The story from Sports Interactive sounds like a dream for every hobby programmer. The two football fanatics Paul and Oliver Collyer have developed a football management game in their spare time. The graphics weren't very good, but the most addictive feature was the impressive database which contained accurate information and skills for thousands of players and teams worldwide. Neither the giants from Electronic Arts, nor any other publisher was interested in their creation. Only Domark (now known as Eidos Interactive haven given this title a chance. Championship Manager was born in 1992 and was shipped for Amiga and Atari ST. Surprisingly it was a big success, because players all over the world liked the high accuracy level of the players and teams and all the statistics within the game.
It was only a question of time, when Sports Interactive would produce a sequel, which would improve everything of the original Championship Manager game. Everything than the graphics! Sports Interactive never produced anything else than football management games. Until now there are nine versions of the Championship Manager series available, including a special version called Championship Manager Italia, which featured the players and teams from Italy's series A and B. The latest version of the CM sereis was released at the end of the year 2000 and is called Championship Manager 00/01.
With every new release, the database has grown, more features were included - only the graphics still look as ugly as in the previous versions and remember more on Excel, than on a game. But the success of this series shows especially in the UK, that graphics are not always important for having fun with a game.
You want to know more about Sports Interactive? Then please visit their website. It includes many interesting infos about their games as well as some funny background infos about the people from this company. | 
CM - the original
CM - Italia
CM - Italia 95 |