Football Manager - The Original

[Yngwie]

About 25 years ago, my weekends and school holidays were largely taken up playing what I think might have been the first ever football management simulator, simply called Football Manager. I'm sure I'm not the only one.

It was written in Basic by Kevin Toms, back in the days when a computer game could be designed and fully programmed by an individual, rather than huge teams of developers. I had the ZX Spectrum version, but it was also available on other formats like Commodore 64.

So after loading it up from screeching audio cassette for 5 minutes, you picked your (English) team, chose between black or white team colours, and were treated to your first season in the old 4th Division. There were at most a few dozen named players in the entire game, with the likes of Kevin Keegan, Eric Gates and Mick Mills. I don't recall if Terry Butcher was there.

I think you could have up to 16 players in your squad, with a strict wage budget. Rather than having dozens of attributes, each player simply had "Skill" on a scale of 1 to 5. The only time these ratings changed was at beginning of each new season, when, to your annoyance, they would just randomly change. The best thing to do was sell your best players towards the end of a season and buy cheap rubbish ones, knowing that over the summer your 5s would decrease and your 1s would improve.

I don't think you had any formations, tactics, or substitutions. For a match itself, you got to see brief snippets of goalmouth action depicted at snails pace, with a handful of black or white matchstick figures standing around watching as one would shoot and usually miss the open goal.

There was sound too, some random bleeps if you scored.

It was rubbish but very addictive all the same, and quite advanced for its day. Kids nowadays just don't know........

[Scotty]

I had the Commodore version as I was a C64, then Amiga type of chap, but there is an online retro version of the spectrum one .... I managed to make it crash in under 2 minutes

Online version : http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekpla...=3&aspect=3

[CaleyD]

And the Golden Joystick award still looks like a Penis

[Scotty]

My favourite of the early 80s was "Hunchback". I had it for the C64 and it was just as good on the home computer as the version they had on a video machine in the Columba !!!

http://www.arcade-history.com/?n=hunchback...ail&id=1154 / http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunchback_(video_game)

[Johnboy]

I can mind getting the Spectrum version for my son for Xmas when he was about 5 years old...

It didn't mean much to him but it kept me amused for hours...

[Yngwie]

Online version : http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekpla...=3&aspect=3

Just played a season of it for old times sake!

How do they make these emulators, does someone write a copy of the game from scratch or do they use the original code?

[EWS]

Online version : http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekpla...=3&aspect=3

Just played a season of it for old times sake!

How do they make these emulators, does someone write a copy of the game from scratch or do they use the original code?

Some smart people copy the original code using programs, and then they write a decoder that will work on a PC. Think of having an old PS2 mouse and needing to put it into a USB port.

Just to warn you, not all emulators are strictly legal.

[EWS]

I suppose I should add;

If you go to www.championshipmanager.co.uk you can download Champ Man 01/02 for free. You do need to register, but that isn't really a hassle. Further, you can download an update as well.

[The Mantis]

I played that game on a Spectrum. Couldn't tell you what the packaging was like mind you, because everybody at work had a pirate copy. If I remember rightly, it started around the same time as the radio version of 'only an excuse'.

Totally off-topic, but can anybody remember how 'only an excuse' started?

[Scotty]

It was a one-off radio show if I remember correctly and took the mickey out of William McIllvaney who had done a 'serious' documentary about Scottish football. It then replaced Scotch and Wry at Hogmanay when Rikki Fulton retired from TV.

[Yngwie]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Only_An_Excuse

[The Mantis]

Feck me, they have everything on wiki these days.... I still have some fuzzy old videos of 'Only a Game?'.

[EWS]

If you go to Jonathon Watsons wikipage, there is an interesting sentence at the end.

Jonathan Watson fights people with "BB"