Part 5: New Ideas (1993)

Been a while since last update, but this article series is back, alive and kicking. Originally I was going to include the year 1994 in this update, but then I realised how many titles that came in 1993, so I split the years. It will probably take a while between each update, because I have to test most of the games and do some research on them.

Championship Manager 93/94 (1993)

Much like CM03/04 was a "data update" based on CM4, Championship Manager 93/94 was (sort of) an update for CM1. So why even write anything at all about this game? I've got two good answers for you: 1) CM 93/94 became massively popular and 2) this game was much, much more than just a database update. Although the graphics were almost exactly the same (see part 4 to compare for yourself), this new game had some new features to it. More players had real names, reserve squads were included and the match engine was improved to make it easier to imagine what was going on on the field.

One of the more interesting new features in this game was the option to bring players from overseas, international transfers were limited or simply not possible in most of the games at the time. Trying to find cheap-but-class players now became a part of the fun, and in gaming magazines hints and tips for unknown star-players were published. Like now however, research was limited, so naturally some players were in the wrong clubs, and some were much better than in real life. "Cheat-players" became a well-known term, but in truth this was also a phenomenon in the older games.

Premier Manager 2 (1993)

You might think that back in the ol' days, CM or FM were the most popular football management games, just like it is in now. But there were other games that sold really well, or even better than CM and FM. One of them was Premier Manager 2, which looked a bit different from the first edition, but most of the gameplay was still the same. It was still important to choose the right staff, you could still improve your stadium and get sponsors, and the game was still too easy.

PM2's match engine was probably even better than CM's match engine, in this game you could get more info on the things that were going on at the pitch, like numbers of tackles and passes. Match management, which was limited in Premier Manager 1, became a lot better in this game; now you could give detailed instructions to specific players on the pitch, at any time of the match, easily. Jolly good! A sad fact that ruined the game's playability though, was the massive memory problems. If you came far in this game, you would get problems with memory, and restoring old savegames would not help. This was a frustrating problem in many management-games at the time, but apparantly this was a huge problem in this game; some couldn't even get to the fifth match. All in all a good game, but the memory-problems and the easiness of winning everything ruined a lot of fun.

On The Ball: World Cup / League Edition (1993)

...and now to something completely different. The creators of On The Ball tried to develop the "realistic" manager-games genre further. If that doesn't make any sence to you, I could just say that they tried to make the game more similar to the real manager job: you have an office, you make calls, talk to people and players. "Pep" talk was a new feature in this genre, although this was only possible in the World Cup-version of the game. Yes, they decided to create two seperate games: one for leagues and one for the WC. Nifty, huh? Not really.

Even though there are differences between these two games, the graphics were mostly the same. They were in fact much better than in any other football manager game at the time, and matches are especially interesting: 2d-players on a "3d-field" running around and falling down. Spectacular. Jokes aside, this revolutionary game in terms of graphics and psycological aspects of the genre never became one of the legendary games, simply because of the serious stability issues. A shame really, 'cause these games had an awesome stadium-building feature. This game was by the way made in Germany under the name Antoss, and you could easily see that the game was translated from German language to English.

Okay, so as requested I've changed the name of this last part of the article. Welcome to Other Games!

Other Games

Championship Manager Italia (1993) - Looked like CM2, as addictive as CM2. The only difference really from this version compared to the original, was the increased speed and Italian players and Serie A & B instead of English blokes and 4 massive leagues.

Premier Soccer (1993) - This game looked like a mess, and I seriously wonder if it was made in Paintbrush (oldschool version of Paint). I can't find much information about it, and it was made by a developer called "Midnight Oil", so my best guess is that it was crap.

Premier Division (1993) - Made by the creators of Match of the Day, unlike MoTD though, this was just a regular game with things you've seen before.

Treble Champions 1 & 2 (1993) - Oh my. http://cmfrenzy.com/lilarc0r/pics/treblechampions2.PNG

Soccer Team Manager: English and Italian Leagues (1993) - By reading the title of this game, you know that it's a budget game not worth knowing about.

Read Part 1

Read Part 2

Read Part 3