Premier Manager 2

When someone mentioned football management simulation in the nineties, Premier Manager came to mind for plenty of people. This disk from 1993 was one of those that spun in every computer class and on home 486s. You didn't really play it—you simulated it with clicking and numbers.

It's a text-based simulator of the English Premier League where you take a team and try to get it to the top of the table. You pick players, manage their form and morale, buy and sell. Matches don't play out on screen—you just see numerical results, statistics, reports. You read who got injured, who scored a goal, and that's it. The rest is tactics based on the table and news.

Playing is boring waiting with a boring user interface. You don't have a reputation that influences the game. The menu is loud, incredibly slow, and confusing. You click and click, but nothing really gets under your skin. Player statuses are interchangeable, their names you don't want to know—they're just columns of numbers. The game doesn't give you a sense of control or victory. Matches play at night and you find out about them the next day through a report full of data you don't understand anyway.

That it was popular in the nineties, sure, that makes sense—it was simply the first thing of its kind you could play on a home computer without class or training. Today we see why the concept didn't stick. Simulation isn't fun without feedback. Without animation, without drama, without it being clear what's actually happening.

Who would look at Premier Manager 2 today? Maybe just to see where things started. It's not badly designed—it's just... empty. Don't play it to win, play it to understand why someone later made the management simulation concept better and better. Today you have Football Manager. This is its distant ancestor, lacking soul.