Championship Manager | |
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Genre(s) | Sports management |
Creator(s) | Collyer brothers |
Platform(s) | Amiga, Atari ST, DOS, Windows, Mac OS, Xbox, PlayStation, PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, Xbox 360 |
First release | Championship Manager (1992) |
Latest release | Championship Manager 17 (2016) |
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.[1] 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.[2]
In 2003, Sports Interactive split with Eidos, the publishers of Championship Manager.[3] Sports Interactive retained the game's database and match engine, producing a new game based on these titled Football Manager. Eidos retained the name and interface, with Beautiful Game Studios taking over the development of Championship Manager. Although the two series initially ran alongside one another, the sales of Championship Manager began to fall below those of Football Manager. The most recent full version of Championship Manager was Championship Manager 2010, with an iOS mobile game in 2011 the latest game to date released by Eidos. Square Enix Europe, owners of the brand after purchasing Eidos, revived Championship Manager under the title of Champ Man in 2013. They have released five games for iOS and Android handheld systems and mobile phones since then.[4]