That daily ritual had a lot of hope, a lot of uncertainty and a few wisps of magic. An almost perfect combination for childhood or adolescence to which was added the feeling of refuge. Because the gestures of turning on the computer and inserting the floppy disks or CD-ROM and at the same time the brief and endless seconds of waiting to know if the video game loaded correctly always happened in the same space. That table in a father’s or mother’s living room, bedroom or office on which the computer on which the Football PC was installed was located used to always be the same. And when you started playing, it was like entering a universe in which everything was in order. A space in which football – and with it, life – could be controlled.
The cover of a magazine can also act as a Proust madeleine. PC Fútbol was accompanied by one that, edition after edition, had Michael Robinson on its front page. Seeing her in the distance, at the kiosk, was the first step towards happiness. Los PC Fútbol by Dinamic Multimedia (Game Press) is a book that practices sentimental memory and digital archeology at the same time. Its author, Albert Traguany Minguell, is one of the world’s largest collectors of the saga. He has had direct access to its creators, which has allowed him to write a book that is the history of a Spanish company to which the audacity, talent and passion of its original partners – and of their followers, who played a fundamental role—led to the creation of a prestigious, international and innovative brand that sold hundreds of thousands of video games. And which, by extension, are also the stories of all those people whose computers those video games ended up on. A book to remember a decade, recognize Dinamic Multimedia the merit of everything achieved and understand the influence that the game exerted on a generation: enough so that it was assumed that Kanchelskis, Blomqvist or Le Saux were at some point among the ten best footballers in the world.
