Championship Manager 2

Championship Manager 2
Developer(s)	PC - Sports Interactive, Amiga - Sterling Games Software Ltd
Publisher(s)	Eidos Interactive
Designer(s)	Paul Collyer, Oliver Collyer
Platform(s)	PC, Amiga
Release date(s)	PC - September 22, 1995, Amiga - 1997
Genre(s)	Sports
Mode(s)	Single player, hotseat-multiplayer
Rating(s)	ELSPA: 3+
Media	CD-ROM
System requirements	486 SX or better, 8MB RAM, 2x speed CD-ROM drive
Input methods	Mouse & keyboard

Championship Manager 2 is a football management computer game in the Sports Interactive's Championship Manager series. It was released in September 1995 for PC - it was originally due to be released much earlier but the release date slipped several times as the developers refused to ship the game before it was completely ready. The Amiga release of CM2 was developed by Sterling Games, making CM2 the first game in the Championship Manager series to not be developed by Sports Interactive, who felt that the system was not capable of running the game to a satisfactory standard. The Amiga version was very slow to run, lacked features (notable ones include the Scottish League, international management, player histories and backgrounds), it could not be installed to a hard drive, received exceptionally poor reviews (including 12% from Amiga Format) and was repeatedly delayed, postponing the release until 1997.

New features

CM2 was quite a leap forward, in terms of graphics, from previous versions. The game now had SVGA graphics and photorealistic background pictures. Possibly the most notable new feature was the one which is widely regarded as a big mistake^{[citation needed]} - the audio commentary engine. As well as the traditional text-based match commentary, there was also optional voice commentary, provided by famous British football commentator Clive Tyldesley. The major criticism^{[citation needed]} of this was that there were not enough comments and it quickly got stale and repetitive. Also, to use the audio commentary the games had to be "viewed" at a very slow speed.

Another milestone was the inclusion of playable Scottish leagues, albeit only in the PC version. For the first time in the series there was a selection of leagues to choose from at the start of the game - only one could be run at a time, however.

Gameplay

In terms of the underlying gameplay, not a great deal had been changed since the original CM. The look and feel had been improved but it was still very much a text-based, menu-driven game and the user interface was almost identical to previous games, albeit at a much higher resolution.

European league versions

Two new versions of Championship Manager 2 were later released allowing users to play leagues from across Europe. One version contained the Spanish, Belgian and Dutch leagues, the other contained French, German and Italian leagues. Only one league could be run at a time but this was still a big milestone for the series and signalled the intent of Sports Interactive to expand the CM universe across the globe.

Trivia

• This game started the long standing tradition for the box art in the CM series - a simple picture of a football and the title large across the top. This tradition still continues to the present version on the game, Championship Manager 2008.

• If an offer of £20m was made for a player, and the offer was immediately changed to a free transfer, the initial offer would be accepted but, assuming contract negotiations were successful, the player would be signed for free.

See also

• Championship Manager series
• Football Manager

External links

• Official Championship Manager website
• Championship Manager 2 at MobyGames
• - Information for the Amiga Version of CM2 and CM2 96/97