Football Manager 30 years old this year!
Kevin Tom's brilliantly fun Football Manager will be 30 years old this year!
I wonder if he imagined, the genre he created would turn into a huge snore fest.
Give me FM '82 over the latest spreadsheet simulators any day!
I wonder if he imagined, the genre he created would turn into a huge snore fest.
Give me FM '82 over the latest spreadsheet simulators any day!
Post edited by Rebelstar without a cause on
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One great thing the original fm did teach me, all the clubs, lower leagues up. I knew as an 8 year old who port vale were, you ask your average teen forum football expert these days, they've no idea who anyone else is outside the premier league.
Fm was great, as was 2.. the third i only ever played the demo... the world cup, just bad.
Personaly i thank Mr Toms for inventing the most crack addicting genre ever:)
It didn't have great graphics, but then it didn't need them. What it had was gameplay that kept you hooked. I am sure that more modern football management games are vastly different, the game is different and has changed with the introduction of television cash (for the worst if you ask me). But as the great-grandaddy of all the serious sports management sims...FM is still great.
I've fixed a couple of bugs in the England version, and there's now a Scotland version too! :smile:
When I get a chance, I plan to do some European leagues, such as Spain, Italy, Germany etc.
The Great Glen
I haven't played a football management sim since the early 90s. However, I pestered Kevin Toms so much about doing a BBC version that when he did, he called me up (back when I was a but a wee VIth Form student in the early '80s) and got me to play-test it for him prior to release.
Those were indeed the days! :-)
I'll need to try FM2 & 3 and i think there was a special World Cup edition.
There are now 5 leagues to play in my enhanced versions:
England, Scotland, Spain, Italy and Germany. with varying numbers of divisions and teams. Football Manager has never been so good!
Download them from my website:
http://fm1982-revisited.yolasite.com/
Have fun!
The Great Glen
Hopefully the Scottish League version is accurate in that it features Celtic and rangers finishing first and second every year unto infinity with all the other teams 50 points behind :grin: Though the idea of a league of ten playing each other twice sounds really good.
https://discordapp.com/invite/cZt59EQ
I keep getting (in the spanish, english and italian version so far) the error N statement not found 5/whatever in the emulators Spin and Specemu.
I must admit I have only tried a couple of times each file and haven't read the text file :P
Am I doing something wrong? (appart from not reading the instructions...)
The message "N Statement Lost" occurs with some emulators but not with others, so I'm not sure what the problem is.
If you get this message, just type "GOTO 1" without the quotes and it should be fine.
The Great Glen
WWW
Please download the files again and let me know...
http://fm1982-revisited.yolasite.com/
Actually, if you've any comments or questions on the game, I'll try to answer them.
The Great Glen
There's 3 divisions with a total of 60 teams
If anyone would like a specific country setting up, please let me know. There are some "rules":
1. All divisions within a country must be the same size.
2. Minimum of 2 and maximum of 4 divisions.
3. Division size can be 8,10,12,16,18 or 20 teams.
4. Play-offs are optional, but must be the four teams below the automatic promotion plsces.
5. The cup competition can be up to 8 rounds, with optional replay.
However, not being technically minded I still wonder exactly how much strategy was needed generally for all management games.
It seems that in some cases, especially on Soccer Boss and Football Director, luck and/or a set pattern of input is required to get any kind of success.
It would be a shame if a management game only had one route of action to 'win' the game rather than setting your own ideals.
Easy way to cheat! Problem with a lot of management games like this, cricket captain or whatever that was called on the speccy, Soccer Boss (my favourite), is they all took so long. That is nearly as true for modern games consoles, the more intricate ones as slow as less intricate older ones.
Love CM 2006 on the PS2, CM 2007 has some good extras including work permits and squad size not mattering to the team you buy from, but you could just buy up loads of cheap players like Semjonovs, Kozak, Lettrich, Rajczi, Halmosi, Demo, Ricardo Fernandes, Rodic, Bogdanovics, Olarra, Apatic, Freud etc, have a team good enough to win the Championship and still have change from ?1m
A lot of people mention Soccer Boss as their favourite, i liked it too but preferred On the Bench which strangely had a lack of depth but was absorbing.
The best football management game i ever played was Championship Manager 3 on the Amiga. Nothing has came close to beating that one.
Championship Manager 2006 on the PS2 is the best, relatively quick to get through, some 'quirks' which actually make it more interesting - like being able to approach to sign good players from youth teams, being able to transfer more than once in a season (if you buy a player and swap them in another transfer), being able to loan players out for ?20m loan fee and it goes into your transfer budget to name a few.
They might be seen as flaws, but in fact you don't have to do any or all of them. A tip if you ever give it a bash is to sell players to clubs like NK Maribor, TMKV Tallinn, SAPRISSA, and Skonto Riga and buy Brulc, Neemelo, Saborio, Centeno and Semjonovs from them. Their first teams squads will probably need to have 14+ players in them, but if you buy say Ward, Scannell and Craig from Northern Ireland and do a swap with a youth team player, then that bumpfs their squad up.
Alternatively approach to sign some youth team player keepers and do a swap signing with the target teams youth players, for some reasons keepers work. But if you play as say Brighton you can get Saborio and Centeno by selling Saprissa Geary and Sullivan, Semjonovs by selling Martin to Skonto Riga, Neemelo by selling Taylor to Tallinn, and 3+ cheap players to Maribor.
Also mark your prices up by about 20%. Sign Teixeira, you may need a budget of ?3.6m at the time and to pay ?410k for him, but it's worth it. Sanli of Fenerbahce is the dogs wotsits and you can get him for ?5m.
One other quirk is you can often sign players even for lowly teams, but on lower wages. If I approach to sign Siderakis of Olympiakos, having done the same with Mikes the previous month so he drops into the youth team (another trick), I can get him for about ?625 a week for Accrington, about ?2.15k a week for Brighton and something in the multi thousands for Liverpool.
Also you can bump up the wages a bit, say approach to sign Volpato from Juve. Instead of paying the signing on fee, zero it out and up the wages. not sure the ratio but say Anita of Ajax is ?300 a week + ?35k signing on, I'd just offer ?650 a week. Once you've signed Volpato renegotiate his salary and do the same, but down from say ?4k a week (at Brighton) to ?3.1k a week.
There's so many options and ways to play it, different leagues, set yourself different targets. A season would probably take say 7-9 hours depending on how much activity you do pre-season. I usually sell the whole squad and bring in a strong first team and reserve team, but you can vary your approach. Try taking Falkirk to the SPL title, I can often do it or get close, definitely Sanli is an advantage there and you need to sell the squad to afford his fee.
I've even tried playing it by selling my entire squad and playing with only approach to signs like Siderakis, Stathis, Marques, Kane, Roux, Israel, Maa Boumsong, Portilla, Volpato, Vela and Ceravolo. There's loads of variations, because you can do so many different things that you might not think to do on FM etc, it makes for so many possibilities.
And the biggest plus is the game isn't "too easy", if I play as Liverpool and sign Torres, Sanli, Kompany, Messi, Love, Toraman, Alex, De Rossi, Lahm and lots of top players I'm still not guaranteed to win games or the league. That is why I rate CM 2006 so highly, it is never easy.
The first week Scoobie always broke his leg, so before you play the first game simply move a poor player into his position. This is exactly what I mean about the kind of scripted strategy that would hamper these kind of games. Saying that, at the time me and my brother were amazed at being able to take over in charge of Sheffield Wednesday!
On The Bench did seem to be the more thorough game, if anything it was more stat heavy and realistic but lacked the heart of Soccer Boss and it's weekly news.
Best news item - Trialist signs no fee
Back then the highlights were great, took ages though for that table to appear.
Kevin Toms is creating a new Football Manager on iOS, been following him on twitter, hope its really good
But for its time Football Manager was a classic
Sure there were a few things on Soccer Boss that seemed preordained, it was still Boss though.
A trick is to buy players with zero rating, wait until they improved up to 1 then sell them. It was terrific when a board member or whatever injected cash.