few people doing it unfortunately :(
However, as the campaign has gather pace it attracted attention from none other than Jon Hare himself, the big SWOS maker in the sky (actually a Codemasters office). He responded somewhat disappointingly, although understandably that there is no place for SWOS in the modern market, and thanked us for making it his defining moment of his career, this is quite charming and very nice to say. It would be nice however to see a bit more recognition from Jon about the SWOS community, just a hello now and again, many people have said this, it would be nice if he could take part in SWOS Witnesses, even just a token membership would be great.
There are a few questions from the message boards and newsgroups which keep coming up over and over, I'd like to add my opinions on them. One thing is that people want Jon to make a new SWOS game in his spare time - I think this is unreasonable, mainly due to the fact that Jon probably has a family to look after and spend time with as well as what is quite a time consuming job. Steve Screech may have done Kick-Off 2002 in his spare time, but I dont know if he works for a big publishing house like Codemasters or has a family as well. People also seem to want him to do 'just a little update' to SWOS, I don't think this is possible either. If SWOS was to be even partially succesful in the market today, I think most people would agree that a big overhaul is necessary. For one, it is a DOS game, nobody uses DOS anymore and as such it is very difficult to get the game to run 100% on all the new machines and Operating Systems that are around. To rework it into something which worked with windows DirectX/DirectDraw and DirectSound and DirectPlay would require quite a lot of work.
Jon also says that he thinks another SWOS would be like a band coming on a comeback tour, I can completely agree with this. It is well documented that Sensible Software weren't too keen on doing the slight update that was SWOS 96/97, because they'd done so many other versions of SWOS before. For the SWOS diehard it is hard to accept that the publishers of the game are not as pumped about releasing new versions of games with slight updates as they are, but it is true - nobody wants to do the same old project/game again and again with just minor changes. Compare this to other creative forms - music for example; a lot of people would love Radiohead to keep on making albums like The Bends and OK Computer over and over, they can't accept it when they release something which is nothing like those albums, but it is because they are artists and like to create new things, it is the nature of the artist. For this same reason, we, the SWOS community, cannot expect Jon Hare to want to keep on producing SWOS over and over and over, he has to move on and keep interested. I am sure you all agree that the very worst thing that could happen to SWOS is for a bad version to be released, spoiling everybody's memory of the game, just because Jon and the rest of his team only produced it to keep the diehard SWOS fans happy.
Think about other game series which have suffered this fate, X-Com for one - everybody must remember UFO: Enemy Unknown, that was a gripping game, but since then there have been countless versions, X-Com: Terror From The Deep, X-Com: Apocalypse, X-Com: Interceptor, all on a slow downw
ard sprial into rubbishness.
It would be great to see another SWOS, but we aren't going to see anything official for at least another 18 monthes, probably more. Codemasters already have a soccer game in development, Codemasters Soccer - it would be foolish for any company to release two games along-side each other that compete for the same share of the market, only EA Sports would do something like that.
As Jon also said in his mail - the only chance for SWOS is on Game Boy Advance or Gameboy Color - this is perfectly true, the handhelds are perfectly suited to the kind of gameplay that SWOS provides. It would be nice, but I feel that they will not really be progressions of SWOS, more like straight conversions, even if they were produced.
We have to accept that SWOS as a game on the PC may never happen again - the market seems to be moving away from producing anything more than First-Person Shooters like Doom 3 or Serious Sam and real-time strategy games like Command And Conquer. This is kind of a cycle from a few years ago, in about 1990/1991, all the PC got was simulations due to the fact that the hardware was not suitable for the kind of games that appeared on consoles. Then for a while the PC got good at the sort of thing that consoles could do and everything came out on PC as well, now it appears that only the console games with the biggest market share get released on PC. For an example of this just check out Codemasters web page about which games are being released on PC - Colin McRae 3.0 doesnt even get a look in, and that was a huge PC hit last time.
It seems to me that rather than being the great thing we all thought it was when Codemasters bought out Sensible Software, it actually seems like the worst thing that could have happened, with regards to us getting new versions of games. They have sat on the Sensible Soccer and Cannon Fodder titles and done nothing with them bar a Gameboy Conversion of Cannon Foddder, all that in 3 years. It is very disappointing, but maybe without them buying Sensible out, we would have had the source code for SWOS released, now that would be a mistake for them because releasing it would mean people could make a better version, then they would have wasted the money they paid for it. It isn't impossible however for them to release the source code AND still make a new version of SWOS to sell, an example of this is Open Office Sun released the source code for it, and are making their own StarOffice 6.0 based on the source code of Open Office - it's possible. I don't think it is likely though, Codemasters seem to be far too protective over their rights.
Life goes on though, and I have, as i'm sure you all know, released a new patch for swos called SWOS 2002, it updates the leagues and relegations, substitutions and cups for SWOS - check it out:
SWOS 2002 (1.3mb)
I hope to make this eventualy into a full team update for SWOS to the 2001/2002 season and beyond. It was Bogdan Mihai's idea for all the teams to be updated and I agree - if you'd like to help then get in touch and i'll send you a list of what teams we already are updating and what you can do!
2002-03-30 - Cleaned up the site a bit, removed a few old pages and old bits of info and added my guide to Running SWOS On Your PC - enjoy!
2002-03-28 - New 2.05 update available - it it here! lots of changes in this one! Look out for my guide to running swos on Windows XP coming soon!
2002-02-02 - New 2.04 update available - it it here! lots of changes in this one!
