In fact, we've been playing the beta version for weeks, or at least those of us in the know have. The rest have probably been chasing trolls around a dark cave. The annual Champ Man update has now become a fixture in the football calendar rivalled only by the start of the actual season. In fact, for many football fans, it provides a welcome respite from the reality of watching their team's early-season hopes fall apart in the harsh reality of a bleak English winter.
By the time CM is released in mid-November, many clubs' ambitions will have been shattered on the rock of ineptitude, and the game offers a unique opportunity to enact how it could have been so different. And that really is the crux of the Champ Man phenomenon.
In the opinionated world of football supporters, everyone is a self-appointed expert, and CM lets you prove just how much of an expert you actually are. One of the game's co-founders, the elder Collyer brother, Paul, concurs: "It is like a world of football.
You know football fans like to read Teletext, page , or if they've got Sky, , Skysports. It's giving people a chance to do that, but to have control over what happens.
People love transfer rumours and stuff like that, they love it, they want to pick the team and you have people phoning up Richard Littlejohn or David Mellor and saying: The England team should be like this. Enthusiasm is nothing without application, though, and fortunately Championship Manager is a miracle of programming and design.
As the younger Collyer, Oliver, says: "With Championship Manager, we create the football world and then just put the user into it rather than the other games, which build the world around the user. You know that you're on a par with everybody else. So you're just part of the machine?
Without you it would just quite happily carry on, and you're almost insignificant. And that's like real football, isn't it? As a manager you're just part of the big jigsaw. But there's also other peripheral stuff such as the user interface. Even though people generally say it looks like a spreadsheet, it looks really dull and uninteresting, I don't think any of the other games' user interfaces have come near the intuitiveness.
As Paul says: "It's like the Internet, isn't it? You can click on something that interests you. No one says the Internet looks like a spreadsheet, it looks as much like a spreadsheet as CM. So we've established that it's great, but let's not lose sight of the fact that in real terms this is simply another update. We happily rip into EA Sports for bringing out the same game every six months, so why should CM be reprieved? Admittedly, it's only an annual update, but it's an update nevertheless.
The game has a vast online following and home-made data updates are freely available, not least on PC cover disc. So why bring this one out, Paul? Why bring it out? Because it's going to be better. The first thing is that, if you just edited the players, you'd still be starting in and that's not much use because it would get messed up anyway.
It's another year of adding little bits and making it as perfect as we can. And it's only 20 quid, so it's not like we're taking the piss like FIFA.
Both us and Eidos appreciate the fans and realise how much they contribute to the game's success. Because if you piss the fans off, then there's no point. Oliver agrees: "It's more than just a data update, there are refinements and stuff. And the one big reason is that people actually want it. People are quite happy and tell us that they want to spend, like, 20 quid on this version. The price is certainly a valid point. Working within the games industry, it's easy to lose sight of the fact that people actually pay good money for this stuff, and being able to buy the best game of the year for half the going rate can only be a good thing.
It's good because over the years we've managed to get more power and they do listen to us, and we sort of say to them, you know, charge more than this and you are taking the piss. But, 20 quid, you work out how much time they're going to spend playing it, generally, and that price is absolutely nothing - completely good value. But it also makes it easy for new people to get into a game if they can go and buy a standalone version for 20 quid, like the latest version of Championship Manager.
It helps broaden the game to other people. As far as whether somebody should just update the data, there are more features in it. There are certainly more features, and this seems as good a time as any to take a look at them. For starters, it will now be possible to play an astonishing 26 concurrent leagues, ten more than in the last version. As Oliver says: "We've added a whole load of new leagues, some sort of obscure and a bit contentious, others that were blatantly missing from the game.
The list in itself is impressive enough, but even more so when you consider the research that goes into each league. It's not just a case of having a flick through a foreign edition of Rothman's, there is a vast infrastructure of researchers in place.
So how, for example, do they go about setting up a Croatian League? He'll probably come up with about 20 people who have said they would be the Croatian researcher if we do that league. We then get in contact with those people and ask them to do some sample data to see how quickly they respond, and generally communicate with them over a few weeks. And if they're still up for it, then we choose the best one. We try and make sure they go to matches and that they're not just armchair fans, so we get people who are really into it.
Sam Charpenter 1 point. Alan, Dimi, Estrella and all, I found a no-date patch to the game. New to version 3. Alan Shearer 3 points. Lads, like. Any oot of memory errors could be due to not ronen' in compa'abili'y mode like. But it would be nice if someone has a solution, patch or whatever, no update nonesense, just a patch fix, I suspect this version they uploaded is the Demo version, which I remember, before getting the OG copy, which I then lost out of pure negligence, but one could make it a full game with some kind of cheat that allows you to continue on their Vanilla demo.
Dimi 2 points. Estrela, never had the problem you are describing. The problem I had was about not being able to launch the game cause of "not sufficient memory" and I went over it through some kind of "compatibility test" right click on the. Why don't you try it? My problem now is that it crushes after 3 complete seasons. Tried everything new save slot, uninstall and reinstall, different directory. Nothing, it doesn't go beyond 21 July I thought the file was corrupted, but same happened when I installed the game through another zip file different download location.
Any ideas on that? Damn, and It was real fun after all these years Estrela 2 points. I managed to start one time right after instalation, played a little just to see if it works properly, everything ok, then saved and went to lunch Now when I want to start the saved game says "insert cd" Than what I did? So everytime I want to play I have to install it?
Whats wrong? Anyone else with same problems? Dimi 0 point. Guys help, I've downloaded the file and "mount" has gone just fine, game is installed Windows 7. However, when trying to start a new game I can't, a pop up message says I there is not enough system memory and I need to free up some. But this can't be true, there are not many procedures running in task manager and I am really low in CPU usage.
Any ideas why this is happening? During his scathing analysis he mentions how it's really not any of the player's fault, but it's all down to the manager.
He should be asking the board for more money for players. He should be playing such and such on the wing, not in the centre. He should be sacked. Chances are that the next week, the team wins, and all of a sudden said manager is absolutely terrific, the best the team has ever had! Sound familiar? It's always easy to shout from afar, but would you do a better job? Unless you are tied into the game from an early age, the odds of you finding out for real are pretty minimal.
Or are they? This is your chance to see just how good your managerial skills would be in the real world. After a painless installation, the first thing you need to do is give your manager a name, and choose the team you are either going to make, or break! You can choose any team from Arsenal in the English premier league, through to Yeovil in the Conference. It doesn't stop there either. You can also choose to be in virtually any league you can think of.
Fancy taking control of the mighty Juventus of Italy? No problem. Of course for the latter, you'd need to explain that it's football, not soccer. Once this is done, the program will then set up the new season ahead. Depending on your processor power, this may take a fair while to process. Those of you thinking that any sort of delay is quite unacceptable, think again. Not only this, but there is each player's own attributes, team histories, top scorer tables, league tables, cup competitions, the transfer market, international tournaments, and for each club there is a reserve team complete with all its own relevant attributes.
That is an obscene amount of data! So you can forgive it for taking a couple of minutes to set itself up each season now, can't you? Once you have selected your team, it's time to check out what low-lifes you have just taken charge of.
The squad select screen shows you every member of your team and their preferred position to play in. It will also show you whether the player is injured, unhappy, on loan, out of contract and other attributes. If you are expecting lavish graphics and FIFA graphical style game coverage, you are going to be very disappointed. Similarly, if you are expecting a ripping soundtrack and groovy in-game effects, you will not find them here.
Graphics wise, everything is text and menu driven. The menus themselves are extremely easy to get to grips with and navigate.
For each different page, you also get a good quality background photograph of various footballing heroes. This is an absolute necessity, as there are times where you want to let the program deal with its data crunching, and go do something else in the meantime!
So how does a simple text driven game work over something more appealing to the eye? It is down to the quality of simulation.
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