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| OLD GAMES |
| REVIEW SITE |
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| Speccy Soccer Part 1.
Management games. |
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| The spectrum was home to some of the earliest football management games going, in fact the first of the genre, Football Manager by Kevin Toms, first appeared on the old zx81 before moving on to its newer sexier sister, the Zx Spectrum.
So what are these sorts of games all about, and what is the big deal? Why do so many football fans want to play with a bunch of numbers? And how has the genre stayed alive for so long, well We shall find out. |
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| Right back in the early days of the computing world, 1982 to be exact, Kevin Toms unleashed Football Manager onto the unsuspecting world.
Written completely in Basic, and really very simple this game must be the most famous in the genre. The Advertising for this game shows why we brought it in our droves, simply it was something new, something that fans of the beautiful game could get into, even if they didnt like action games. |
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| The basic premise of the game was to get your team to victory, by winning games obviously!
This was made more difficult by the quality or skill of your players, so you had to make sure they were fit, and happy before you played them, else they would loose points. The game was very very simple, unlike later games there wasnt a bucket load of options, this was much simpler than that, you pick your team, maybe buy a player every other game and watch the Animated highlights! |
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| Oh those highlights, so good for their day, little stickmen shooting for goal, the tension it caused when you where 0-0 in the last few minutes then one of their players scored!
And this is the beauty of the football management genre, the feeling that your in control, even though all your doing is shuffleing numbers. |
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| Obviously over the years things changed, more options were made available to the players, simply things got a little more realistic.
In 1986 D & H games, brought us the first installment of Football director, which took the same text based route as Football Manager, just added a few extra tweaks, such as gambleing and buying ands selling shares. |
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| By the time its sequal came out about a year later, the amount of options had increased quite considerably, with things such as training being an issue, also you didnt only have your team to worry about, you had to build a group of backroom staff as well, the options were quite a change to anyone that had been stuck with Football Manager, they made that game seem like childs play, here you could increase your ground, or set ticket prices, but in the end of the day it was still the same basic idea as Football Manager just tweaked a little. |
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| By the start of the nineties, the whole genre was getting quite a following, but only really with the hardcore football fan, these werent games for the happy arcade people these were stratagy games, and no-one liked that sort of game except for your dad!
Well that was all going to change pretty soon, the second wave of football Management games started to pour through during the end of 88 into 90 then right through to the speccies death a few years later. |
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| By '88 we had seen the options increase quite considerably, with the games now a lot more realistic than the very basic Football Manager, but in a lot of ways the games werent really changing, just getting a new lick of paint. |
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| So its 1988, the whole genre is getting a little dry, and a tad over crowded with samey text based management games, so along comes Kevin Toms with Football Manager 2, which is basically FM1 with bells on, you have the smae amount of control, but wait for it, this is controled by the joystick, and its got graphics!
Shock horror, a management game with Graphics, the fans loved it. But was it actually any good? We no to be honest, it lost a lot of the fun of the original, if possible it simplified the first game, and lost a lot of the feeling of the original. |
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| But people did notice this game, and pretty soon people had decided that the graphical interface was the way to go, this gave fans of all genres a chance to play these sorts of games.
Kenny Dalglish Soccer Manager, release in 1990, was one of the first in the new breed, this wasnt scared to show some colour, this wasnt afraid of the dreaded graphics, in fact this blatently threw its graphics at you, with a cool icon based menu system, that any user of Windows will be able to get to grips with fairly easily. The matches with their big animated footballers, this was good, you could buy or sell players and oh wait thats about it really, It really was simple, but it worked well, and people bought it. |
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| In the next year we had a few more, with games such as First Division Manager, by codemasters, and Football Manager 3, which wasnt made by Kevin Toms and basically wasnt very good, but it had graphics!
Although these were quite good they all seemed to lack a bit of the early sparkle, but their was always the smaller indie companies such as Cult making Football manager games the old way. |
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| The last Management game i remember was Match Of The Day, this was released just as the speccy died its last breath, so none of the shops around me had it, I spent ages searching for the next few years to find this game, looking through second hand shops, going to car boot sales, but it wasnt going to appear, then along came the Internet, and I still couldnt find it, id pretty much given up hope, then it appeared on World Of Spectrum, so i downloaded it, i was starting to sweat now, was it any good? |
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| Nope, quite possibly the worst management game ive ever played!
In fact Game is the wrong word for this its pretty useless, simply all you do is fill up your diary with various options, which as with the very early games is basically buy/sell and train. Well obviously since them days, we have had the world of PC's thrown up around us, and the almighty Championship Manager really is the god of all management games, but just think with out the original, would it have happened? |