- Excel football manager game pro#
- Excel football manager game series#
- Excel football manager game tv#
Management features and player trading were boosted by the inclusion of a whopping 1500 teams and 27,000 players. You got the same fantastic arcade-oriented gameplay, but the title comprehensively acknowledged the rest of the world’s existence, with the kind of slavish devotion of a true footballing aficionado. It took everything that was great about Sensible Soccer and just ran with it. It couldn't last, of course - but boy was it fun while it did.Īlmost 25 years young, SWOS is still top of the league. You could waltz through five tackles, if you had a skillful enough player, but you couldn't get away with just running the ball into the net. You could score screamers from 40 yards or tap-ins after a goalmouth scramble. Not quite as frantically insane as Sensible Soccer, not quite as gloriously detailed as FIFA 18, but instead a wonderful mid-way between the two extremes. On the gameplay side, it was as fluid and playable as football games get. The Master League had by now developed into a proper four-division set-up, with promotion, relegation and a Champions League equivalent and there were even, finally, proper player names.
Excel football manager game series#
But that would be silly, so instead we've picked the probable highest point in a series of very high ones. Frankly, we could have had all of them in this list.
Excel football manager game pro#
We could have picked any of the four games from Pro Evo 2 to Pro Evo 5 and made a case for its inclusion. That its standards did eventually drop was inevitable, but it doesn't make the glory years from 2002-2005 any less special. Well, Pro Evolution Soccer managed the same feat. The Simpsons did that from about season 3 to season 9, for instance, but it's pretty rare. But then it does - for year after year after year.
Excel football manager game tv#
There are times in popular culture when a thing - band, TV series, game, whatever - reaches such a peak, you think it can't possibly stay there. But in truth ISS Pro Evolution was already creeping ahead of FIFA by this time it was more realistic yet also more playable - and that's a winning combination in any game. While the Master League was a great addition to the series, it would have meant nothing if the gameplay hadn't matched up to it. Instead, it gave you the chance to shape the team of your dreams, packing it with attacking midfielders if you chose, or instead making sure you had a Mourinho-solid defence. You could buy and sell players, but you used points earnt by winning games, rather than money, and there was none of the complicated day-to-day running of the club that you'd have to endure in Championship Manager. And it was here that it first appeared.Īlthough at this stage a relatively basic affair, the Pro Evo Master League still bolted a decent career sim on to an already superb football game. Let the arguments begin.Īh, the Master League: just how many hours have we spent cocooned in your comforting embrace, steadily building up a team of honest pros and turning them into world beaters? Probably several thousand - and that's no exaggeration. So, whether you agree or disagree with our list, we hope it'll spark plenty of memories. Arguments raged across the office - FIFA or Pro Evo? Sensi or Kick Off? - and that's exactly as it should be. And game makers soon realised they were on to something good when they created the first footie sims, because in no time they were flying off the shelf.Īs a result, there have been hundreds of football games over the years - so man y, in fact, that narrowing down our selection to a mere 25 titles was near impossible. Seriously - we've shed real tears at a line of text on a screen describing how the opposition stick figure has just put us out of the cup.īut then that's football: it has the power to reduce otherwise sensible people to mere shells of their former selves. It's a sad fact that most of us won't ever be any good at football, but the best games can take you into a fantasy world in which you're a world beater.Īmazingly, that applies w hether you're controlling a stick figure on an 8-bit computer or a fully realised 3D model with ultra-realistic stubble on a PS5.