Football Manager
Football Manager is a series of football management simulation games first released in 1982 by Addictive Games, and lasting until the mid 1990s. In 2004, the series was revived by Sports Interactive to replace the name of their Championship Manager series. The original series is credited as being the first ever computer game to use the concept of managing a football team. The current incarnation (Football Manager 2007) is the latest in the series
In the United States and Canada the game is sold as Worldwide Soccer Manager 2006 or WSM. This is similar to the name of the series on the Sega Saturn and Sega Dreamcast. These games were published by Sega who, incidentally, are now Football Manager's publishers, in the place of Eidos, who published Sports Interactive's Championship Manager series until their split in 2003.
The original Football Manager series
Football Manager was originally developed by Kevin Toms for the ZX Spectrum in 1982 and was to start a whole new genre of computer game: the football management simulation. The game was a huge success and was ported to a wide range of systems including the Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, BBC Micro and Commodore Amiga - the Amiga version memorably using the machine's speech function to read out match results.
Due to the success of the game it was inevitably followed by several sequels: Football Manager 2 (1988) and Football Manager World Cup Edition (1990), both written by Kevin Toms, and finally Football Manager 3 (1993), without Toms' involvement. Football Manager 3 was poorly received, seen by many as an attempt to cash-in on the previous successes with a sub-standard game, and as a result the series came to an end.
An interview with Kevin Toms, where he discusses "Football Manager," is available from EPL Talk at http://epltalk.libsyn.com
Football Manager 2005 - resurrecting a classic brand
On 12 February, 2004, after splitting from publishers Eidos it was announced that Sports Interactive, developers of the Championship Manager game, had retained the rights to the source code but not the rights to the title "Championship Manager", which were held onto by Eidos (who previously acquired the brand rights from Domark upon their merger in 1995). These developments led to a further announcement that future Sports Interactive football management games would be released under the famous "Football Manager" brand name. Whilst the Championship Manager series would go on, Eidos no longer had any source code, or, indeed a developer for Championship Manager.
Having been left without a publisher for its football management series, Sports Interactive teamed up with Sega and later, in April 2006, Sports Interactive was acquired completely by the publisher in a continuing trend of consolidation within the games industry.
The first game released under the newly acquired Football Manager brand was Football Manager 2005. Commonly known as "FM 2005", it competed directly with Championship Manager 5 the severely delayed, and widely criticised effort from Eidos-funded Beautiful Game Studios.
Football Manager 2005 included an updated user interface, a refined game engine, updated database and competition rules, pre and post-match information, international player news, cup summary news, a 2D match engine, coach reports on squads, job centre for non-playing positions, mutual contract termination, enhanced player loan options, manager "mind games" and various other features.'
Football Manager 2005 was released in the UK on 4 November, 2004 - closely followed by releases in many other countries around the world - and it became the 5th fastest selling PC game of all time (according to Eurogamer). The Apple Mac version of the game comes on the same dual format disk as the PC version, so its sales are also included.
Football Manager 2006
Football Manager 2006 for PC and Mac was released in the UK on 21 October, 2005 (2 weeks earlier than the originally stated November 4th release). On the same day as the game's release, Sports Interactive also released a patch to fix some bugs discovered during the Beta and Gold stages of development. In its first week of release, it became the second-fastest-selling PC game of all-time in the UK [1].
Essentially just a season update of FM 2005, it does however, include many small adjustments and improvements to the general gameplay. These adjustments include team-talks, simplified training and in-game help screens. As well as this, the game is updated by its many researchers (unpaid fans of the game augmented by in-house collaboration). The database is usually updated twice in the period of the release of the game. The first comes with the game and the second is usually downloadable in February as a free data update to reflect the changes which take place during the winter opening of the FIFA transfer window. As has been customary with the series a beta demo of the game was released on 12 September, 2005. This was later followed on 30 September by a gold demo. This is a cut-down, limited time version of the full game which is sent to the game manufacturers.
Football Manager 2006 Xbox 360
The Xbox 360 version was released on 13 April, 2006 and is the first home console game in the Football Manager series. The full 50 playable league systems are included, as well as a 250,000-strong player database (very near to the figure of the PC version), but due to the large save files of the game, the Xbox hard disk drive is required. The game is also region free.
This version also makes use of the Xbox Live functionality, allowing players to create online leagues and cups with up to 16 human-controlled teams using team data they have exported from their offline game. Voice chat is fully supported during online play. It has also been confirmed that SI will release new content through the Marketplace system.
Football Manager Handheld
FM Handheld was released on 13 April, 2006. The game is a milestone for Sports Interactive as it is their first ever game for any handheld console. Due to the obvious hardware constraints of the PSP platform this game is a cut-down version of the standard FM 2006 with a choice of just 7 playable leagues/countries and a total of 19 playable divisions.
Below is a list of leagues that are playable within the game.
- England - Premiership, Championship, League One, League Two, Conference National
- France - Ligue 1, Ligue 2
- Germany - Bundesliga 1, Bundesliga 2
- Netherlands - Eredivisie, Eerste Divisie
- Italy - Serie A, Serie B
- Scotland - PremierLeague, First Division, Second Division, Third Division
- Spain - Primera División, Segunda División
Key difference from the PC/Mac version of the game include the following:
- There is no multiplayer modes in FM Handheld, but it is being looked into for "next year's version".
- There is no 2D match engine like its PC counterpart. This is due to the technical limitations of the PSP.
- Team squads are limited to 36 players - again due to technical constraints.
- There is no database editor, though this may be included in a 'subsequent version of FM PSP'.
- Each game is playable for a maximum of 30 seasons.
With a special download from Sports Interactive, you can play as the fictional football team, Harchester United from Sky One's series Dream Team.
Football Manager 2007
On 8th June 2006, Sports Interactive published details on Football Manager 2007 [2]. "Packed full with more than 100 new features, Football Manager™ 2007 is set for release on PC, Mac and Intel Mac, as well as the Xbox 360™ video game and entertainment system from Microsoft. Football Manager Handheld on Sony’s PlayStation Portable handheld entertainment system (PSP) completes the format line-up, with all platforms set for a Christmas 2006 release."
On 24th September 2006 it was announced that Football Manager 2007 will be released on the 20th October 2006.
On 1st October 2006, Sports Interactive released a Gold Demo of FM 2007, available in two versions, vanilla and strawberry. Both versions allow users to play 6 months into a season. The strawberry version contains a larger collection of quickstarts so users can try out more leagues. It also contains more graphics than the vanilla version.
"As a result of certain retail outlets ignoring the official release date of October 20th" (Sports Interactive Website) Football Manager 2007 was actually released on 18th October 2006.
See also
- Championship Manager series - The name formerly used by Sports Interactive for its football management series.
External links
Below is a list of several external resources which contain various features relating to the Football Manager scene (both official and unofficial) such as patches, articles and downloads.
Official
- FootballManager.net - Official game website from SEGA and Sports Interactive
- Sega Europe - Sega's site showing a brief summary of the game.
- SIGames.com - Official Sports Interactive website
- Myspace - Official Sports Interactive Myspace Page
Affiliates
Sports Interactive has set up an Affiliates section (SIAS) which fansites can join. They offer a number of benefits to users, such as free games to give away in competitions, exclusive news and opportunities to visit Sports Interactive in Islington, London. You can view all the affiliates here
Fansites
- Football Manager Portal - Web Links Portal For The Football Manager Community
- Football Manager Fansite - Football Manager news, downloads and discussion portal