Your earliest memories of cm/fm

[graham78]

does anyone remember the names of the 2 data editors (i think) who put themselves in the cambridge team, they were both awesome - think it was on an upgrade disk for cm93

[JRD7a]

does anyone remember the names of the 2 data editors (i think) who put themselves in the cambridge team, they were both awesome - think it was on an upgrade disk for cm93

Ferraro Orosco and Mark Collis. Certainly something very similar.

The first version for me without real players was the first incarnation I bought, my favorite ever moment was cm93 (not the 93/94 update) and bringing Gazza back from Italy. In that version, players were generally rubbish at 31, so I would always insure them in the last week, take their squad positions away from them, whack their value up as high as I could, and reap the financial rewards. However, gazza played in the hole (Unstoppable 3313 Counter Attack formation) up until 34.

That was the last great Amiga CM. After that, there were real work permit issues with practically every player from abroad. I even remember Gazza being refused a WP. They also changed it so only Man U could get the best players from abroad. Although Nii Lamptey (in a later version) could be signed, as long as it was in the frst couple of weeks.

CMItalia was also great (and very easy) but they had the regen issue where your squad would be full of crap regens after about 5 years because nobody had any space in their squads to sign or sell.

[kerlonmoura]

CM 99/00 great game. siging mads jorgensen and kennedy barkigloeiwhjiowenio(however you spell it) Also managing ireland the two keane's being dominant. Also the background pictures are still a distinct memory

Bakircioglu

[TimHardy]

Buying my first PC back in '95, and after brief flirtations with Ultimate Soccer Manager and some EA rubbish i really got into CM.

Proper regens there were at that time, just wait til the legends had retired and you could pick them up as 17/18 year olds.

I'd the regen'd Papin, van Basten, Matthaus, Le Guen and my Aberdeen team won the Champions Cup.....which i think is the only time i've managed that, but i'll keep trying!

Ultimate soccer manager! That's a legendary game! My mate found it in his attic the other week and we spend all day playing it lmao. tbh tho the match engine was poor.

My earliest memory is of installing CM 01/02 aged 6, and being unable to work out how to buy players for 2 weeks! (I got the game without instructions as it came with my new computer, so couldn't just refer to them) CM 01/02 was a great game though

[Gerry-Atric]

I had it for the amiga can always remember looking on the transfer list and signing the free transfers up always a player called beavers

Also like best the CM series the year Shearer had left for newcastle and you started at Blackburn with a massive 15million transfer budget and you felt like you was a mega rich club, never could replace Shearer though, even though i tried really hard lol

[Lenzar]

I can remember playing the CM93-94 demo and ending up buying the full game. Which brings me onto..

Are there any players remaining that have existed (as players) in every version of CM/FM, excluding the versions which don't work with the English league? Giggs and G. Neville must be about the only two left these days.

[StewartJRobertson]

My earliest memoryis of the original CM. I remember before Champ man italia came out. I thought it was by far the best game ever back then and i still think it now.

I also have a really strong memory of listening to 4 Non Blondes song " Whats going On" whilst playing CM. Have no idea why. but that song always reminds me of playing Champ man as a kid.

[dave emrys]

On the Atari back in 93. Having being playing pretty useless management sims since 86 on various platforms. The joy of finding a game that was and still is way ahead of the competitors.

Think the Italian version was released the following year.

[kevhamster]

I had CM93/94, and I remember having several title wins with Sheffield Wednesday - Chris Bart-Williams was a monster player! I also remember taking Exeter City all the way from Division 3 to the Premier League title - it was much easier to do that on the original CM than it would be on the newer games. I also remember struggling financially, and on the field, with Wycombe Wanderers.

The other thing I really remember about the original CM is that if you chose to play with made-up players, you could start with any team in any division - I remember making Wealdstone start off as a Premier League side.

And I remember buying CM2 on the cheap in a Woolworths sale. I was doing really well with West Brom, then I encountered what I can only assume was a bug (a really annoying one). I was something like 7 points clear at the top of Division One (as it was back then) with about 10 games of the season to go. Ferguson was sacked by Man Utd, and they offered me the job - the main thing being that the game made me take over them, despite the fact I didn't want to. I reloaded the save so many times in hope that it would turn out different, but it never did!

I also remember trying to install the next season's version of CM2, but there wasn't enough free hard drive space on the PC! The computer only had a 1GB hard drive.

[Parmie]

My first memories are the original Amiga version. I always played as Swansea City taking them into to the top. They had an Irish player called Kwame Ampadu and regens' names were influenced by the players you had your team, hence Kwame Murphy and many other Irish Kwames were spawned.

Then there was the unavoidable -player x will be sold at the end of the season to a team on the continent.

The skill of AI managers was ascertained by how many players they actually played in the correct positions, the lower league were littered with managers selecting strikers in midfield and defenders up front.

[chengharry]

I remember it was still called CM2. A game with massive font and massive buttons.

Within that game, there was some guy called Baggio whom was an amazing striker........

[deltablue]

Was due to get a laptop (my first) for christmas 2004 (which also counted as my previous birthday present) and the choice of a game. This was shortly after the launch of the rebranded FM and I chose that over CM, the better known name at the time (something I'm massively thankful for). The game actually arrived a few days before the laptop giving me plenty of time to build up anticipation, almost as soon as I set it up I started my first FM save as England (naming myself in tribute to the recently deceased Brian Clough), and that was the start of it all.

[marknufc]

Championship Manager: Season 97/98 got it on my first comp when a was like 8 event tho 99/00 was out

eric nevland playing for united and he turned into a world class player

[Lenzar]

And I remember buying CM2 on the cheap in a Woolworths sale. I was doing really well with West Brom, then I encountered what I can only assume was a bug (a really annoying one). I was something like 7 points clear at the top of Division One (as it was back then) with about 10 games of the season to go. Ferguson was sacked by Man Utd, and they offered me the job - the main thing being that the game made me take over them, despite the fact I didn't want to. I reloaded the save so many times in hope that it would turn out different, but it never did!

I remember this magazine, PC Football, that mentioned this bug, so it was obviously fairly well known. The same magazine, which I think only ever had one issue, asked for stuff for CM3, thinking it would be the next couple of years.

[Ezequiel_Lavezzi]

CM97...

My mate brought it over one day and played it on my pc...

I was AC Milan and he was Juventus....we both failed miserably and to be honest I thought it was too hard and kind of disliked the game.

A few weeks went by and I noticed the game was still installed on my PC so I gave it a go.

Managed Salernitana to 5th spot in Serie B and was sacked...spent 1 season unemployed which equated to about 3 or 4 days in real life. I spent it eating chips and drinking coke, while listening to music (a little like real unemployment)...until I landed a job with Castellon.

I spent about 2 hours making up my team and clicked continue after I was satisfied with my squad.

The next match day I was confused to find that I had a totally different squad of players and did not understand why. I eventually found out that Castellon was full of "grey" players and the team had just gotten promoted so there was no playing squad as of yet.

I resigned immediately out of anger when that happened (I still did not know why that was) and I ended up joining relegation battlers Badajoz.

Two seasons of midtable obscurity was ahead of me until in season 5 on the game, I signed 14 players all under the age of 20.

Joao Paulo Baidoo (Regen from Chad), Valderamma and Higuita (Regens from Colombia), Ekakia (Regen from Nigeria), Jean Michel Daniel (Regen from France), are still players I remember until this day.

That fifth season in the game, and my third with Badajoz would be one that would create magical memories for me. Topped the Segunda division bombarding over 150 goals, I then went into La Liga, expecting a difficult season, but the kids performed well and we finished 5th. I kept the same starting eleven for over 10 seasons.

I won 1 cup winners cup, 1 copa del rey and 2 La ligas in 20 seasons. I would have won more but Barcelona and Real Madrid had a crazy amount of super stars and sometimes would not even lose a game. Every season I would be either 2nd or 3rd a few points behind them.

I played that save so long, I saw Jean Michel Daniel retire from a broken leg, I saw my other players retire at 37-38 with great careers.

That was my favourite save and I miss enjoying a sim THAT much. I remember when a new release would come out from SI, I would buy it at the shop straight away and take the game manual to school or college and read every single word and take notes.

[mrdorf]

first memory was cm 93 finished 9th with everton and was well chuffed :confused: Probably shows how bad we were back then. Used to play it all the time to the extent that I was getting told off by my parents.

Best memory was playing CM Italia. I ordered the game from a magazine (can't remember which one) and was hooked. Was playing as Roma and got them to the Uefa Cup final when it was two legs in the final we were 4-0 down in the first leg and one 5-0 in the second leg to lift the trophy bloody blinding!

[phnompenhandy]

My introduction to CM was delayed by about three years owing to my prior addiction to SWOS. That was so much fun and had a delightful 2D screen. The commentary-only CM seemed a step back but I eventually gave it a go and was won over by the depth.

In my first campaigns I usually managed my team, Inverness Caley who were in a lowest playable league at the time - not sure I ever actually got them promoted.

Still miss SWOS and honestly believe FM should take a leaf out of its book re. oral commentary. I was fun and never mentioned a player's name so wasn't hard to code. Great commentator too, for a penalty: "Ho ho, the ice man cometh!"

[reeson@gmail.com]

My football management career actually started around 2001-2002 with a series from EA Sports call FA Premier League Manager. What is funny about that game is all that matter for a player was his skill which is rated out of 100. Player with highest skill at the start of the game is N0.9 who actually is Ronaldo at Inter, rated at 90+. Second best is Vilas at Real Madrid (who actually is Raul, also 90 something). These are the only two players whose names are fake. I assumed because of licensing issue, same reason why there is a Jens Mustermann in Bayern Munich for most of CM/FM series.

That series also got few cheat players , with Dimitar Balabonov & Marco Bergani being the most famous ones. Balabonov is a Russian centre-half who's skilled rated at 99 while Bergani is what To Madeira is to CM01/02. But unlike cheat players in CM, these two players are extremely expensive.It is also known for it biased towards English players. Joe Cole & David Dunn can easily match Zidane after a season .

This is the game that lure me into football management game. Then a friend introduce me to CM01/02 which I take a while to get into and never look back since. But that EA Sports series always hold a special place in my heart. Although after that version, all football management games made by EA were disasters to me.

[Deisler26]

Dennis Bergkamp at Inter!!

[AndyPass]

Going around to a mates house (many many years ago) and seeing the box for the original CM. I asked him whether we could play it and he admitted that he'd never loaded it. Instead of playing it, he gave it to me and I've never looked back!

[Roy Race 9]

got every version of the game:thup:

remember trying to play first game with all leagues loaded:eek:

and with a system running about a tenth of the ram I have now:o............I learned not to do that again:rolleyes:

[matt_forest]

A lad I played football with lent me a copy of CM 00/01 along with a few other games. I think I barely left the house that week as I was instantly addicted - everytime I see him around about town now I think to myself ''what if he never game me that f*****g game?!?!?!''

[kccircle]

Remember trying to guess the score from the instruction book to boot the game up

Also the vital third wage offer to secure a player on CM2 I think

Someone above posted about buying so and so on CM1 but I think the first CM had made up players as no licenses were purchased - i might be wrong however

[Svenne Poulsen fan]

CM93... oh that was the days... i was livning at a boarding school, and one of my mates had this game.. so we would sit 3-4 people playing - My mate would always be Man Utd, and he would hate if we took Blackburn, because they had Shearer. I also remember, in that version, Gary Lineker was almost impossible to buy.

[UELLfan]

CM93/94 wih EOS data for me.

A father of a friend worked for Zenith and Bull computers and traveled constantly to UK. Knowing we were hooked on PCFútbol on manager mode but ranted a lot about the fact that it was only one season long he looked for something that might appeal us in the UK. We got it as Christmass present, one copy each.

I remember the akwardness we felt because the game had no 2D match engine and because our english grasp wasn't as good as it's today I remember thinking Pace was Flair back then.

[mike8001]

First one on the PC was CM2, but I still remember playing a version on the Amiga. I shared a copy with my dad and brother, and so we had to book the Amiga in advance to start a new game as it would take an entire day to load a new game. Getting a score from the manual! I remember that too!

Finally, I remember that there weren't squad numbers on the Amiga, but there were real players. So I would number Andrei Konchesky as 14, then sub him on in the first minute so my Man Utd squad would be more lifelike.