This month, chums, I’ve been doing some drawing. And it’s made me do some thinking.

Hear the players all shout!

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For a large chunk of this month, pals, I’ve been drawing some artwork for a fantastic retro pinball program when I should have been working.

And when I say "working", of course, I mean "playing this big bunch of games on the PS2 Sony sent me recently". But though you might not think it, the two things are connected.

Why? Because two of the games I’ve been playing when I haven’t been drawing pinball stuff are FIFA 2001 and ISS. Confused? Read on.

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FIFA 2001 and ISS are two of the PS2’s highest-selling games to date. (FIFA, in fact, is No.2, beaten only by Tekken Tag Tournament.) And yet, they’re also causing some of the listless apathy being displayed towards the console by the general public, who’ve so far failed to buy PS2s in serious numbers.

The reason for this is that FIFA and ISS are simply rehashes of the existing games in their respective series with some smartened-up graphics, something which is also true about the vast majority of PS2 games generally. So?

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Back in May 1998 I wrote a Panel 4 about how easy it would be for game developers to give even the most tired old genres a whole new lease of life, simply by applying a tiny amount of original thought to the existing ideas.

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And while that one used Doom as an example, football games are just as easy. So just to prove it, here are half-a-dozen things that would really liven up a modern football game.

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No. 1 – HANDBALL

How come you never see free kicks or penalties given for handball in video games? It happens all the time in real football, and it’s always a really exciting moment.

No.2 – REFEREEING ERRORS

Related to No.1, footy fans spend more time talking about dodgy refereeing decisions than almost anything else. So why don’t they ever happen in games, with outraged commentators getting the players all wound up about it? It’d be really great.

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No. 3 – PROPER HIGHLIGHTS

With the power of modern consoles, you’d think one of them could replicate this great feature of Sensible Soccer, where you could select any incident from the game at the press of a button, then watch all the highlights at the end, just like they do on telly. The gloating potential when you’ve got your mates round would be enormous.

(Virtua Striker on DC sort of does this, but only with goals, which of course are only half the story.)

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No. 4 – REAL WEATHER

It often rains or snows in footy games, but how often do you see the conditions making players slip or fall over, or a simple shot squirm through the goalie’s grasp because the ball’s greasy and end up in the net?

No. 5 – EMPTY STADIUMS

100,000 people don’t turn up in real life for a friendly between Tunisia and San Marino. So why does it happen in video games? How much more believable and exciting would it be if you had to EARN big crowds?

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No. 6 – CRAZY GOALKEEPERS

Videogame footballers (like videogame crowds, in fact) never seem to know what time it is. They can be 2-0 behind in a cup final with seconds to play, and still muck about in their own half passing the ball sideways to each other without a care in the world.

But imagine a game where, in last-gasp desperation, your keeper went up for corners, or even out as a Fabian Barthez-style extra midfielder. Difficult to program? No. Excellent? I think so.

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These are just a handful of the ideas that came to me within half-an-hour of sitting down and thinking about it. (And not even thinking very hard.) There are dozens more where they came from – I’m sure you have plenty too.