Sports Pad Football on the Sega Master System is one of those weirdly charming retro sports games where the players look like little pixelated blobs, but somehow it still gets intense. You’ve got this chunky, arcade-style football (soccer, if you’re American) where the controls are dead simple—pass, shoot, sprint—but the AI actually puts up a fight. First time I played, I got wrecked by the CPU because I kept spamming long shots like an idiot.

What’s cool is how fast it plays. No fancy animations or replays, just straight to the next kickoff. The Sports Pad controller (that weird trackball thing) makes it feel a bit different from other football games of the era, though a regular controller works fine too. It’s not deep, but it’s the kind of game you fire up when you just want to smash in a few quick goals without overthinking it.

Also, the crowd noise is hilariously loud—like someone mic’d up a handful of people aggressively chewing chips. You get used to it.