Steve Wright's Championship Soccer introduced four innovations in video gaming!
First, of course, this game was the first 4K cartridge, making room for more graphics and sound effects.
Second was the vertically scrolling playfield. Up to this point, all game screens were static, with just the sprites moving around. The Atari engineers said a vertical scrolling field would never work; Steve is glad he didn't listen to them!
Third was a "payoff." When a player scored a goal, the screen switched to a fireworks display accompanied by a roaring crowd. This never-before-seen gameplay innovation by Steve can be seen in this gameplay link of Championship Soccer.
The fourth innovation was the manual. Up to this point, a video game "manual" was a sterile two—or three-page foldout pamphlet describing the gameplay. For Championship Soccer, Steve wrote the manual himself. He began with a funny story about the characters on the rival teams, complete with humorous illustrations reminiscent of the comic characters in Mad Magazine. To this day, video games are wrapped up in a story.
On a side note, a year or so after Championship Soccer was released, Pele became all the rage in soccer, so Atari licensed his name and renamed the cartridge to "Pele's Soccer" for marketing purposes. It's the same game, but tragically, the Atari marketing team gave the gameplay manual a sterile rewrite to talk about Pele.
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