The ‘news centre’ on the ‘Organiser’ menu allows you to read through any important messages using your ‘Personal Digital Assistant’. Once that’s done, you’ll land at the first menu screen. You can change these responsibilities at any time.įinally, you’ll get to pick which club you will manage, along with a national team if you so wish. You can be a ‘Jack of All Trades’ and put yourself in charge of everything (from team management to finances and facilities), or you can delegate some duties to other staff members. Your last decisions before selecting your club involve setting your areas of responsibility. While Football Manager has a lower age limit to keep things realistic, this isn’t so strict in TCM, so using my actual birthdate would let me manage a Premier League team as a 14-year-old schoolboy (now there’s a sitcom idea)! You can add up to four managers, set the level of difficulty, and decide whether or not you want sackings to be possible. You then have three game modes to choose from: ‘Select A Club’ (does exactly what it says on the tin), ‘Play A Career’ (choose one of three randomly-selected clubs) or the brand-new ‘Found New Club’ mode (more on that later).Īs well as naming your manager, you can set their nationality, managerial attributes, and age. Several leagues (many of which are fully licensed) are available to be loaded, though if your computer’s not exactly a powerhouse, it may be best to pick only those you’re interested in managing in. Instead, you can immediately go into the process of setting up your game, albeit a process that takes much longer than the previous titles.
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It may come as a relief to find that there are no annoying FMV clips at start-up this time, apart from the usual EA Sports title and licensing credits. This is Total Club Manager… or, should I say, Total Club Advertising Board Negotiator. Incidentally, the manager on the German cover was Felix Magath, who would have a rather less impressive stay in west London a decade later. The self-proclaimed ‘Special One’ was at his peak back then, having just begun his glorious first stint at Chelsea after guiding Porto to Champions League glory.
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Many of the German devs (including former Ascaron head Gerald Köhler) were leading this project, which may explain why some of the English-language translations… aren’t quite perfect.Īdorning the English cover of the DVD case is none other than a fresh-faced José Mourinho. The studio is best-known for having produced every title in the behemoth FIFA franchise since FIFA 97. TCM 2005 was released by EA Sports in autumn 2004, and developed in Vancouver by EA Canada. That’s why I am today reviewing Total Club Manager 2005. While I remember enjoying Total Club Manager 2004 a lot more than its successor, I gave away my copy of that title some time ago.
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Total Club Manager 2003 came out in September 2002, but it was the later two games that brought me into this series as a teenager. Fussball Manager 2002 was released exclusively in Germany, and after receiving a positive reception, the green light was given to an international release the following season. That same year, EA poached several employees from German developers Ascaron (who created the Anstoss / On The Ball series in the 1990s) to make a potential successor. This era ended with the release of FA Premier League Football Manager 2002, in late 2001. That was definitely the case with FA Premier League Football Manager in the early 2000s, when EA exploited the PL’s licence for all its worth and forgot about producing quality games.
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Let’s find out if Total Club Manager 2005 really was as special as the man on its cover…Įlectronic Arts’ football management simulations have had more makeovers and brand changes than David Beckham, and they’ve typically tended to prioritise style over substance. This series ran from 1997 to 2013, and for today’s review, I’ve plucked out a game from the middle of this run. Throughout this month, I am picking out a number of titles from EA Sports’ opinion-splitting FIFA Manager series to see how they developed – for better or worse. This is the third part of my ‘EA MAY’ mini-series. It’s time for another ‘retro review’, where I find a vintage football management video game and see if it’s still as good (or bad) as I remember it.