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| This was Codemasters first forray into the world of Football Management, which they later did again with the LMA series for the playstation. |
| FIRST DIVISION MANAGER |
| Released way back in the dark ages, in 1991 to be exact, this was quite a change from the usual Codemasters games, in that it didnt feature any eggs or intresting puzzles!
What it did have was a nice graphical interface, that worked better than most on the speccy, Most graphical Management games seemed a little simple or dry, but this one offered a little something else. This game is also nothing like the Amiga version, which is more of a dry management sim. |
| The main game is viewed from your office, Controlled by the joystick, where you have a computer, a telephone, a filing cabinet, a newspaper and a radio!
Each one of these(except for the radio) will be used in your challenge to create a great football team (The radio just plays music!) The filing cabinet contains details on all the players in the four divisions, where you can find the players that you want in your team. Also in the filing cabinet are details about your finances, upcoming fixtures and League tables. |
| Your Telephone is where you can get in touch with the transfer market, buying and selling players, you can ask your physio if you have any injuries, your coach may give a little advice on how your team need to improve, you also have the ability to pay for a scout that will give you a little bit of information about the upcoming team.
Your computer is where you really start to take control of your team, you can set training for each of your players, and set your team from this area, you can also raise or lower the price of tickets to watch the team. |
| So in total there isnt many more options than other games in the genre, in fact some of the lesser known games have many more features, but this is an adictive little game, which actually feels good even with the flashy graphics.
Once you've picked your team and set some training, its down to the pitch for the important part of the game, finding out if all your hard work has been for nothing! |
| The match is quite nicely represented, unlike most where you get a couple of animated scenes which repeat over and over again, showing the same goals etc, this game shows the full pitch, with you able to see who'se passing to who and where the shots etc are coming from, Fairly similar infact to Codemasters later games the LMA series!
Underneath this is a short written commentary, which whilst not amazingly detailed, does give enough information to let you know whats going on. |
| You get a fair few tense moments when it flashes up that someone has taken a shot, then waits a few seconds to tell you the result!
Thats whats fun about this game, its took some nice ideas and done them well, although compared with some of the text only games it does seem a tad shallow, it offers some nice fun. |
| The main problem nowadays though is that this was made by Codemasters, Who famously wont let any of their old spectrum games go for emulation, which is strange seeing as they dont make a penny on them, but maybe one day they might want to resurect the 1st Div game!
But if you search hard enough you will find this game, and its well worth a quick look. |
| GRAPHICS: 6/10
SOUND: 4/10 GAMEPLAY: 6/10 LIFESPAN: 7/10 --------------- OVERALL: 6/10 |
| SPECTRUM |
| FOOTBALL MANAGEMENT |
| 1991 |