The Fabulous Destiny of Marked Accordingly

A Marked Accordingly Glossary. Part the First.

Punt of Evil. An infallibly reliable technique in any video game (esp. sports) which instantaneously converts a seemingly disadvantageous situation into an overwhelmingly favourable one.

Gay Header of Champions. An infallibly reliable technique in any video game (esp. sports) which invariably results in the scoring of points by one player without any avenue of intercession for the other.

Is that aw you kin DAE?! Cry, often peevish or ill-natured, traditionally favoured by recipients of the above.

The first full-priced video game I ever bought with my own money was FIFA ‘95 for the Mega Drive. £34.99 it cost me from the now defunct Dixons across from the now rebranded John Menzies. £34.99! I could hardly afford that now, let alone then. Bloody hell! See, that was the thing about video gaming when you were a kid; you couldn’t afford not to like any game you bought. Thirty-five pounds was not a sum of money you were likely to see again any time soon. Just William-esque meditations about whether to spend it on the metaphorical equivalent of Coconut Kisses (taste nicer) or Gobstoppers (last longer) were purely academic, because whatever you bought was going to HAVE to last you, regardless of your inclinations on the matter.

Not that such metaphysical speculations were likely to be inspired by FIFA ‘95, uncontroversially excellent as it was. Button-hammering, end-to-end mish-mash which was not much like real football as it was, but certainly like real football as it seemed to our youthful eyes, what probably separated the FIFA games from previous efforts was the presentation of the package: the pre-match head-to-head comparison, the smooth segue of goal-scorers’ names, the action replays! All of it, in other words, much more like watching footie on TV than actually playing it, and we played football ourselves often enough as it was, so that was just fine. So it was ironic that watching football on television was not only FIFA ’95’s inspiration but also its downfall.

1995, you see, was the year in which millions of us had watched, slack-jawed, as an amazing 50 yard lob in the last seconds of extra time had won the European Cup Winner’s Cup for Real Zaragoza. Suddenly playground pitches everywhere were buzzing with the cries of “NAYIIIIIIIM!” as shots from the halfway line, the penalty box, the car park lofted high and hopelessly wide; to score from anywhere within 20 yards of the goalmouth was suddenly ignoble and ignominous, whereas to score from anywhere beyond was carte blanche to tack on the emulatory yards up to the prerequisite fifty. Oh to be a goalkeeper in those happy days, when life was spent in perpetual pursuit of bouncing, wayward swipes, and you invariably returned with the ball under your arm only to find another one nestled snugly in the net and your next-door-neighbour-but-one prancing and screaming “Fucking NAAAAAAYIIIIIIIIM!!!!” thirty yards away.

But what happens on the field doesn’t stay on the field, and copycat serendipities were not limited to doon the pitches and up the park. No, from Kick Off 3 to Sensible Soccer, ISS to Dino Dini’s, any video game which had a “lob” button was apt to the same use and misuse as the centre-circles of our everyday. But it was a craze which would have died out of its own accord. In most games, because of the simplistic programming of goalkeeping functions, scoring a fifty yard lob was literally impossible. In FIFA ‘95, however, not only was it possible but, in fact, foolproof.

The spot was just in from halfway, tucked in on the right touchline. (Which was, as it happened, precisely the position from which Nayim actually scored his goal; not that anyone would ever have disqualified a successful effort on these grounds, of course; never dare to drag the pursuit of goalscoring greatness down to a game of fucking Horse!) Once you got there, and lobbed to a smidge beyond the far post, and curled the ball back towards the goalmouth, nothing was left but the hilariously dispairing dive of the goalkeeper and contemplative selection of the celebratory mega-mix of sounds prompted by the hammering of buttons, honks and fireworks and screams of “GOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAALLLLL!” accompanying your opponent’s appreciative breath of congratulations: appreciation which would become even less vocal as time wore on. Because it was a friendship-destroying trump card to have, this, particularly when you only used it as needed, particularly when it was over hours and days and even weeks that the twos and twos and twos of last-minute lobbed winners finally accumulated in your opponent’s leaden brain to a heavy four.

There is a book called “The Goalkeeper’s Revenge”. I have not read it in quite some time: but its concluding words, if there is any justice, ought to be “Fucking NAAAAAAAAAAAYIIIIIIIIIIIM!!!!!”