''Football Manager'' is the first game in the ''

Football Manager ''Football Manager'' (also known as ''Worldwide Soccer Manager'' in North America from 2004 to 2008) is a series of football management simulation video games developed by British developer Sports Interactive and published by Sega. The game bega ...

'' series.

Development and release

Kevin Toms developed the first game, which was text-only, on a

Video Genie Video Genie (or simply Genie) is a discontinued series of computers produced by Hong Kong-based manufacturer EACA during the early 1980s. Computers from the Video Genie line are mostly compatible with the Tandy TRS-80 Model I computers and c ...

, a clone of the Tandy

TRS-80 The TRS-80 Micro Computer System (TRS-80, later renamed the Model I to distinguish it from successors) is a desktop microcomputer launched in 1977 and sold by Tandy Corporation through their Radio Shack stores. The name is an abbreviation of '' ...

. The title evolved out of a board game Toms first designed aged 11 that was itself inspired by the 1968 football management simulation board game ''Soccerama''. Early iterations were modelled on the cardboard from cereal packets and blank card decks, but Toms was inspired to develop it into a computer game after purchasing a

ZX81 The ZX81 is a home computer that was produced by Sinclair Research and manufactured in Dundee, Scotland, by Timex Corporation. It was launched in the United Kingdom in March 1981 as the successor to Sinclair's ZX80 and designed to be a low-cos ...

and deciding this was a "much better tool to run the game on, especially for automating things like the

league table Standings or rankings are listings which compare sports teams or individuals, institutions, nations, companies, or other entities by ranking them in order of ability or achievement. A table or chart (such as a league table, a ladder or a leaderb ...

calculations and fixtures". It was later converted to the

Sinclair Sinclair may refer to: Places * Lake Sinclair, near Milledgeville, Georgia * Sinclair, Iowa * Sinclair, West Virginia * Sinclair, Wyoming * Sinclair Mills, British Columbia * Sinclair Township, Minnesota * Sinclair, Manitoba People * ...

ZX80 The Sinclair ZX80 is a home computer launched on 29 January 1980 by Science of Cambridge Ltd. (later to be better known as Sinclair Research). It is notable for being one of the first computers available in the United Kingdom for less than a ...

and

,Press advertisement
from

Sinclair User ''Sinclair User'' was a magazine dedicated to the Sinclair Research range of home computers, most specifically the ZX Spectrum (while also occasionally covering arcade games). Initially published by ECC Publications, and later EMAP, it was pub ...

, May 1982 and Toms created the software label

Addictive Games Addictive Games was a UK video game publisher in the 1980s and early 1990s. It is best known for the ''Football Manager'' series of games created by company founder Kevin Toms. The company was originally based in Milton Keynes, England and lat ...

to launch the game in 1982. It was then ported to the

ZX Spectrum The ZX Spectrum () is an 8-bit home computer that was developed by Sinclair Research. It was released in the United Kingdom on 23 April 1982, and became Britain's best-selling microcomputer. Referred to during development as the ''ZX81 Colou ...

with added animated graphics showing match highlights. The game was a huge success and was ported to a wide range of systems between 1984 and 1987.Press advertisement
from Micro Adventurer, July 1984 While the Amiga,

Amstrad CPC The Amstrad CPC (short for ''Colour Personal Computer'') is a series of 8-bit home computers produced by Amstrad between 1984 and 1990. It was designed to compete in the mid-1980s home computer market dominated by the Commodore 64 and the Si ...

, Atari ST,

BBC Micro The British Broadcasting Corporation Microcomputer System, or BBC Micro, is a series of microcomputers and associated peripherals designed and built by Acorn Computers in the 1980s for the BBC Computer Literacy Project. Designed with an emphas ...

, Commodore 64, MSX and

DOS DOS is shorthand for the MS-DOS and IBM PC DOS family of operating systems. DOS may also refer to: Computing * Data over signalling (DoS), multiplexing data onto a signalling channel * Denial-of-service attack (DoS), an attack on a communicat ...

versions, kept or improved all features such as the match highlights graphics, all others (including the

Acorn Electron The Acorn Electron (nicknamed the Elk inside Acorn and beyond) was a lower-cost alternative to the BBC Micro educational/ home computer, also developed by Acorn Computers Ltd, to provide many of the features of that more expensive machine at a ...

, Atari 8-bitConverted to Atari Basic by Colin Lennox.

Commodore 16 The Commodore 16 is a home computer made by Commodore International with a 6502-compatible 7501 or 8501 CPU, released in 1984 and intended to be an entry-level computer to replace the VIC-20. A cost-reduced version, the Commodore 116, was ...

and Plus/4 were, like the original, text only.

Gameplay

The game was written entirely in BASICInterview with Kevin Toms
for the blog The Ball is Round"The Spectrum Collection"
Tony Hetherington, Computer Gamer, August 1985 and, apart from the match highlights on some versions, used only text displays and keyboard entry. The player chooses a team and then must try to earn promotion from the fourth to the first division (although the player can then keep playing for as many

seasons A season is a division of the year based on changes in weather, ecology, and the number of daylight hours in a given region. On Earth, seasons are the result of the axial parallelism of Earth's tilted orbit around the Sun. In temperate and po ...

as they wish). The player also competes in the

FA Cup The Football Association Challenge Cup, more commonly known as the FA Cup, is an annual knockout football competition in men's domestic English football. First played during the 1871–72 season, it is the oldest national football competi ...

. Though the team and player names are real, they are not accurately represented, so whichever team is selected, the player always starts in the fourth division and their team is randomly populated with players. Each player has a skill rating and an energy rating. Players must be rested to renew their energy rating or they become injured. The players' skill and energy ratings also change at the end of the season. The team has ratings of defence, midfield and attack (the total skills of all defenders, midfielders or attackers selected), energy (an average of all selected players) and morale (which increases when the team wins and decreases when they lose). The player can select their team to balance the skills based on the opposing team's ratings (e.g. to increase the defence rating if the opposition has a high attack rating). As the match is played, the screen is updated if a goal is scored. For versions with animated graphics highlights, attempts on goal are shown in

isometric 3D Isometric video game graphics are graphics employed in video games and pixel art that use a parallel projection, but which angle the viewpoint to reveal facets of the environment that would otherwise not be visible from a top-down perspective ...

at either end of the pitch with a scoreboard showing the current score. The player cannot affect the game while it is in progress. The player must also balance finances. Weekly income and expenditure is calculated and bank loans can be taken out. There is also a basic player transfer system. Random players become available to buy which the player can bid for. If the squad reaches the maximum of 16, no players will be available to buy. The player can also list their own players for sale and then accept or reject bids. Game progress can be saved at any time. A customiser utility was included with the game so players could rename the teams and players.

Reception

''Football Manager'' was a commercial hit, selling 500,000 copies in its first six years available. The game was well received by the gaming press although ''

'' did comment on the lack of realism of the teams and individual player ratings."Getting as Sick as a Parrot"

, February 1983 The excitement of watching the game in progress was often seen as the highlight of the game. ''

Electron User ''Electron User'' was a magazine targeted at owners of the Acorn Electron microcomputer. It was published by Database Publications of Stockport, starting in October 1983 and ending after 82 issues in July 1990. Initially it was included as a 1 ...

'' claimed the game was "one of the best strategy games available for home computers" with reviewer Dave Carlos stating "I doubt that this game will ever be bettered".''Football Manager'' review
Dave Carlos, ''

'', April 1986 The game was nominated in the 1983

Golden Joystick Awards The Golden Joystick Awards, also known as the People's Gaming Awards, is a video game award ceremony; it awards the best video games of the year, as voted for originally by the British general public, but is now a global event that can be vote ...

for best strategy game, eventually coming second to the Melbourne House adventure game ''

The Hobbit ''The Hobbit, or There and Back Again'' is a children's fantasy novel by English author J. R. R. Tolkien. It was published in 1937 to wide critical acclaim, being nominated for the Carnegie Medal and awarded a prize from the ''N ...

''."The Golden Joystick Award"

C&VG ''Computer and Video Games'' (also known as ''CVG'', ''Computer & Video Games'', ''C&VG'', ''Computer + Video Games'', or ''C+VG'') was a UK-based video game magazine, published in its original form between 1981 and 2004. Its offshoot website ...

, Issue 29 In 1985, Tony Hetherington of Computer Gamer magazine included the game in "The Spectrum Collection" - "15 classic games that all Spectrum owners should have". By 1991, when reviewing the £2.99 budget release, '' Amiga Power'' awarded a score of only 19% as the game had been "out-featured by practically every other game in the genre" but was "still massively addictive" and referred to as a "classic" and "one of the legends of computer gaming".''Football Manager'' review
Amiga Power, July 1991 The ZX Spectrum version was voted the 26th best game of all time in a special issue of ''

Your Sinclair ''Your Sinclair'', or ''YS'' as it was commonly abbreviated, was a commercially published and printed British computer magazine for the Sinclair range of computers, mainly the ZX Spectrum. It was in circulation between 1984 and 1993. History T ...

'' magazine in 2004. Steve Mann for ''

Personal Computer World ''Personal Computer World'' (''PCW'') (February 1978 - June 2009) was the first British computer magazine. Although for at least the last decade it contained a high proportion of Windows PC content (reflecting the state of the IT field), the mag ...

'' said "I can vouch for the satisfaction that can be gained from this program. Recommended." Bob Wade for ''

Personal Computer Games ''Personal Computer Games'' was a multi-format UK computer games magazine of the early/mid-1980s published by Verenigde Nederlandse Uitgeverijen, VNU. History ''Personal Computer Games'' was launched in July 1983. The magazine was part of VNU ...

'' said "It is one of the most addictive games I have ever played and if you will excuse me I'm just off to take Wimbledon to the Cup Final."

Legacy

In August 2015, Toms began rewriting the original 1982 ''Football Manager'' game for mobile devices after pitching the idea to his followers, drawing on his work experience of business app development. The new game, ''Football Star* Manager'' (KTFSM), was released in 2016 to an overwhelmingly positive response from buyers – many of them former players of the original ''Football Manager'' series. KTFSM was first released on iOS and Android; since its release, the game has been ported to macOS, Windows 10 and Amazon Fire. The game is as near to the original ''Football Manager'' as you can get on the new platforms. In January 2022, Kevin launched a Kickstarter to fund a new version of his Football Manager game, ''Football New Manager'', to mark the 40th anniversary of the original game.

Reviews

*''The ZX Spectrum Book'' *''

ACE (Advanced Computer Entertainment) ''ACE'' (Advanced Computer Entertainment) was a multi-format computer and video game magazine first published in the United Kingdom by Future Publishing and later acquired by EMAP. History ACE launched in October 1987, roughly the same time as ...

'' - Nov, 1989 *'' ASM (Aktueller Software Markt)'' - Feb, 1986 *'' Atari ST User'' - Jun, 1988 *'' ASM (Aktueller Software Markt)'' - Dec, 1986 *'' Amiga Power'' - Jul, 1991https://archive.org/details/Amiga_Power_Issue_03_1991-07_Future_Publishing_GB/page/n79/mode/2up

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Football Manager (1982 video game) 1982 video games Amiga games Amstrad CPC games Association football video games Atari 8-bit family games Atari ST games BBC Micro and Acorn Electron games Commodore 16 and Plus/4 games Commodore 64 games DOS games Dragon 32 games MSX games Oric games TRS-80 games VIC-20 games Video games developed in the United Kingdom ZX Spectrum games ZX81 games