Championship Manager is a series of football management simulation video games, the first of which was released in 1992. The Championship Manager brand and game was conceived by brothers Paul and Oliver Collyer. In a scenario typical of many self-made game programming teams in the early days of the industry, the original Championship Manager game was written from their bedroom in Shropshire, England. The brothers subsequently founded a development company to take the game further, Sports Interactive, and moved to Islington, North London. Championship Manager became the most popular football management sim of the later 1990s and early 2000s, regularly setting sales records.
Sports Interactive Limited is a British video game developer based in London, best known for the Football Manager series. Founded by brothers Oliver and Paul Collyer in July 1994, the studio was acquired in 2006 by Sega, a Japanese video game publisher, and became part of Sega Europe. In addition to its work on Football Manager, the studio has also created a number of other sports-management simulations, including NHL Eastside Hockey Manager and Championship Manager Quiz, and is the former developer of Championship Manager.
Football Manager, also known as Worldwide Soccer Manager in North America from 2004 to 2008, is a series of football management simulation video games developed by British developer Sports Interactive and published by Sega. The game began its life in 1992 as Championship Manager. Following the break-up of their partnership with original publishers Eidos Interactive, triggered by the fiasco release of Championship Manager 4 in 2003, Sports Interactive lost the naming rights to Eidos Interactive but retained the game engine and data, and re-branded the game Football Manager with their new publisher Sega. The latest version of Football Manager, titled Football Manager 2024, was released on 6 November 2023. Football Manager 2024 is the most played title in series history, clocking 7 million players by the end of February 2024.
FIFA is a discontinued football video game franchise that was developed by EA Vancouver and EA Romania and published by EA Sports. As of 2011, the FIFA franchise has been localized into 18 languages and available in 51 countries. Listed in Guinness World Records as the best-selling sports video game franchise in the world, the FIFA series has sold over 325 million copies as of 2021. On 10 May 2022, it was announced that EA and FIFA's partnership of 30 years would come to an end upon the termination of their licensing agreement, making FIFA 23 the last entry to the franchise under the FIFA name. As a successor to the FIFA series, EA launched the EA Sports FC franchise, with EA Sports FC 24 being the first installment under the new name.
Sensible Soccer, often called Sensi, is an association football video game series which was popular in the early 1990s and which still retains a following. It was developed by Sensible Software and first released for Amiga and Atari ST computers in 1992 as well as for the IBM PC compatibles. The series was created by Jon Hare and Chris Yates, as a successor to their previous football game MicroProse Soccer (1988), which in turn was inspired by the arcade video game Tehkan World Cup (1985).
Premier Manager is a series of a football management simulation video games started in 1992. Published by Gremlin Interactive, it was first developed by Realms of Fantasy, later passed to Spanish company Dinamic Multimedia. The later games were later published and developed by Zoo Digital Publishing, who bought the rights from Infogrames and hired some members of the original Gremlin staff. The latest releases in the series were developed by Urbanscan Limited, a company established by Gremlin founder Ian Stewart.
The Kick Off franchise is a series of football simulation video games created by Dino Dini. Kick Off was published by Anil Gupta's publishing house Anco Software for the Atari ST and Commodore Amiga. First released in 1989, Kick Off was well-received and won awards.
Actua Sports is a sports video game series published by Gremlin Interactive which competed with Electronic Arts EA Sports label during the second half of the 1990s, until Gremlin was acquired by Infogrames. The term "Actua" is a play on Sega's line of "Virtua" titled games, which included Virtua Fighter, Virtua Racing and Virtua Striker.
Football Manager 2005, known as Worldwide Soccer Manager 2005 in North America, is a football management simulation video game for PC Windows and Macintosh (Mac) developed by Sports Interactive and published by Sega. It is the inaugural entry in the new Football Manager series, as well as the first game from Sports Interactive that was published in North America and was succeeded by Football Manager 2006. Commonly known as FM 2005, it competed directly with Championship Manager 5, the severely delayed and widely slated effort from Eidos Interactive-funded Beautiful Game Studios.
Championship Manager is the first game in the Championship Manager series of football management simulation video games. The game was released in September 1992 on Atari ST and Amiga, and ported to MS-DOS soon after. The game was written by Paul and Oliver Collyer, the co-founders of Sports Interactive.
Championship Manager 93/94 is the second installment in the Championship Manager series of football management simulation video games. It was released a year after the first Championship Manager.
Championship Manager 2 is a football management simulation video game in the Sports Interactive's Championship Manager series. It was released in September 1995 for PC. An Amiga version was released in 1997.
Championship Manager 97/98 is a game in the Championship Manager series of football management simulation video games. Based on the Championship Manager 2 game engine, it was developed by Sports Interactive and released in October 1997, exclusively for the PC, as the final game in the second generation of Championship Manager games.
Front Page Sports Football, first released in 1992, was the first in a series of American football simulations released by Sierra Online. The Front Page Sports series was notable for being one of the first football simulations to include a career mode where players aged and retired, and for the number of statistics it offered. The first game did not have a license from the NFL or its players association, meaning that all teams and players offered were fictional, but subsequent versions starting with Front Page Sports Football Pro '95 in 1995 included real NFL players and teams. New versions of the game were introduced each year, with the final one coming out in 1999, however, the 1999 version was recalled. A 2000 version was also planned, however it was cancelled shortly after the 1999 version recall.
Sensible World of Soccer is a 1994 football video game designed and developed by Sensible Software as the sequel to their 1992 game Sensible Soccer. It combines a 2D football game with a comprehensive manager mode. The game includes contemporary season data of professional football from around the world, with a total number of 1,500 teams and 27,000 players.
Premier Manager 3, also known as PM3, is a football management simulator video game for the Amiga and MS-DOS platforms. It was released in 1994 by Gremlin Interactive. The objective of the game is to manage a football club successfully within the top 5 divisions in the English football league system, starting from the 1994–95 football season. The game was re-released a year later to include updated teams and player details for the 1995–96 football season. Gremlin also released Premier Multi-Edit System, a software that allows the user to edit the statistics of football players and teams in Premier Manager 3 to their liking. Premier Manager 3 followed Premier Manager 2. There is an AGA version of Premier Manager 3 as well as a standard version for all Amigas.
Premier Manager is a football management simulator video game for the Amiga, Atari ST, Acorn Archimedes, and DOS platforms. It was released in 1992 by Gremlin Interactive. Later the game was converted to the Sega Mega Drive. While the Amiga, Atari, and MS-DOS versions were all similar, the Mega Drive version more closely resembled Premier Manager 2. The objective of the game is to manage a football club successfully within the top five divisions of the English league system. Premier Manager is the first game in the Premier Manager series.
Football Manager is a video game series published and developed by Addictive Games, the label set up by the game's creator Kevin Toms. The first game was released in 1982. The game started a whole new genre of computer game, the football management simulation. It was then ported to most home computers during the 1980s and spawned several sequels, starting with Football Manager 2 in 1988, followed by Football Manager World Cup Edition in 1990, and finally Football Manager 3 in 1992, the first without Toms' involvement. Football Manager 3 sold poorly, and as a result the series came to an end. The series was claimed to have sold over a million copies by 1992, and close to two million copies overall.
Championship Manager 2010 is an football management simulation video game developed by Beautiful Game Studios and published by Eidos Interactive. It was released for Microsoft Windows on 11 September 2009, making it the second Championship Manager game to be released alongside Football Manager since Championship Manager 2007. The Mac OS X version of the game was shipped from Virtual Programming on 23 November 2009.
The FIFAe World Cup, formerly the FIFA Interactive World Cup (FIWC) and the FIFA eWorld Cup, is an esports tournament series held by FIFA. From its inception until 2023, the tournaments were held on the latest incarnation of the FIFA association football video game series. The open qualifying format for the tournament allowed millions to compete in the initial online stages, which resulted in the FIWC being recognized as the largest online esports game by Guinness World Records. Due to FIFA and EA Sports parting ways after the release of FIFA 23 and EA launching their own esports circuit known as EA Sports FC Pro for the EA Sports FC series, the FIFAe World Cup has shifted to a football-focused tournament series, with Football Manager and Rocket League having tournaments in 2024.
