Who or what got you in to the football manager series?

For myself it was getting football manager handheld for christmas 06 i believe? I then got 07 when it was released the following year and after a few months of playing that i wanted to play a bigger version of the game so bought the pc version of 07 for £19.99 in game and been hooked since.

How did you get into the series?

I was introduced to CM/FM by a fella I used to play football with. It was CM97/98 and I was at his after a match, I remember it well because not only did I think the game was great and insist that he let me borrow it, but his mum's cooking gave me food poisoning and I was sick for about 3 days.

Haha, ahh it brings back memories. A schoolfriend called Rob Pryce lent me his copy of 01/02 whilst we were sat in the I.C.T lesson at Wakeman School, Shrewsbury. Remember reading the manual under the desk.

Went home, installed it, and for some reason picked Dover Athletic. First player ever signed on the series? Danny Byrne.

Only later did I realise how much of a sacrifice it must have been for him to not play it for a evening while I borrowed it. Suffice to say, 8 versions later and I'm still hooked...

I was in a training course for my work and a Portuguese trainee was playing a game during the training course on his laptop, it looked like some football thing, so I asked him, he showed me and I was hooked as well. It was CM00/01 if I am not mistaken.

Ever since I bought every version of CM/FM.

started when i wanted a football managing game and seen cm3 i think i was about 12 then and been getting it ever since

started in 1999 thanks to my dad playing it all the time!

He quit now but i been carrying on so i played since 01-02 till now and i will carry on

I got into it back when it was still called Championship Manager. I simply saw it in a shop, liked the look of it and bought it. CM 97/98 was the first version I played. I'm 22 now, I first played it 11 years ago, so I've now officially been into CM/FM for half my life. Still enjoy it as much now as I did back then.

Freaking Amaroq, with a huge assist to Isuckatfm.

Damn them both!!!!

Too long ago to remember, but I do remember that it was the first game that actually felt anything like managing a football team.

I go right back to the beginning. I remember seeing luke-warm reviews for the first ever Championship Manager, but thought it looked interesting. I eventually bought CM93 (aged 13) from a games stand in my local market and played that to death. By the time CM2 came out, must have been in 95-96 ish, i was well and truly bitten by the bug.

Got championship manager 97/98 for free from a friend. So playing this game for 11 years already now.

the very first one on the Amiga. I borrowed my mates computer and have been hooked every since. Dion Dublin at man utd and all that.

I got into it by a friend and it was the 01/02 champ manger probobly my favorite 1 of all because of the memories.One of my friends actually still plays that game because it is that good.The people that havent got a bad word to say about the newer type fm games are the people that have not played a previous version of champ manager/fm and dont know what a good champ manager is ! I feel very sorry for you guys

My missus pressurised me into having a vasectomy.I meant I couldn't walk for a few days and had to sit on a cushion. Out of pity she bought me CM3. Years later, I still lose the ability to walk for days whilst I sit on a cushion. Instantly Hooked.

I used to player the original Football Manager by Kevin Toms on the Spectrum and CM93/93 when it was released on the Amiga.

I've not played every version since then as I tended to leave the game for a year or more, luckily one of the years I missed was CM4.

Championship Manager on the Amiga, followed swiftly by Champ Manager Italia. Back then, if you were playing a tie in Europe, the players didnt even have names ie Player 1, Player 2 etc etc

Used to love the AC Milan side from Champ Manager Italia......Van Basten, Papin, Baresi, Lentini. Superb

Cm97/98 for me, I think it could be the one where you didn't need the CD to play it. A lad at school passed it round most of the people in our year and I was hooked, I'll never forget my mum and dad shouting atme for sitting for hours in front of a computer playing on a game "where you don't even do anything" haha, my missus says that now!!... How wrong they are!

I used to player the original Football Manager by Kevin Toms on the Spectrum and CM93/93 when it was released on the Amiga.

I've not played every version since then as I tended to leave the game for a year or more, luckily one of the years I missed was CM4.

haha, what i loved about the Kevin Toms FM is the way there was only a very limited range of names in the game so after a bit of wheeling and dealing you'd invariably end up with the likes of Shilton, Lineker, Beardsley, McMahon, Sampson, Waddle, Hoddle, Fenwick etc. etc. Eventually you'd basically end up with the England squad of the 80s

The A-league FM08 Demo from 4-4-2

Answering literally, I went to FM as I was already a fan of SI through Champ Man.

Going back to Champ Man, I was leant CM1 on the Amiga by a school friend. I loved it, and got my own copy. The rest was history. Of course with DRM now I assume legal copies of games aren't handed around nowadays and that's a shame - you can see from my own case it can generate sales, and this was in the days of much easier piracy!

My first memories of CM/FM are from about 1995. My best mate was obsessed with the game and used to run tournaments at secondary school. We'd all randomly pick a team and he'd go home and play out the matches and print out the results and league tables to bring into school. I remeber sitting watching him play it at his house and thought it was the most boring game I'd ever seen.

Fast forward to 1999 and I went off to uni and aquired my first ever PC. As I was a skint student I went looking round all the bargain bins in the game shops for cheap games that i could stick on my PC to play in between doing some uni work. One of these games happened to be CM2, I remember that it was only a couple of quid so I thought I'd buy it and see what all the fuss was about. The other games I bought that day were soon forgotten, and later so were any thoughts of actually doing uni work .

I was hooked and ended up house sharing with some lads a year later who also loved CM, so we ended up playing it a lot. And ever since then it's been the only game I've bought every year without fail.

Championship Manager on the Atari ST with my dad. God I was addicted to those 3 bars rising and falling until the dreaded "father beats son" moment... oh how things have turned around

Firts CM/FM I bought was CM 93/94 and i've bought every one since (01/02 onwards on pre-order). I still even buy the CM's made since the split, for posterity.

I played the Off the Ball series until it went downhill (OTB 4), then i played Fifa Manager until i went downhill (05), somehow found out about CM 03/04, got it and immediately fell in love. Bought FM until 07, didnt see much incentitive to get 08, and will perhaps get 09 next year when its fully patched and cheaper.

I was introduced to it when I was 8 and someone was playing cm2. It fascinated me so much I got into it and I've been playing the series ever since

Championship Manager 3. Great game!

Couldnt understand why why 22 year old son spent all of his waking hours playing a computer game. When he was tired of CM99, he gave me the disc ( without the instruction manual, which was nice!) and the rest, as they say, is history.

I found CM2 in a shop and I have been hooked ever since then.

Anyone know what year CM2 came out? Early 90s?

got introduced to CM 98 by my bros mate who saw me playing Premier Manager 98 and took pity on me

Being loaned a copy of CM2 did it for me

When I was an ankle-biter, little more than five or six years old, we had a BBC Micro, and I used to play the original Football Manager on that. When the BBC Micro became a museum piece (which, to be honest, it was when I was using it anyway), I was still pretty little and figured there were no manager games out there anymore. And anyway, we didn't have a PC.

By the time I was about nine or ten, a friend of mine had a PC and I used to go round there and he had some game called Championship Manager. He only used to let me watch, but I was fine with that. I was hooked just from watching. Incidentally, he was a very angry FMer. He used to growl when he lost and then re-load! But we were no older than 10, so I think it's excusable.

Then, in 1997, when I was 13, my dad bought a PC. I spent my birthday money that December on CM97/98. That was the first CM I owned. I can still remember my best game on it - setting out to keep newly-promoted Barnsley in the Premiership... and achieving it.

I had another lull after that, though. The PC couldn't handle any CMs after that. The next one I got was the final CM before the split with Eidos. I went to university and my dad got me a PC. I've had every FM since then. I only had that PC a couple of years. I got a laptop for my 21st birthday, and FM08 is the last I will play on that laptop. FM09 will be on my brand-spanking new one.

There is my entire CM/FM history. Hope you enjoyed!

So makes me want to load up a game of any old CM version tonight when I get in, im gonna try and pick up a copy as I havent got them now.

I can honestly say I have bought 2 PC's and one laptop in the last ten + years so I can play CM/FM at a good speed, bought a new laptop this week, reason = FM09

Had the original Football Manager 1 and 2 on tape for my Speccy 48k in the 80s, and then the first Championship Manager on the Amiga in the 90s.

Had the original Football Manager 1 and 2 on tape for my Speccy 48k in the 80s, and then the first Championship Manager on the Amiga in the 90s.

Me too. When the Amiga came out i thought it was an amazing machine and when the 'updated version' of Football Manager came out under the new name Championship Manager i was instantly hooked. I still remember having to type in the password from the manual.

Who remembers a picture of the bearded Kevin Toms on the cover of the original FM's cassette? We owe that guy a debt. He's the father of all this.

I downloaded FM05 on a not legal way (sssssshhh don't tell anyone ) just out of curiousity. I really liked it, but didn't understand a thing of it. Then I bought 06 and I really got into the game. Since then I bought every FM in the gameshop and will probably buy 09.

as i understand it, SI's Football Manager franchise is in no way related to Kevin Toms' game of the same name, i guess the license on the name had expired by the time SI split from Eidos so it was available to them.

but yes, mr toms' bushy beard was legendary. i think one of the collyers should grow a similar one in tribute.

I loved the idea of managing a club while playing the FIFA series(not fifa manager), but it was way too easy and totally unrealistic. I think I signed Tevez on a free transfer once for a championship club and sold him the next day for 30 million pounds.

I began searching the internet, found CM, FM and FifaManager and downloaded all of the demos. After trying each, this was by far the best, so I bought FM07(technically WWSM 07) and now can't wait for each new release.

as i understand it, SI's Football Manager franchise is in no way related to Kevin Toms' game of the same name, i guess the license on the name had expired by the time SI split from Eidos so it was available to them.

but yes, mr toms' bushy beard was legendary. i think one of the collyers should grow a similar one in tribute.

I did read somewhere that the modern FM is considered a continuation of the Kevin Tom's original. Just wondering, can anyone remember what the name of the company was that made the original? I know they were based in Bournemouth.

I've been a football fanatic my whole life so looking for such a game was the logical thing to do. At the time, Champ Man was the only thing that was buzzing around, that was worth playing at least. Got into it, and here we are many years later.

I had FIFA Manager 07 but the 3D-engine ****ed me so off that i changed to FM.

Am i the only one who sees the irony of this?

moby-parrently , they were published & developed by Addictive Games

http://www.mobygames.com/game/football-manager

FM 2008 was actually my first foray into FM. I had been hooked on Major League Baseball sims since I was a kid, but in recent years I was looking for something more complicated, new and different (to me anyway!). I downloaded FM 2008 on a whim and have been hooked since! Shortly after getting hooked on FM, I found my cable company carried Fox Soccer Channel, so I subscribed to that. I love seeing my players from the game in real life! A bit backwards, I know; most people get excited to see their real life players in the game, not vice versa...

moby-parrently , they were published & developed by Addictive Games

http://www.mobygames.com/game/football-manager

Cheers for that.

Cheers for that.

i have a perverse obsession with trawling through sites like that, normally in search of football management games i used to play as a nipper !! i never actually go back and play them though as i know the memory is probably sweeter than the actual game ...

After getting frustrated of LMA2006 I searched for the demo of FM2006 and played that, I was appalled at was I was missing and immediately bought FM07, been playing alot ever since... not as long as most here but, I saw sense

I acquired CM4 on a whim in a less-than-legal way (I admit! ^^; ) back when that was released. I didn't have a very high opinion of spreadsheet-esque games like management games at that time, but to my own great surprise I became very immersed in my save. It'd be fair to say I got hooked and I've bought the new edition every year ever since. Ironically I wasn't very big on football either at that time and only watched the national team play, but I've always been a big gamer. One day I figured "hey, some decent real football games should be on TV here", and there were indeed. It was initially a bit weird to see the people I'd just considered names in a game strutting around the pitch, but also interesting to recognize players I'd never seen before yet had an idea about what they played like. Truth to be told I had a bit of a strained relationship with my father after my parents broke up, but with him usually being in the TV-room when I wanted to watch a game, we started following the various leagues together. These days we get together every weekend to watch a bunch of games and get a bite to eat, so what started as a capricious gaming moment turned out to be quite a positive catalyst.

I acquired CM4 on a whim in a less-than-legal way (I admit! ^^; ) back when that was released. I didn't have a very high opinion of spreadsheet-esque games like management games at that time, but to my own great surprise I became very immersed in my save. It'd be fair to say I got hooked and I've bought the new edition every year ever since. Ironically I wasn't very big on football either at that time and only watched the national team play, but I've always been a big gamer. One day I figured "hey, some decent real football games should be on TV here", and there were indeed. It was initially a bit weird to see the people I'd just considered names in a game strutting around the pitch, but also interesting to recognize players I'd never seen before yet had an idea about what they played like. Truth to be told I had a bit of a strained relationship with my father after my parents broke up, but with him usually being in the TV-room when I wanted to watch a game, we started following the various leagues together. These days we get together every weekend to watch a bunch of games and get a bite to eat, so what started as a capricious game test turned out to be quite a positive catalyst.

That is a very nice story.

My brother is a long time player of the CM/FM series... he suggested it to me and I'm hooked!

Mine was FM 06. I was playing Eastside Hockey Manager and kept on hearing about this great soccer management game on the SI hockey forums so I decided to try it and the rest is history.

My brother is a long time player of the CM/FM series... he suggested it to me and I'm hooked!

I've never been one to stereotype Americans, but I have to say one thing that especially pleases me is when I hear about American FM fans. It just shows that there are plenty of real football (or soccer - I really don't care what people call it) fans over there, and that they are clearly intelligent with it, given the nature of FM.