Championship Manager series
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Championship Manager is a series of British computer games, the first of which was released in 1992. Championship Manager (sometimes abbreviated "CM", "Champ Manager", "Champ Man", or "Champ") is a football (soccer)-management simulation. It was one of the most popular computer game franchises of all time.
The Championship Manager brand and game was conceived by two brothers: Paul and Oliver Collyer. In a scenario typical of many self-made computer game programming teams in the early days of the industry, the original Championship Manager game was written from their bedroom in Shropshire, England. Since then, they have founded a development company to take the game further, Sports Interactive, and are now based in Islington, North London. Oliver now only works for the company on a part time basis, but remains co-Chair, with his brother. The Collyer brothers and Sports Interactive are no longer involved with the development of Championship Manager (see below).
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[edit] Championship Manager
The release of the first version of the game was not an outstanding success, and sales were steady rather than spectacular. Reviews ranged from the encouraging to the dismissive; the original game was written in BASIC, a programming language not well suited to programming high-performance computer games. Other limitations included the fact that generated names were used for each team, whereas its key competitors of the time, such as Premier Manager and The Manager, included real players in the game.
[edit] Championship Manager 93/94
The release of Championship Manager 93/94 one year later built on the original game, ported to the C programming language, adding a real life player database and other features. By now Championship Manager had built a large following amongst hardened football fans all over the UK.
[edit] Championship Manager 2
If the Championship Manager 1.x series laid the groundwork, the success of the franchise went stratospheric with the release of Championship Manager 2 in September of 1995. The game again included up to date squads for each team, added photos of each ground to build an atmosphere of the teams you were managing/visiting, and included a now infamous in-match commentary engine with the voice of famous British football commentator Clive Tyldesley.
Two seasonal updates followed over the next two years.
[edit] Championship Manager 96/97
Championship Manager 96/97 was released in 1996 and was the first game to feature a non-British league as playable in the standard game - in this case the Italian leagues. It also included several rule changes to reflect the many changes going on in the real life world of football at that time, such as the Bosman ruling.
[edit] Championship Manager 97/98
Released in 1997, this version of the game included nine leagues from around the world which could be run simultaneously, new competition formats to follow those implemented in reality, and many more tactical options. The game remains very popular amongst fans of the series, mainly for its simplicity compared to the huge, processer-intensive games that the series has since developed into.
[edit] Championship Manager 3
This was the first of the seasonal updates to CM3 and saw the American MLS added to the list of playable leagues. It also included more media involvement, board interaction and improved scouting functions.
[edit] Championship Manager: Season 00/01
Ten more playable leagues were introduced for this version, including Australia, Greece, Northern Ireland, Russia and Wales. It was also the first version of the game to come with an official data editor - something which has been continued for all subsequent versions.
[edit] Championship Manager: Season 01/02
No new playable leagues were added to this version of CM (until a patch was later released that added South Korea's K-League to the game) allowing the developers to fine tune the game's mechanics. As a result the game is still widely regarded as the best version of all-time amongst many fans. Indeed, many people still play this rather than the newer versions. CM01/02 also contained one of the most infamous players in CM history - the fictional Tó Madeira.
In April 2002, Sports Interactive took the decision to move away from the PC platform for the first time since CM2, producing a version of CM01/02 for the Xbox. The success of the game saw a follow up, CM02/03 released seven months later.
[edit] Championship Manager 4
What all CM fans were waiting for, however, was Championship Manager 4. Released on March 28, 2003, CM4 broke all records on its release becoming, at that time, the fastest-selling PC game ever on its first day of release. By now its fame was international; encompassing fans via online communities and buy-in through the additional leagues in the game. CM4 included thirty-nine playable leagues, plus four more in its update, CM03/04. On the gameplay side, a top-down view of the match engine was included for the first time, a significant shift from the "imagination" philosophy championed by Sports Interactive previously.
Despite its high sales, CM4 was generally not well-received by hardcore fans for several reasons. The game ran quite slow on computers which had previously had no difficulty in running CM games (although arguably this is a common issue with software). The original release contained some functional bugs which in some cases rendered the game farcical - the score in matches could randomly change and lower division clubs were able to sign superstars with ease. In one memorable bug, non-league club Northwich Victoria would move to a stadium with a capacity of 850,000. Sports Interactive also irritated some fans with the euphemistic term "Enhancement Packs" used to describe what were essentially patches to fix the bugs in the original release. This term was dropped for future releases.
[edit] Championship Manager 03/04
This was the final CM game to be developed by the founding fathers of the series, Sports Interactive, before they were forced to start a new franchise under the name Football Manager. CM03/04 ironed out many of the problems seen in CM4 as well as adding new features and more new playable leagues to the game's already bulging portfolio.
[edit] The Eidos / Sports Interactive split
The creators of Championship Manager, SI Games, split with publishers Eidos, and signed a deal with Sega, to continue the series under the new name, Football Manager. After the split, both parties kept their intellectual property. SI Games kept the base code, the game database and programming of the game, whilst Eidos kept the name "Championship Manager" and its interface.
The reasons for the split have never been revealed, although it is generally felt that Sports Interactive enjoy far greater creative freedom under Sega.
The former working partners are now in direct competition - Eidos and Beautiful Game Studios producing future Championship Manager titles, and Sega and Sports Interactive with Football Manager.
Although under a different name, Football Manager is very similar in gameplay terms to the previous CM games and preffered by original CM gamers, whereas CM5 is a totally new game due to it being written almost from scratch by a new development team.
This emergence of the Football Manager series and the fierce marketing battle between the two could spell danger for EA Sports' Total Club Manager series and other, less successful football management games.
[edit] Championship Manager 5
This was the first version in the series to be developed in-house by Eidos. Both Football Manager 2005 (FM2005) and Championship Manager 5 were slated for a release date of October or November, 2004. However, the release date of Championship Manager 5 was put back by Eidos to March 2005, due to the extent of work discovered in coding the game from scratch. This allowed Football Manager 2005 a clear run to establish itself ahead of the release of CM5.
The game is widely viewed as a disaster. Bug-ridden, lacking in features and with an amateurish GUI a large proportion of its sale resulted from ignorance of the Eidos/SI split and many a fan of the old series must have been shocked to see such a retrograde step.
[edit] Championship Manager 2006
The follow-up to Championship Manager 5 was released on PC on March 31, 2006 under the name Championship Manager 2006.
Again, this version did little to reverse the growing gap in quality between CM and Football Manager. Basic features that had been a staple of the latter from over a decade, such as international management, were missing from the boxed version of CM 2006.
[edit] Championship Manager 2007
Championship Manager 2007 was released on 2006-10-13.
[edit] Other CM games
There have been various games over years which fall outside the traditional Championship Manager series. These include a handheld version, a massively mulitplayer online version, and mobile phone game and even a CM-based quiz game.
[edit] Championship Manager Quiz
Something of a departure from Sports Interactive usual style, CM Quiz was developed as a bit of fun. The game was released on PC on PlayStation (PSOne) in late 2001. It doesn't really have much to do with Championship Manager games, but instead is a football quiz game containing a huge 11,000 multiple choice questions. It marked a milestone for Sports Interactive as it was they first time they had released one of their games on a console platform and also their first ever non football-management game.
[edit] Championship Manager Online
In an effort to compensate for the lack of an online multiplayer mode in CM5, Eidos teamed up with Jadestone to create Championship Manager Online (more commonly known as CM-Online or CMO) a completely separate online game based on the Championship Manager series. CM-Online is a subscription-based MMOG and as the game is based solely online, players do not need to buy any software, they just pay a monthly for membership of the game's website.
[edit] Championship Manager 5 Solo
In August 2005, Eidos released a version of Championship Manager for Java-enabled mobile phones, called Championship Manager 5 Solo (or, more commonly, CM5 Solo). The game was developed by Dynamo Games and was released for phones on the 3, Orange and Vodafone live! services, and has since been released for the O2 network.
Early reviews of the game, such as those on The Guardian website and MobileGameFAQs.com were complimentary of the game's addictiveness and playability and suggested that it was one of the best mobile games available at that time. [1]
It also won the Tiga game of the year award for 2005.
The follow-up to CM5 Solo - Championship Manager 2006 Mobile - was released at the end of March 2006 on Orange and Vodafone UK.
[edit] Championship Manager PSP
On December 9, 2005, Eidos released a version of CM for the Sony PSP, called Championship Manager PSP. This game, developed by Gusto Games, is essentially a cut-down version of Championship Manager 5, featuring fewer playable leagues and a smaller player database, thus allowing it to run on the PSP.
[edit] External links
- Get Managing The biggest community and download centre for all Championship Manager games
- Championship Manager FAQ Fansite and community forum for both CM and FM
- Eidos' official Championship Manager website
- Eidos's website
- Sports Interactive website
- ManagersNet.net An Israeli CM fansite
- Football Manager Football Management Fan Site
- Review of Championship Manager Solo
- Championship Manager '93 download (download fee required)
