⚽️📓 Championship Manager 2 - Nottingham Forest vs Aston Villa - Episode 16: "The Fizzy Cup Thriller" ⚽️📓 #RetroGaming

Championship Manager 2 has been on my list of games to play on YouTube for years now and finally, I have pulled my finger out and taken the job of Nottingham Forest Manager.

Come see how my season unfolds in these short sharp Champ Manager vids. 

⚽️📓 Championship Manager 2 - Nottingham Forest vs Leicester City - Episode 15: "DJ HESKEY" ⚽️📓 #RetroGaming

Championship Manager 2 has been on my list of games to play on YouTube for years now and finally, I have pulled my finger out and taken the job of Nottingham Forest Manager.

Come see how my season unfolds in these short sharp Champ Manager vids. 

⚽️📓 Championship Manager 2 - Nottingham Forest vs Aston Villa - Episode 13: "Vying With The Villains!" ⚽️📓 #RetroGaming

Championship Manager 2 has been on my list of games to play on YouTube for years now and finally, I have pulled my finger out and taken the job of Nottingham Forest Manager.

Come see how my season unfolds in these short sharp Champ Manager vids. 

⚽️📓 Championship Manager 2 - Nottingham Forest vs Arsenal - Episode 12: "Goals With The Gooners" ⚽️📓 #RetroGaming

Championship Manager 2 has been on my list of games to play on YouTube for years now and finally, I have pulled my finger out and taken the job of Nottingham Forest Manager.

Come see how my season unfolds in these short sharp Champ Manager vids.

⚽️📓 Championship Manager 2 - Nottingham Forest vs Sunderland - Episode 9: "Who Remembers Lars Bohinen?" ⚽️📓 #RetroGaming

Championship Manager 2 has been on my list of games to play on YouTube for years now and finally, I have pulled my finger out and taken the job of Nottingham Forest Manager.

Come see how my season unfolds in these short sharp Champ Manager vids. 

Episode 9 sees me take on Blackburn Rovers as Lars Bohinen and Luis Garcia combine to create mass panic in the Forest defence!

⚽️📓 Championship Manager 2 - Nottingham Forest vs Wigan Athletic - Episode 7: "Hangin' With Mr cooper" ⚽️📓 #RetroGaming

Championship Manager 2 has been on my list of games to play on YouTube for years now and finally, I have pulled my finger out and taken the job of Nottingham Forest Manager.

Come see how my season unfolds in these short sharp Champ Manager vids. 

Episode 7 sees Forest in the League Cup as the magic of the cup comes to the Rugby town of Wigan!

⚽️📝 Championship Manager 2 Episode 5: Vs Sheffield Wednesday - "Tricky Trees" ⚽️📝 #Retrogaming #ChampionshipManager

Championship Manager 2 has been on my list of games to play on YouTube for years now and finally, I have pulled my finger out and taken the job of Nottingham Forest Manager.

Come see how my season unfolds in these short sharp Champ Manager vids. 

Episode 5 sees me take on Sheffield Wednesday as a bug in the game causes havoc and some of my Notts Forest legends step up to the plate!

⚽️📝 Championship Manager 2 - Episode 4: Nottingham Forest vs Aston Villa "Jiggery Pokery" ⚽️📝 #Retrogaming #ChampionshipManager

Championship Manager 2 has been on my list of games to play on YouTube for years now and finally, I have pulled my finger out and taken the job of Nottingham Forest Manager.

Come see how my season unfolds in these short sharp Champ Manager vids. 

Episode 4 sees me continue to struggle with Silenzi and Roy and many a case of jiggery pokerey takes place in the Forest Tactics Truck!

⚽️📝 Championship Manager 2 - Episode 3: Notts Forest vs Leeds - "The Tide Has turned?!" ⚽️📝 #RetroGaming #ChampionshipManager

Championship Manager 2 has been on my list of games to play on YouTube for years now and finally, I have pulled my finger out and taken the job of Nottingham Forest Manager.

Come see how my season unfolds in these short sharp Champ Manager vids. 

Episode 3 has some transfer drama, a cracking game vs Leeds and my struggle to remember Nottingham Forest's City Ground Capacity.

⚽️📝 Championship Manager 2 - Episode 2: Notts Forest vs Derby - "Derby Woes" 📝⚽️ #ChampionshipManager #Retrogaming

Championship Manager 2 has been on my list of games to play on YouTube for years now and finally, I have pulled my finger out and taken the job of Nottingham Forest Manager.

Come see how my season unfolds in these short sharp Champ Manager vids. 

Episode 2 sees me delve into the transfer market, travel to Derby and struggle with the name of Derby's ground!

⚽️ Championship Manager 2 - Episode 1 - Notts Forest vs Liverpool - "Roy Oh Roy!" ⚽️ #Retrogaming #ChampionshipManager

Championship Manager 2 has been on my list of games to play on YouTube for years now and finally, I have pulled my finger out and taken the job of Nottingham Forest Manager.

Come see how my season unfolds in these short sharp Champ Manager vids. 

Episode 1 sees me evaluate the squad, separate the wheat from the chaff and put a load of players on the transfer list.

Also, watch out cos Bryan Roy is about!

⚽ Championship Manager 93 Legends ⚽ #Retrogaming

Nostalgia is a powerful force of nature.

I just got back into playing Championship Manager 93 which is an extremely dangerous statement to be making upfront as I'm now a recovering CM Addict from the 90s.

⚽️Things I Miss in Video Games - "Championship Manager Hot Seat Sessions"⚽️

As I’ve got older I’ve begun to realise how precious time is to us all.

When we’re younger it seems we have all the time in the world to do whatever we want and we take it for granted.

This is especially true for playing video games.

☆ Door 4 - Christmas Retro Gaming Advent Calendar ☆ #Retrogaming #GamersUnite

Why I Love........

CHAMPIONSHIP MANAGER

☆ A Championship Manager Cult Legend Retires ☆ @90sfootball #Retrogaming #GamersUnite

Every version of Championship Manager always seemed to have that player that you just had to purchase but wasn't that well known and actually may not have been that well known but they proved to be the bedrock of any team that you built on the mighty CM.

One of those such players has now reached the end of his career and retires with a career in football that didn't quite live up to it's ratings and wonderkid status in Champ Manager!

His name is................

🕹️ 1992 - The Greatest Year In Video Games History? 🕹️ #GamersUnite #RetroGaming

After extensive thought and research (Google) 

I hereby declare that 1992 was...

"THE GREATEST YEAR IN VIDEO GAMES!"

Why!? I hear you yell….

Well if you sit down for a moment and listen to 

what I've got to say then I'll tell you exactly WHY….

☆I've Fallen Back In Love With Championship Manager☆ @champman #GamersUnite

I'm a long time Championship Manager Fan, since the days of CM93 on Amiga and also an ancient Football Manager fan since the days FM on the Speccy.

With that in mind I've seen both series evolve immensely over the last 30 years...

The management sim genre has seen a shift each time towards more involving and complex gameplay whereby you can have a say in literally every part of 'your club' and how it's run.

That kind of gameplay has meant heaven for gamers with a whole weekend to orchestrate their attack on the division title and cup glory...

But as I've gotten older I've had less free time to plot Spurs' rise to Champions League grandeur and therefore haven’t purchased any of the recent FM or CM games because I know it's going to take me 8 hours to sort out my transfer targets, training regime and backroom staff.

I've wanted to go back to the days of CM93 where you pick your team make a few signings and away you go...

♥A Weekend In With Championship Manager 93/94♥ #RetroGaming #GamersUnite

Sitting here now on a Friday I cast my mind back to when Friday meant one thing………

CHAMPIONSHIP MANAGER 

Yes, Friday was the gateway to a whole weekend consumed by playing Championship Manager on my trusty Amiga 600

As you have no doubt heard from thousands of other CM addicts from around the world, CM could dominate your life like no other game possibly could.......

CM was a game that you had to set aside at least 4 hours of your life, there was no dabbling in CM or "casual play", it was an all or nothing kind of game.


Championship Manager as we know is essentially a massive spreadsheet of player stats and yet the illusion that you are somehow controlling these players actions was the draw.


You would spend hours of your life pulling together your very own elite dream team of players. 
 

The gameplay on the Amiga was simple compared to the ridiculously complex gameplay of todays version of CM. 
 

That was the key though, you could literally play a season in an evening because once you'd set your team up and bought who you wanted you could pretty much play match after match after match…….


The CM version that dominated my life was Championship Manager 93/94
 

The Disk for this game barely left my disk drive. The only time it left my drive was to put in my save disk.
 

Back then you were presented with a couple of questions when you loaded up the game and these were something like 

"What Is The 3rd Score On Page 21 of the manual"

This was put into place as an anti piracy measure for those naughty people who had copied their mates CM disks (not as complex as the Monkey Island 2 wheel but almost as effective.)


My team of choice back then was Nottingham Forest (even though I support Tottenham Hotspur) Forest were a strong team in the Premier League back then and I had always admired their passing style of play.


Once you started the game that was it, you'd launch into the main task of signing players. 
 

Back then it was all about signing Chris Bart Williams or Robbie Fowler as they were young, up and coming superstars of the time! 


There was a guy called Poddubski in my version who had the holy grail of CM Stats ….. ALL 20's! 
 

Championship Manager Stats were made up of the following categories:
 

My Forest team played together for 15 seasons and by the team I had rolled around to season 15 the team was full of player regens with unrecognisable names such as Johnny Hoddle and the like.


CM was the first game that really stole hours from me as one minute you'd check the clock and it was 8pm and then before you knew it, it was 2am and you'd utter the immortal phrase 

 "Just One More Match…….and then BED!"

Wedged between playing real football and CM my weekends were consumed with the game. 
 

Breaks came in the form of meals as my mum would shout up to me in my loft bedroom to tell me when dinner was ready.

This was well before the days of games asking you whether you have thought of taking a break from playing (like the good old Wii tends to do)


One of my favourite past times though, had to be the Championship Manager Hot Seat 2 player Game……..in other words a 2 player CM game where you take it in turns to manage your club.


The hotseat games would mean that you were competing for the same transfer deals more often than not and it made it even more realistic as you battle it out in the same league together. These were good times!


When Sunday came I had plenty of stories to tell my mates at school and sometimes I'd actually print out my Nottingham Forest Team to show off my average ratings and scores in Cup Finals.

These truly were the glory days of Championship Manager!

 

DID YOU KNOW?

"The Championship Manager '94 - End of Season Data Disk, which was available on the Amiga, contained 2 fictional players added by a couple of people who worked on the game. The players were Mark Collis and Ferah Orosco. They were a striker and a defender, respectively, for Cambridge United in Division 3 and are regarded as the first ever fictional super-players in the CM series"

The online community for the early versions of CM are still very much active so take a look at some of these cool sites for your CM fix…

Firstly There's The Story Of The Champ Man 01/02 Community HERE 

Then There's The Actual Champ Man 01/02 Community Forums HERE 

 

Then there's the legendary "The Dugout" site HERE 

 

Not only that, why don't you get on over to MY ABANDON WARE and download the original CM 93/94 game and get playing!

HERE 

With all this CM Goodness still about its made us want to go home tonight and get lost in CM world till Sunday night…….now where did I put my Amiga?