Two Germans, Jensa Onnen and Werner Krahe, started experimenting with football manager games in late 1980s with... not great results to be honest. But just few years later, together with Software 2000, they came up with new take on the soccer manager genre that it shaped the future titles for long years. Their Bundesliga Manager game (later version was called Bundesliga Manager Professional) wasn't in theory that different from the others, but in some way it actually was. While games of the genre were based mostly on text and (at best) simple animations, they went to produce game that not only had quite impressive interface, but also used complicated animations to present goal chances.
While the idea with animations wasn’t new, even Spectrum Football Manager used them, in Bundesliga Manager they were not only better, but also complex and fitted perfectly with the rest of the interface. On the other hand the players were described using only three parameters (skill, fitness and form), but the way it was presented was enough to keep users busy for a long time. What is more the animations were only tip of the iceberg - Bundesliga Manager had managerial options that were absent in other titles, like signing sponsorship deals for ads around stadium, sending team to training camp or improve parts of the stadium.
Of course with limited number of animations available with time the game was losing its freshness, but then they introduced the slightly upgraded version, Bundesliga Manager Professional, which offered additional events added by the fans, which was again a novelty. The game was so popular that Software 2000 published English version, called just The Manager, which simulated the English divisions and brought a lot of attention to the title.
Overall Bundesliga Manager introduced so many new elements to the gameplay that it’s hard to imagine how the genre could have existed without them - even with very simple gameplay it was fun for long, long hours with literally matches described in newspaper, sending team to training camps, negotiating loans with bank and signing deals with sponsors.
Overall Bundesliga Manager introduced so many new elements to the gameplay that it’s hard to imagine how the genre could have existed without them - even with very simple gameplay it was fun for long, long hours with literally matches described in newspaper, sending team to training camps, negotiating loans with bank and signing deals with sponsors.
There even was sort-of multiplayer option, in which up to 4 players could take part in the game taking in turns all the decisions for their own teams (playing on same computers). It wasn't perfect, but again it was quite new and interesting.
Bundesliga Manager was in many ways a new approach to the genre and lead to such classic titles as Anstoss / On the Ball and many others.