The scene. 1983 – some 10 years before the last story I wrote about playing Syndicate in 1993, a few minutes ago. Coincidence weirdly.
During lunch breaks at school, we used to go back to my friend’s house to play Football Manager on his ZX Spectrum. Now, Football Manager back in the day was not the huge spreadsheet sim it is today, but at the time, it felt like you were in charge of a real team and its highs and lows.
It then came out on the Amstrad CPC464, the computer we had in our household, and we religiously played it every Sunday with a friend who came around. It’s a gaming memory of mine when we got to a cup final and missed a chance to equalise in the last minute. I remember our friend just shouting, “nooooo and he had his head in his hands.” It was genuine heartbreak.
To look at Football Manager today, you would think we were insane, but those early days of football management were captivating. The guy who designed the original Football Manager, before Sega and SI came and took the name, was a chap called Kevin Toms, who believes there is still room for the simplicity of the 8-bit days when it comes to management.
To prove it, Kevin Toms’ Football Star Manager is arriving on Steam on August 14th. The rather clumsy title seems enough to circumnavigate any IP issues, and you can wishlist the game now on Steam.
We would give you the system requirements, but as you can see from the image below, this is not going to tax your GPU. Don’t let that fool you, though. I’ll be all in on this one in a fortnight’s time.
Football Star Manager Features
- Classic simplicity with subtle depth: Manage your club across four divisions, with promotion, relegation, domestic cups, and European cup competitions. There’s a transfer market, tactics to set, player fitness-wise decisions, and club finances to balance — all designed to be quick to learn but hard to put down.
- Match highlights: Stylised, text and graphic match highlights reminiscent of the original 8-bit title. It’s charming, easy to follow, and still engaging.
- Customisation & roster controls: Rename teams, edit kits, or retitle players. Player ratings consist of skill, fitness, and age. Aged out players retire or decline, while younger talent can improve season by season.
- Strategic decisions: Purchase loans to fund signings, manage morale boosts (twice per season to lift spirit), bid on players with risk/reward valuation, and navigate transfer valuations that fluctuate with division status.
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