Championship Manager '94 (published by Domark) RRP œ9.99
        (Football sim data disk for PC, ST and Amiga)

    A short review by Richard Hewison, played on the IBM PC

As Championship Manager '94 is an update to Championship Manager
'93, I'm not going to go through all the features available in the
game. Piotr Tyminski covered these very well back in issue 26. I
have to admit here and now that this is easily the best football
management game I've ever played. Comprehensive doesn't even begin
to describe it.

Anyway, CM '94 is a data disk for CM '93 (so you need the latter
to be able to play it). The update includes all of the transfers
conducted during the close of season '92-'93 and the start of
season '93-'94 (back in August '93). It seems to be 98% accurate,
except that when I started, my beloved Luton Town team had gained
Perry Digweed (a Goal Keeper) and Kenny Sansom (a defender).
Admittedly, the latter had played a few games for the real reserve
team last season but he never actually signed for the club. The
reserve teams are not accurate (fictitious names are used) and the
foreign and non-league teams consist of 'No. 2' etc.

I have only a few small criticisms. It would be nice to be offered
the chance to make changes during the half time interval, instead
of having to start the second half and then initiate any
substitutions or tactical changes via the mouse. It would also be
nice to be able to print out not just the full seasons results,
but the final league table each season along with all the
historical points of note (biggest win, biggest defeat, highest
crowd etc) which are recorded and retained in the game. A chart
covering the last ten seasons would have been nice, giving you a
good 'at a glance' look at your progress as a manager so far. (The
Board of Directors give you a % rating which gives you some
indication on a season by season basis).

I did have a small problem installing the game. The CM '94
installation program only allows you to run it from drive A, yet
my 3.5" drive is drive B. Fortunately the DOS command SUBST
rescued me from this, but it's the first time I've come across a
PC program that makes such an assumption. I also couldn't adjust
the number of save games within the install procedure from 1
(although as it happens I only ever use 1 save anyway so no harm
was done).

In his review of the ST version, Piotr mentioned that it took
about 30 mins to generate the new data at the start of each
season. The PC version is much better by comparison, taking only
five minutes on my 33 mhz 386. There is quite a long gap at the
end of each match though (it feels like about 3 minutes but it's
probably only 90 seconds).

I'm sure you're all dying to know how I got on in the game. As a
veteran Football Manager player from the old BBC Model B days (I
completed 65 seasons in total back in the good old days!) I was
able to get to grips with the game quite quickly. I won the
Division 2 championship at my first attempt then struggled in
Division 1 for two seasons (finishing 15th and 13th) before
winning the Division 1 championship in my fourth season. I then
finished 11th in the Premier League and had managed to accumulate
nearly 1.5 million quid in the bank. It's a shame there are no
congratulation screens or tunes when you win promotion (except for
a small message from the board) but the feeling of achievement is
still very strong.

If you want to play a seriously comprehensive football management
game then I can strongly recommend Championship Manager '93 and
its data disk for the 93-94 season. I'll keep playing it until
they decide to give me the sack!










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