When the very first commercial computer games appeared in the early '80s, a high percentage were clones - no, let's not mince words, copies - of successful arcade titles, but with slightly different names. Eventually publishers realised that if the 'home' games had the same names and artwork as their arcade counterparts, potential purchasers would have a greater degree of trust in the product and so sales would increase.

This duly happened and official licensing came to the embryonic computer and videogames industry. Within a few short years, licensing came to dominate. If a game had a brand (any brand - movie, TV show, board game, celebrity) it could attach itself to, it would pick up more coverage in the specialist press, be easier to present to chain store buyers and would ultimately sell more copies to the public. Which brings us to this week nine years ago and the release of a game that, even now, makes grown marketeers shake their head slowly and mutter about a license too far.

Electronic Zoo were publishers formed by senior ex-MicroProse staff and so they were widely perceived to know which way was up, and they had enjoyed a certain degree of success with Amiga titles like Hybris. This week, however, they released their highest profile title to date: Subbuteo. At the time I was a software buyer for a small chain of shops and remember saying to my sales contact, "Hold it right there.

"Subbuteo takes great liberties with the rules of association football and the style of play is totally divorced from the real thing. To replace 22 free-willed men running around a vast area with one man and an army of round-bottomed figurines may allow the sport to be adapted for the confines of the table top, but surely the point is that Subbuteo is a substitute for the real thing. Who'll want to play a simulation of that substitute when they can play any number of simulations of the real thing?"