From Sensible Soccer to Sociable Soccer: Jon Hare is back with a new football game

Hare's new opus Sociable Soccer 24 aims to bring the joys of arcade-style football games to a new generation of players and consoles

For a sports video game to have any sort of life even a couple of years after release is rare nowadays. But when I meet Jon Hare, the genial, garrulous co-founder of Britsoft powerhouse Sensible Software (and one of Norwich City's biggest fans) at Bafta in London, he invites me to a forthcoming event where enthusiasts will gather to play and celebrate his game Sensible Soccer - which was originally released for the Commodore Amiga in 1992.

Sensible Soccer exerted tremendous influence at that time, helping to put football games on the map in an age before Fifa, and it has demonstrated unfeasible longevity. But Hare, now head of Tower Studios, is initially keen to talk about something else: the imminent release of his newest game, Sociable Soccer 24, out this week on PC and a little later on consoles.