Championship Manager 01/02

Keeping the classic alive

Championship Manager 01/02

The most popular game from the old Championship Manager series has got to be Championship Manager 01/02.

This game was released before even the 2D match engine was a thing. This is old school Championship Manager the way it was intended, before they brought along morale issues, the 3D match engine, and all the stuff that goes along with it.

There’s an entire forum dedicated to the game — which, by the way, was released as freeware not long ago. As long as you apply the proper patches, you can play Championship Manager 01/02 with the latest updated rosters, and will likely be able to do so for the foreseeable future.

The funny thing is that I don’t think anybody could have seen this coming.

Championship Manager 01/02 was originally released in mid-October 2001. PCZone magazine, which we’ve been quoting a lot recently, gave the game this preview in its October 2001 issue:

An interesting thing to note here is that the new features of the game weren’t really apparent until the reviewer had spent considerable time playing.

That was also evident in the full review published in November 2001:

The most interesting thing to note here is how similar this is to reviews I’ve read of more recent Football Manager games. You start off thinking that nothing has changed, you think that there isn’t much to the game — and then you get into it, slowly but surely, only to find yourself completely addicted.

And some people are so hooked on this game that they’re still playing it, almost 25 years later.