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!
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?
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