Sep.04
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Prologue
Since the beginning of the human era, man has always wanted to be a leader. "The ability of an individual to influence, motivate, and enable others to contribute toward the effectiveness and success of the organizations of which they are members" has always been important in the civilized world; both in sports and in politics, and also in all other parts of the society. The problem with this though, has always been responsibility. You can't just kick our best player out of your team just because you don't like his haircut in real life - it will have consequences in your life. And you can't undo your errors in real life, you just don't get a second chance to make things better if you've really screwed up.
Since Football Manager launched in 1982, people have been playing footy management games. This series of articles will focus on the history behind the modern football manager games, ideas that still are used, and the odd ideas and games that nobody wants to remember. Also, I will write something about the development of the community and the future of footy management games.
Part 1: The Early Years (1982-1986)
Football Manager (1982)
As previously mentioned, the whole football management genre started with the brilliant game Football Manager in 1982 on ZX Spectrum, which also was released as a home computer in the UK the same year. The game was set in a special scenario unlike what we see in management games today: You picked a team, started in the 4th division (no matter which team you choosed to manage), and tried to get promoted to the top division and win the FA Cup, which was the main goal in the game. Suprisingly enough, you had difficult settings in this game, ranking from 1- Beginner to 7- Genius. So, if you managed a team like Colchester on Genius difficulty, that would be the ultimate challenge. Well, maybe Colchester was overrated on the game, I don't know.
Like FM07, stats and money played an important part in Football Manager. You could Obtain a loan up to a certain "credit limit" which was decided by the division you were playing in, so if you played in the fourth division, you could loan up to £ 250k, and if you were playing in the top league, you could loan up to the massive amount of £1M. If this wasn't enought, you could sell players to get more money to buy better players. The better players had Energy-ratings up to 20, and a Skill-rating up to 5.
Already in the first game, you had Morale, which affected the performance of your team (you could rename the team and the players if you wanted). You started with a morale of 10, and if you won games, it would increase, but if you lost games, it would decrease, thus making it even harder to win games. If this wasn't enought, you also had a Managerial Rating which was calculated for you depending on your success.
All in all, it was a pretty solid first footy management game, and it became an instant success in the UK. Already back then people got addicted to the FM, and soon it launched on other consoles such as Amstrad (1984), Commodore 64 (1984) and Atari 8-bit (1985), now with better graphics. The game got the "Strategy Game of the Year Award" in 1983 and was regarded as one of the best ZX Spectrum-games ever created.
The Boss (1984)
Competing with the Commodore-release of Football Manager, The Boss had to offer something new that Football Manager didn't have to get their game sold. And The Boss had loads of new stuff. Not only could you play games in four English division plus the FA cup, but you could also play in the European Cup and the Cup Winners' Cup. Like in FM1, you started in the 4th division, and played your way to glory. This game had similar player and finances-aspects to FM1, but The Boss couldn't compete with FM1's awesome match engine. But if you were looking for a "large database" and more possibilities, The Boss would maybe be you favourite out of these two games. Maybe.
The Boss also had some features to the game that we don't see in managerial games anymore. Spying on the opposition and fan riots might've spiced the game up a bit, but neither added any depth to the game, and the long wait for the match results didn't exactly make the game any better. But the game had a certain "fan-base", and like Football Manager, it was also released on the Atari 8-bit and the Commodore 64.
Football Director (1986)
The first true rival to Football manager: The 3 first Football Director games offered a whole new level of footy management simulation. The "2 Player Super League" made hotseat management possible, "International Manager" had the World Cup plus other international games, and "Records File" made all these three games into one game. Although it had a larger database than any other footy management at the time, it still was a text-based game, even though it came 4 years after FM1.
But even though the game might have looked like hell, it still had some interesting and revolutionary new features. Before you could even start a match, you had to hire scouts, physios and coaches. You also had a youth team to take care of, to find new awesome players for the future. But all these new stuff led to a well known problem with manager games: Bugs. Some had enourmous problems with crashes after the first season, and not everything worked as it should. Because of this, the game was slaughtered by the press, but some enjoyed the game for it's complexity and strategy challenges, however most people ignored it.
Well, that's it folks, the end of the first part of this series of article. In the next part, we will look at the management games from 1987-1989, a period filled with new FM-rivals that were never to be seen again, plus the next game in the FM-series, Football Manager 2.
