''PC Fútbol'' was a series of

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...

management simulation games developed by Spanish developers

Dinamic Multimedia Dinamic Multimedia was a Spanish software house and software publisher, publisher created in 1993 which was created after the bankruptcy of Dinamic Software in 1992 by some of its former members. After having released several titles, they filed ...

. It was one of the big successes in the Spanish PC market, spawning several titles from 1992 until the studio's closure in 2001. The series was later revived in 2004 by developers Gaelco and there were two more releases before the series final demise.

History

''PC Fútbol'' was a significant hit in Spain; ''

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''s Marcos Anton wrote that it "became an absolute legend of the genre". Its first installment sold 7,000 copies in Spain, while ''PC Fútbol 7'' reached domestic sales of 360,000 copies. The games were always sold at a budget price, usually in kiosks, and were always fiercely championed by the local press. Unlike most other

sims at the time, the game (since 2.0) allowed to take both player (dubbed ''arcade'') and managerial approach to the game, a formula that was not used in mainstream games until ''

Total Club Manager 2004 ''FIFA Manager'' is an association football series of sports management games published by Electronic Arts. The games were developed by the German studio Bright Future and EA Sports. The game was called ''Total Club Manager'' until the name changed ...

'' allowed

FIFA 2004 ''FIFA Football 2004'', also known as ''FIFA Soccer 2004'' in North America, is a Association football, football Simulation video game, simulation video game developed by EA Canada and published by Electronic Arts. It was released in October 2003 ...

owners to actually play the game (which in its turn was modeled after

Ascaron Ascaron Entertainment was a video game developer based in Germany. Founded as Ascon by Holger Flöttmann in 1991 and later renamed in October 1996 due to the possible confusion with the Swiss company Ascom AG, the company produced titles primar ...

's Anstoss series). Former

Liverpool Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a popul ...

player and Spanish television

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, Michael Robinson was the face and voice of the game, and most of the season analysis inside the updates was signed by him. The game was one of the first licensed games - by the ''

Liga de Fútbol Profesional Liga or LIGA may refer to: People * Līga (name), a Latvian female given name * Luciano Ligabue, more commonly known as Ligabue or ''Liga'', Italian rock singer-songwriter Sports * Liga ACB, men's professional basketball league in Spain * Lig ...

'' - which meant that the developers were able to use real player and team names. One of the most distinguishable features of the series were the updates; the game had a built-in calendar and league tracking utility and so owners of the game could connect to Dinamic's servers and update their data monthly. Some of the data (like photos) could not be fit inside a

floppy A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, or a diskette) is an obsolescent type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined wi ...

, and data packs were made available in gaming magazines or via direct request. As the

CD-ROM A CD-ROM (, compact disc read-only memory) is a type of read-only memory consisting of a pre-pressed optical compact disc that contains data. Computers can read—but not write or erase—CD-ROMs. Some CDs, called enhanced CDs, hold both comput ...

replaced the floppy versions (around 1996), there was no need for additional data packs, but there was still a final update (released in the end of the season) that would complete all league tracking data and Robinsons' comments. The later games (2000 and 2001) were plagued by bugs, and although the updates assured a less problematic gaming experience, it had worn some of the userbase, who could finally have fully licensed alternatives from

EA Sports EA Sports is a division of Electronic Arts that develops and publishes sports video games. Formerly a marketing gimmick of Electronic Arts, in which they tried to imitate real-life sports networks by calling themselves the "EA Sports Network" ...

and

Sports Interactive Sports Interactive Limited is a British video game developer based in London, best known for the ''Football Manager'' series. Founded by brothers Oliver and Paul Collyer in July 1994, the studio was acquired by Japanese video game publisher Sega ...

(FIFA/Stars and

Championship Manager ''Championship Manager'' is a series of association football, football-management simulation video games, the first of which was released in 1992. The ''Championship Manager'' brand and game was conceived by brothers Collyer brothers (game desig ...

, respectively). By mid-2001 ''PC Fútbol 2001'' support ceased, and Dinamic closed shortly after. A complete modification ("

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") of the game was released shortly after, showing a still dedicated fan-base. A total of nine titles in the main series were released, the first simply numbered, and the final two ''2000'' and ''2001'', and sold around 1 million copies altogether. In 2004,

Planeta DeAgostini Editorial Planeta-DeAgostini is a Spanish-Italian publisher and a subsidiary of Grupo Planeta and De Agostini specializing in collectable books, sold periodically in pieces through newsstands (partworks). It has its headquarters in Barcelona.

acquired the rights to the name and released ''PC Fútbol 2005'', developed by Gaelco. It continued the "tradition" of bug-ridden games of the early games, and although it sold very well in December 2004 (second only to ''

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''), most fans were disappointed with it.

Other titles

There were a number of titles released outside the main series: ''PC Calcio'' and ''PC Premier'' focused on the

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...

and

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

football championships, and ''PC Clausura'', aimed at Argentine market. Before the Euro'96, ''PC Selección'96'', gave players the control of the Spanish team for the same tournament.

PC Fútbol abroad

Since the first versions of the game were only available in

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Cana ...

, the series market was limited, but the success was wide. In 1994 Dinamic Multimedia decided to reach the Italian and Argentine markets and published PC Calcio and PC Fútbol Clausura. Both were successful and followed by other versions each year. In 1996,

Gremlin A gremlin is a mischievous folkloric creature invented at the beginning of the 20th century to originally explain malfunctions in aircraft and later in other machinery and processes and their operators. Depictions of these creatures vary widely ...

approached the Spanish company to develop new titles on their highly regarded ''

Premier Manager ''Premier Manager'' is a series of a football management video games started in 1992. Published by Gremlin Interactive, it was first developed by Realms of Fantasy, later passed to Spanish company Dinamic Multimedia. The later games were later pub ...

'' series. Three games were released using the PC Fútbol engine, from 1997 to 1999. In 2000, '' EuroLeague Football'', an English oriented version of PC Fútbol 2000 was released, published by Sold-Out Software.

Games

* ''Simulador Profesional de Fútbol'' * ''PC Fútbol 2.0'' * ''PC Fútbol 3.0'' * ''PC Fútbol 4.0'' * '' PC Fútbol 5.0'' * ''PC Fútbol 6.0'' * ''PC Fútbol 7'' * ''PC Fútbol 2000'' * ''PC Fútbol 2001'' * ''PC Fútbol 2005'' * ''PC Fútbol 2006'' * ''PC Fútbol 2007''

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:PC Futbol Gaelco games Video game franchises Video games developed in Spain Association football video games Europe-exclusive video games