Ultimate Soccer Manager (0)

Overview

Ultimate soccer manager is a football management title that came to prominance in 1995. It was developed by Impressions games and published by Sierra Online. The title was a more light hearted and less hardcore alternative to the championship manager series at the time although it did contain some extra features over its competitor that lead to it still being talked about today.

Features

Stadium Development

It was possible in the game to totally redevelop your stadium as long as you had the cash to pay. It was also the only football management title to date in which your stadium, or more accurately a stand of your stadium could burn down, leading to reduced attendances until the stand could be redeveloped. Other stadium options included the ability to set the prices and type of confectionary sold at the stadium as well as setting ticket prices

Bribery

Bribery was also an option in the game. It was possible to attempt to bribe the referee into helping your team win a game thought this often led to you being caught and sacked so a save game before the bribery attempt was a must.

Teletext

One of the most distinct features of the game was the ingame use of teletext. Teletext was used by you the manager to check football results league tables and other footballing news. although it seems outdated now, at the time this was a quirky way of accessing information that mirrored real life as the internet was not as widely accessible as it is today.

Transfers

Transfers in Ultimate Soccer Manager were staggeringly easy. As long as you had the funds and the player was not in the league above you transfers were generally accepted. Transfers also happened immediatly and there was no ongoing negotiations like you see in modern football management titles.

Match engine
The match engine was a simplistic top down match engine that enabled the player to see his matches and tactics being played out with the aim of spotting tactical errors. In reality the match engine was just a collection of pre defined routines but there was a sufficient amount of them to make it unnoticeable.

Future

Ultimate Soccer Manager has been rumored to be a future XBLA release although nothing has been mentioned since the initial rumor.