''Premier Manager: Ninety Nine'' is a

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 game, for PC,

PlayStation is a video gaming brand that consists of five home video game consoles, two handhelds, a media center, and a smartphone, as well as an online service and multiple magazines. The brand is produced by Sony Interactive Entertainment, a divisi ...

, Windows and Nintendo 64 (with the latter version known as ''Premier Manager 64''). It was released in Europe in 1999 and was developed by

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 ...

and published by Gremlin Interactive. It is part of the ''

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 and was endorsed by then England manager

Kevin Keegan Joseph Kevin Keegan (born 14 February 1951) is an English former footballer and manager. A forward, he played for several professional clubs from 1968 to 1984. Having begun his career at Scunthorpe United, he moved to Liverpool in 1971 and ...

Overview

''Premier Manager: Ninety Nine'' is a

management simulation game that puts the player in charge of a team of their choice from the top four English divisions ( Premier League to the

third division In sport, the Third Division, also called Division 3, Division Three, or Division III, is often the third-highest division of a league, and will often have promotion and relegation with divisions above and below. Association football *Belgian Thir ...

, as it was known at the time) or the top two Italian leagues ( Serie A and Serie B) on the PlayStation version, but limited to just the English leagues in the PC and N64 releases. The player must manage the team's tactics, formations and training. The player must also manage the financial side of running a football club so to be able to afford to purchase new players for the team. ''Premier Manager'' uses the '' Actua Soccer'' engine to display football matches. At the time this was a new feature and set ''Premier Manager'' apart from other football management games. Using the engine allows the player of the game to view the match in detail and assess when and where tactical changes need to be made. The game featured commentary from Barry Davies.

Development

Madrid-based

had already worked on several titles in the genre, having developed and published the '' PC Fútbol'' series from 1992 and developed the ''Premier Manager'' series for Gremlin Interactive since the '''97'' release.

Reception

Steve Key of '' CVG'' gave the PlayStation version a score of 5/5, praising the breadth of the gameplay compared to '' Championship Manager 3'', describing the ability to "pick sponsors for hoardings around the pitch, TV rights, upgrade the stadium ndfluctuate ticket prices" alongside the traditional management options as "almost player-chairman simulation". The game received a score of 90% in '' Official Nintendo Magazine'', with the review dubbing it "the ultimate management game" and praising its breadth of options, in-game graphics and match commentary. ''

PC Zone ''PC Zone'', founded in 1993, was the first magazine dedicated to games for IBM-compatible personal computers to be published in the United Kingdom. Earlier PC magazines such as ''PC Leisure'', ''PC Format'' and ''PC Plus'' had covered games but ...

''s Steve Hill described the game as "taking more of a '' Theme Park'' approach to football management, as opposed to the number crunching of ''

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 ...

''", criticising the game for the presence of bugs and an "ugly and awkward" interface, but praising the 'view mode' and its 3D representation of matches.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Premier Manager 99 1999 video games Association football management video games Dinamic Multimedia games Europe-exclusive video games Gremlin Interactive games Nintendo 64 games PlayStation (console) games Premier Manager Single-player video games Video games developed in the United Kingdom Windows games