Football in the mid-90s was beginning to change. The Premiership was flooding money into the game, but ticket prices were still comparably modest, and you could still envisage a player at a top club who didn't have three cars, two houses and a wanton disregard for those who pay their wages. Ahem.

And it was the mid-90s where Sensible Soccer really took hold; the last great 2D football game (a crown it seized from the equally frantic Kick Off 2). The series peaked with Sensible World Of Soccer 96/97 on the Amiga, an iteration of the title with a management engine bolted onto the side. And it's this version, after a very protracted wait, that's now made it onto Xbox Live Arcade. Yup, for under £10 you can now play it in high definition on an Xbox 360.

Loading the game up, you're met by a take on the SWOS theme tune, Goal Scoring Superstar Hero, but apart from looking a little tidier, the menus are the same. So you can opt to play a single game, set up a tournament, or jump into the excellent 20-season career mode.

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Here you choose your team, pick their tactics and wheel and deal on the transfer market. Then you must try to bring success to them on the field, while balancing the books and keeping the board happy off it. Succeed, and job offers will come flooding in. Don't succeed, and it'll be off to the job centre anyway. It's cruel like that.

The core game of Sensible World Of Soccer has, even after all these years, stood up tremendously well. It's still controlled with a stick and a single button, the latter of which covers passing, shooting and tackling with an effectiveness that leaves you wondering why you need to learn so many controls for a quick blast of FIFA. It's as fast and furious as ever, and superb entertainment. And while the 360 version offers little new, over a decade on, Sensible Soccer is still deserving of the affection it continually attracts.

The key selling point of the Xbox 360 version is the online play, of course, and this has been well worth the wait. The high definition visuals are less striking - SWOS was never a graphical award-winner - while the doubling up of the advertising hoardings around the pitch is a sad concession to the modern day game. It'd be good to have the proper player names, too, and perhaps have them up to date, rather than having to play with mid-90s rosters (although some people might prefer that hit of nostalgia).

Yet SWOS remains one of the best football games ever created. And the wise choice here, flying in the face of every attempt to revive the name since, is that Codemasters have just presented Sensible World Of Soccer pretty much as it always was. And that makes it easily worth the modest asking price.

There's nothing groundbreaking here, and it's all the better for it. SWOS is still a terrific football game, and one that's met the challenges of time well.