Championship Manager

The release of Championship Manager '93 one year later built on the original game, ported to the C programming language, adding a real life player database and other features. By now Championship Manager had built a large following in the UK. This was reviewed many times around July 1993 from its release in around May 1993.

The Championship Manager '93/'94 engine was the basis for Championship Manager Italia. This was a version that simulated the top two divisions of Italian football (Serie A and Serie B). There was also a 1995 seasonal update released for this game.

The success of Championship Manager '93 spurred the release of two update disks, the first "contains every transfer, promotion, relegation and manager changes" for the beginning of the '93/'94 season which is known as "The 1993/94 Season Data Up-Date Disk". The update required the original Championship Manager '93 disks, three blank disks and the Championship Manager '93/'94 Season Data Up-Date Disk disk. This was released around September 1993.

The second of the two update disks is known as "End of 1994 Season Data Up-Date Disk." which "Includes all the latest player transfers. All the play-off results. End of season player stats" for the season 1993/1994. This was released around the end of season 1993/1994.

Championship Manager 96/97 was released in 1996 and was the first game to feature a non-British league as playable in the standard game - in this case the Italian leagues. It also included several rule changes to reflect the many changes going on in the real life world of football at that time, such as the Bosman ruling.

Released in 1997, this version of the game included nine leagues from around the world, three of which could be run simultaneously, new competition formats to follow those implemented in reality, and many more tactical options. The game remains popular amongst fans of the series, mainly for its simplicity compared to the huge, processor-intensive games that the series has since developed into.

This update saw the American Major League Soccer added to the list of playable leagues. It also added the World Club Championship to the equation.

Championship Manager: Season 99/00 received a "Gold" sales award from the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA),[5] indicating sales of at least 200,000 copies in the United Kingdom.[6]

Ten more playable leagues were introduced for this version, including Australia, Greece, Northern Ireland, Russia and Wales. It was also the first version of the game to come with a data editor - something which has been continued for all subsequent versions.

No new playable leagues were added to this version of Championship Manager (until a patch was later released that added South Korea's K-League to the game) allowing the developers to fine-tune the game's mechanics. Championship Manager 01/02 also contained the fictional players. The game was released as freeware in December 2008.[7]

In April 2002, Sports Interactive took the decision to move away from the PC platform for the first time since Championship Manager 2, producing a version of Championship Manager 01/02 for the Xbox. The success of the game saw a follow-up, Championship Manager 02/03 released seven months later.

This was the final Championship Manager game to be developed by Sports Interactive before they were forced to start a new franchise under the name Football Manager. Championship Manager 03/04 ironed out many of the problems seen in Championship Manager 4 and added new features and more new playable leagues to the game.

Championship Manager was released for the PlayStation Portable in December 2005. It was developed by Gusto Games and was the first game in the series to be released on a handheld system.[8][9]

This is the first online version of either Championship Manager or Football Manager, and was launched in UK on February 22, 2005.

The follow-up to Championship Manager 5 was released on PC on March 31, 2006 under the name Championship Manager 2006.

This version did little to reverse the growing gap in quality between Championship Manager and Football Manager. Basic features that had been a staple of the latter from over a decade, such as international management, were missing from the boxed version of Championship Manager 2006.

November 10, 2006, saw the arrival of Championship Manager 2006 (with Championship Manager 5 not being ported) on Macintosh. Championship Manager 2007 was planned for release on the Mac OS X platform in 2007.

Championship Manager 2007 was released on October 13, 2006. Sales continued to be lower than for Football Manager.

Championship Manager 2008 was released on 2 November 2008, with users able to play in a multiplayer mode, with more than one person on an account. Also, users can manage nations and can apply "Club Benefactor", which lets the user have more money, although these additions were added in the previous Championship Manager. Another feature is the addition of more leagues – for example, the Australian League – player tendencies and team talks.

Championship Manager 2010 was originally planned for release on 24 April 2009,[10] however Eidos Interactive released the game on September 11, 2009. A fully 3D match engine (using motion-captured movements to provide more than 500 animations per player) was implemented for the first time, and it was announced on February 6 that new English Leagues, the Isthmian, Southern and Northern Premier Leagues would be included in the game, as well as Croatian, Romanian, Irish and Northern Irish Leagues. The German league system was also restructured for this edition, including the 3. Liga and 3 Regionalliga.[11] The game was released 11 September with a demo version being available on the website from 14 August.

On 18 August a "pay what you want for Championship Manager 2010" promotion was announced whereby between 18 August and 10 September a digital copy of the game could be pre-ordered from the Championship Manager store and was available for download on the day of launch, 10 September. Each customer set the price they were willing to pay in addition to a transaction fee. [12]

A version of Championship Manager 2011 was released for iOS.[13] No later version had been released as of September 2014. It was followed by a period of three years with no Championship Manager games, although a new game, Championship Manager: World of Football (a collaboration between Beautiful Game Studios and Shanda Games), was announced by Square Enix in July 2011.[14]