Premier Division 1993 soccer manager game

Premier Division was rather simple soccer manager game published in 1993 for Commodore Amiga by Zeppelin Games, a company that specialized in such simple games, but in that case the simplicity is not exactly a bad thing. Game simulated the 4 professional English divisions (from Premier to 3rd Division) plus the best clubs from Premier can (after meeting financial, infrastructural and football conditions) be promoted to the all-European league and play against such clubs as Barcelona, ​​Panathinaikos, Milan or PSV.

 

The basic scenario is very typical - we start in the lowest division and through training, transfers and a bit of luck we are fighting our way to the top (which is the international division), but there is an unusual twist to the concept - there is optional board game, similar to Monopoly, about football, that we can play instead of the typical soccer manager game. All of the game elements were put as random events that can come up while you move your piece around the board.

Another element worth noting is the use of random events, which often have rather... drastic form, for example the audit showed irregularities in taxes and you have to pay dearly for it or the doctors said that one of your players, unfortunately, will no longer be able to play football any more due to health problems.

Transfers are carried out in such a way that on the one hand they are a weak point of the game, and at the same time they introduce an additional random element to the game - after each turn there are up to 2 purchase offers, but the players are chosen in completely random way, so we do not known on what position players will be available or are they in our budget range, so if, for example, you need an inexpensive midfielder, you can sometimes wait for weeks for the right offer to pop up.

Generally, the game is very simple, it lacks many elements that could made this a good football manager, but nonetheless Premier Division is a very addictive game that allows you to quickly play the season.

Championship Manager Italia - failed spin-off of classic ChampMan

 

Championship Manager Italia was published soon after Championship Manager 93/94 as sort-of spin-off: the game used the same interface and engine, but instead of English divisions it was simulating Italian league, Serie A and Serie B. Since Italy at that point had the best league in the world it was a smart marketing move to give users chance to play the best football manager game in reality of best league in the world, but... well, it did not work as well as should have.

 

The program is inferior to the original game because the creators simply did not think through the basic concept of the project. Here we have only two divisions fully simulated (Serie A and Serie B), rest of the divisions are treated as non-league, which means only about 40 clubs are simulated. Just like in original Championship Manager there is limit of 26 players per club and taking under consideration that player with expired contract is still part of the team, the squads were filling up really quickly and caused huge problems.

 

 

Once you buy a player it is almost impossible to get rid of him since there are no lower divisions to buy those that can't find place in top clubs. Even when their contracts run out they stick around in the club and there is no way to remove them, so you are looking at the game that after 2-3 seasons is pretty much stuck and almost none transfers take place - you have to wait for players to retire before free slots are available.

Another attraction that backfired was the foreign players list - you can buy the top players in the world, which is great, but at the same time it only increases the pressure on the free slots, since the foreign clubs almost never make transfer offers themselves. Of course you can train players in reserve / youth team, but again - there are no slots so you could promote them anyway, so... 

Championship Manager Italia is another example of how rushing things in game market only leads to giant cock-ups and disappointments. It is hard to believe that established published like Domark did not spent any time actually testing if the game is playable, so after just 2 seasons it usually isn't anymore.

Championship Manager Italia was a project with limited potential, being just copy of very successful game, but still it was all wasted due to simple mistake in game mechanics.

Director of Football - a 1999 classic football manager game

In 1999 football manager games were on a verge of changing from text-based or simple animation-based match presentation to full match being previewed (at least as an option) in some sort of continuous graphical interface. German game Director of Football premiered with bits of both worlds in it - we have here a lot of player parameters (like in classic games) and full graphical presentation of match itself (like in modern games).

 

 

In Director of Football we can choose club in one of the eight nations (England, Germany, Italy, France, Holland, Spain, Portugal and Scotland) with quite few settings (we can adjust starting budget, difficulty level, strength of out team), which gives a lot of possible starting positions. Inside things do not look that great (it is 20 years old game after all) - the interface is a bit messy, full of tiny icons, most of which have no description, so it is hard to adapt to controlling your team just straight away and for new players it could be disadvantage.

Each player is described by wide range of parameters, some of which include aspects like robustness, nerve or goal instinct, there are plenty of statistics from each match, which give user a lot of data to get through. On the other hand the simple match engine presentation (full screen, but limited graphic interface) often do not show a lot of influence some of those parameters have on the gameplay itself.

Just like in most German football manager games here also we will have a lot of background options - improvement of stadium, changing ticket prices, signing sponsorship and insurance deals, not to mention loan deals. All of it is not crucial for the game, but it is always nice that there it is available if you want to dig deeper into the game.

 

 

Overall a complete game that would be great if not for the really outdated and messy interface. Of course 20 years later the match preview is far from being impressive, but still is better than what classic games had to offer.