Championship Manager - Still Champion?

 Hi all you blog fans out there! I am here to talk to you about something rather unusual. I don’t want to sound like Jon Bentley again but it always seems good to include it somewhere. It is something which can take a lot of time and effort. They bring out a new one each year, with updated data and such. If you haven’t guessed what I’m referring to, I am talking about Championship Manager games and similar series on the PC.

If you don’t know what it is, I will tell you. It’s basically a management simulation of the football league. This is where you can take managerial control of a team, buy players etc. It sounds like an experience which should be thrilling to all those football fans out there. There is one slight probably, it is all text based. When I say this, I mean there is only text when playing. You can choose to have dots run around the screen while a game is happening but if you were like me playing the game, the commentary mode was faster and you wanted the game over and done with.

I know a little bit about this series as I myself was once addicted to it. I used to play it every day. I have probably broken some records in it as I played up to the year 2070 something. Considering I started on the 99/00 version of the game, I thought this was impressive. I stopped playing as the game started crashing when I got up to the 2070 mark. Also, what I have found with these types of games is that they have a short shelf life. For example, you’re not going to want to buy David Beckham on the 99/00 version of the game in 2005 unless you’re in it for nostalgia. Most people play these games so they can live their football dreams with the latest squads.

One of the best management games I ever played was Ultimate Soccer Manager 98 on the PC. I have found it was more colourful, better graphics and wasn’t based on a load of words and data on the screen. There was also a decent match mode where you could watch the players. The issue some people find with this is they want to play a Fifa style game where you control the players. A managerial game doesn’t hold these features. This is possibly why the Fifa games include a stripped down manager mode as part of their package, so people can play with David Beckham as he marches on to the pitch for Tottenham, or Andy Carroll running onto the pitch for Liverpool. Things that would never happen in real life football..... Oops

Anyway, I think I shall end this post as it might encourage me to go play Championship Manager. I enjoyed the hours I spent with it, but now it feels like it could be rather bland to play. There are millions of fans out there who would disagree.