Champ Managers Anonymous leader: say hello Justin.
Justin: Hello
Champ Managers Anonymous: Hello Justin! , Tell us your story.
Justin: I lost all my friends and my fish died because I forgot to feed him ----
That was my first CMA (Champ Managers Anonymous) meeting last Thursday. The main aim was to vent our feelings and hopefully help us get back on the road to recovery. Now as a recovering Champaholic it brings back painful memories of endless lost days and my inner yearning for cup victory. It was of course my over addiction to the game of all games CHAMPIONSHIP MANAGER.
It is not a beautiful graphical game, in fact many of its followers would go as far to say its an ugly game, but it is the simplicity of the layout, the abundance of statistics and overall male passion for the game that is known as Football.
Now of course this is the newer release that requires extra processing power and memory so for all those budding to move a bit quicker you can have a go at the older version and just download the updates.
Background
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Back in the early 80s it was started after Oliver and Paul Collyer got their first PC - a BBC. Their interest in football had been there from an early age; Paul's being started off by the 1978 World Cup and Oliver's watching the 1982 World Cup. Having played a football management game out at the time, Paul and Oliver were convinced they could do better. Championship manager 1 was created, Oh! If only they knew what they had started. It contained a text-based system in which you took over your favourite team in a bid for victory. The game was a new concept and was received well by local games magazines. The game (and games of that time) was built in BASIC so it was easy to edit and therefore hack.
In 1990 they were looking to find a publisher for their concept. Many were not slightly interested and added that the game wasn’t graphical enough or didn’t look good enough to compete with the games market. But soon enough magazines caught on and so did a few people in the right places the game took off.
Now updates were made and the game kept on improving as ideas and new concepts
came in, throughout 94 and 95 they worked hard on the idea and added the new flashing text that plays through the match to let you know what’s going on.
In early 1996, CM2 96/97 was started and released in October this was the best yet and its popularity grew. The final part of Championship manager 2 was released in October 97 and stayed in the top 20 for 5 months.
Then we got to Championship manager 3, the new version used up more memory and had over 15 leagues to play in, and the new better graphics system also complemented the 30 or so stats that each player has. This was then followed by updates for the 97/98 and 98/99 seasons. Bigger breakthroughs occurred with the release of 99/00. This version had more options and even allowed you to ask for wage rise and other budget orientated items. The media also had more affect on player moods and a small story in the paper could lead to widespread discontent at your club.
With the 00/01 release we see what the developers had been trying to achieve, they added the option to ask for stadium expansion, wage budget increase, extra transfer fees and more time for those managers with their necks on the line.
This new release is the best yet, and comes with all new bits, buttons and spangles. The most notable being able to mask player’s stats, this option gives blank or limited information on players so that you are required to scout players out, stopping some of those disastrous signings.
What’s it all about?
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The aim of the game is to take a team and obviously try and lead them to victory. You can play with different styles of play; an example of this is how you start your first season. Many people will spend, spend and spend money they don’t have and get the team into debt. Now hopefully the money invested in these players will end with a high place in the league or a promotion. If this doesn’t happen the board will start to question you.
The game is based on numbers and stats; a player will have stats to show you his ability. To show you here is how it is set out:
Acceleration: 13
Heading: 12
Crossing: 20
Shooting: 19
Now each player will have about 30 or so stats and will be a defining factor in your decision to buy or loan a player. You can also look at their past performances, this is done because at the end of each match each player who played will receive a rating from 1-10. 10 are the best and 1 is the worst but you’ll find its only players who are upset that play that bad.
Layout
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The sheer amount of research into players and teams shows how much dedication and commitment the developers put into making each annual update. With such vast amount of data, the game does take a nice system to move and can take about three days solid to complete a season. The layout is very simple and you can get the hang of it very quickly.
Navigation is easy and the bar at the side of the screen contains Manager, player search and competitions etc.. You can get around very easy and this is what adds to the overall effect of the game. With the picture editor you can also add your own pictures, maybe from your teams official website or scanned pictures. Also you could add pictures of yourself playing football, fully customize the look of the game.
Best bits of the game
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Those of you with this game will know that feeling at the end of the season seeing your name next to the 'Manager of the Year Award' its a worth the loss of all your close friends believe me. The main attraction of the game is to find the new Ronaldo and lead Scunthorpe United to the champion’s league final. It’s all possible with the right amount of skill and a trained eye to find the player for you. Sending out your scouts to find new talent is very easy to set up and in no time there will be a list of 20 or so young players ready to be signed up.
Training
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If you find a young player with great potential you can work out a training schedule to help improve his skills, this is a very time consuming task and a player will need training for at least 9 months to see a marked improvement.
You can save your training schemes and use them each time you find a potential good player. Also you can assign coaches to do specific jobs. For example you can set a good goalkeeper coach just to coaching goalkeepers, therefore increasing the efficiency of each coach.
Hey! Coach what do you think eh?
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You can now ask a coach what he thinks of a player; his answer will be either positive or negative. This all of course depends on how good your coach is and a bad decision could cost you a few million. A coach will take in to affect the player’s time at the club, the player’s value, the players attitude and will also report when a player turns up late to training or completely misses one. This is when Fining comes into play.
Oi! Cough up sonny boy!!
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As an example, David O’Leary fined his players involved on the court case that ended recently.
If you feel a player is not performing, or has behaved unprofessionally you can fine them, these range from an official warning through to a 2-week fine. You must take care to use these in moderation as you can end up upsetting more players and may have to sell them, overuse of fines could also lead to your sacking.
If at first you don’t succeed, erh! CHEAT!!!
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One of my all time favourites here, well it went something like that. Yes if you just don’t have the skill give your team millions of pounds and a 1000000 capacity stadium. This way you can learn to put together a good team and not worry about debt, as you get better decrease the funds. This is possible with the editor that comes along with the game. You should make a copy of the Index.dat file and then you can always revert to it later on.
Editor
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In the editor you can edit everything in the game, one thing I did was to add myself to the game and buy myself for a team. In the editor you will also find that it is very easy to change tournament dates, move clubs around and to change player and team histories. To also add to the experience you can change stadium capacities and add whether your team has underground heating, all very useful indeed.
What has this new version got?
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This is from the home site listed below
Full implementation of the brand new EU regulated transfer system
· all competitions, awards, transfer and disciplinary rules updated; the game is now based on the 2001/02 season!
· Vastly improved match engine, commentary and computer manager intelligence
· New scouting feature gives the manager the ability to get in depth analysis on your opposition including key players and team tactics throughout the season.
· For the ultimate challenge and complete realism, the manager can now play the game with stats of new and unknown players hidden, with only players that a manager would realistically know about being shown. Scouting these players will reveal their full stats.
· There is now the ability for managers to make notes on players in the game.
· Managers now have the chance to approach the governing bodies to appeal against bans imposed on their players.
· Managers can now choose to send players away for surgery to repair recurring injuries.
· The manager can now issue the board ultimatums - and vice versa!
· Updated player and team photos.
System Requirements
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As mentioned this version needs more power to run and although not the actual requirements these are a guideline to what you’ll be needing
300Mhz PII or AMD (I would recommend 450Mhz)
32 MB Ram 64 for concurrent or more than 2 leagues (I would say 128 Mb Ram)
Video Card Capable of 800x600 resolution
Sound Card
500 MB free hard disk space. (More free space for swap file 300 megabytes)
2x Cd Rom drive
This game is seriously addictive and after a few months continuous play, you will wonder where the time has gone.
Information from www.sigames.com
T-No and the “Moston Kru 2K2” ®espe©t …
24.09.2002 23:17
can't wait for champ man 4, great op, you are obviously a major fan hehehehe, aren't we all ;)
16.09.2002 21:25
Great op.Im addicted to this game too.Spend my days shouting at the computer screen.I dont think im that good at it though.Nice one!!.
16.09.2002 12:43
Great review of possibly the best game ever