Kevin Toms Blog » The 80s

30 years ago- Football Manager packaging – why the picture (beard!)?

Kevin Toms — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 12:16:31 +0000

Football Manager ZX81 packaging

This packaging was designed by me for when the game was accepted into WH Smith for sale. The picture of the cup with the two players around it came out of my imagination as did the Addictive logo with the lightning bolt and the choice of red and yellow. I chose the typeface for “Football Manager” and just to finish it off I put my picture on the cover. (Lol!)

Although putting my picture on as author of the game was novel in games I didn’t see it that way. It’s common to put the author on music and books because there is a recognised style of work and the publisher is less important than the creatives making the product.

I saw games as the same, and I think only corporate control of creatives has made it less common in games.

30 years ago – BBC Football Manager in the making

Kevin Toms — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 07:45:41 +0000

The BBC micro had an interesting difference. Not enough memory for Football Manager except in mode 7 Teletext mode. But the only graphics in mode 7 of use were characters made of 2 by 3 block pixels. Many Teletext images were made out of these blocky characters. But on the BBC, to create the match action, that was all there was to work with. I was proud of designing players out of this that when they moved across the screen still looked like running footballers despite the low resolution. The image doesn’t fully show it but those who had the BBC micro version will remember!

Football Manager BBC match action!!

30 Years ago Football Manager- weaving the gameplay

Kevin Toms — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 11:56:24 +0000

Not easy to describe this. But it was important. Important to making it work, to making it succeed. I decided the setting, the football league, 4 divisions, plus a knockout cup, the FA Cup. I decided on what attributes your players would have. I decided what you could control. Then I pieced together the game balance. The balance between randomness and control, between complexity and ease of use. Various moving(mathematically) components interacting, finding the way to make it fun and easy but give the game plenty or range, so it did not repeat, was never predictable. And then it had to fit within the programming environment I had, and the small amount of memory.

It took a year to make.

30 years ago Football Manager – making stick men footballers!

Kevin Toms — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 08:22:45 +0000

30 years ago, the ZX81 game was doing well, the TRS80 Football Manager not so much. Then Sinclair came out with the Spectrum. So, I spent a busy couple of months enhancing the game. And one of the things I decided to do was add goal mouth action. So I got busy designing animated footballers on a 3D view of the football pitch. These footballers were stick men graphics, but they worked:

I built intelligence into their behaviour. It was simple but effective. Within the limitations, there was an infinite variety of things that could happen, so it kept the excitement, the uncertainty during the match.

Stick men graphics I created for Spectrum Football Manage

30 years on – the new Football Manager type game from me.

Kevin Toms — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 09:03:41 +0000

So what was it that made the original Football Manager catch on so well, and what can I do now? Well since I wrote it, I know a lot about what made the original tick. I know I made it very playable, very enjoyable, and it had a pace that kept people playing it. I know this because it was all deliberate. I was not new to programming, it was my profession, I was not new to games design- I had been inventing games, both board games, and ball games for years. So there was no random chance about what I put together.

When you are a programmer AND a games designer, you are in the best position to tune and design the game for sheer playability. There are no communication issues in the way. But, there is only you.

So now, I am completing my new Football Manager type game for the iPhone (name suggestions always welcome!). On the iPhone, once more I am free, just like 30 years ago to program and design the entire game myself. So, if I have my way, it will have my strengths in design- simple to learn, fun, very playable. And of course my weaknesses- not flash on presentation lol!

I am close now, I am having fun, creating fun, and that is the way it should be. I will be very happy when the game is (soon) ready for release and I can talk about it and discuss what I have created.

30 years ago – I wrote Football Manager

Kevin Toms — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 11:12:36 +0000

So I launched it on to the market in January 1982. But before that of course, I wrote it. I bought a Video Genie to write it on. The Video Genie was a Tandy TRS80 clone.

The computer Football Manager was written on.

It was cheaper, but still expensive for me at the time. But, I believed that I would be successful with the game. Overall it was about a year of writing the game.

The game had its roots in many board game versions I had written, but at this time I was a professional computer programmer by day, so I knew what I was doing on the Video Genie. I chose to use the built in Basic because it was much better suited to a strategy game than the limitations of Assembler.

Just before going to launch, the ZX81 came out, and I realised the potential market it was creating with its low price, so I converted the game to run on the ZX81 too.

Football Manager was converted by me to run on this

That, was a very worthwhile decision!! – The sales on the ZX81 proved to be 100 times what they were on the TRS80/Video Genie. If I had only launched on that, the whole thing would not have got off the ground as I would have lost money on every advert placed.

So the ZX81 was critical to the early success.

30 YEARS SINCE I LAUNCHED FOOTBALL MANAGER

Kevin Toms — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 21:16:10 +0000

It’s worth putting that headline in caps. It was January 1982 that the first advert for Football Manager (my original game) appeared on the newstands in Computer and Video Games magazine. 30 years on, that foundation game has grown into a genre of computer games. My original game was very playable, and very popular, spending years high in the Gallup charts of the time. I still hear regularly from people who loved and still love playing it. I am proud of what I created.

I believe I can still write good enjoyable games and soon I will be launching a new Football Manager type game for the iPhone.

The first ever advert for Football Manager by Kevin Toms

I thought it would be nice to do 2 things, show a copy of the original ad-

And to highlight a link to the pdf of the magazine here.

The magazine is the February 1982 issue but it was published in January 1982, so that is the first advert for Football Manager, 30 years ago. A life changing moment for me!

People ask me about Football Manager animation..

Kevin Toms — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 09:05:53 +0000

You know, the little stick men running around in the original Football Manager on the Spectrum. Sometimes people ask if the animation was a fixed set, or even believe it was. Well no, it wasn’t, there was an infinite number of possibilities of what could happen and the individual players were making decisions moment by moment what to do next. I did that deliberately so you would be in suspense.

Some people believed you could predict what was going to happen but the program code did not do that. Of course animation was limited in those days, and it was an add on to a strategy game to spice it up more. So, in some ways it wasn’t sophisticated. But within the memory limitations it did plenty. So I am proud of the design and code especially for it’s impact on the fun of the game.

80s Computer Games

Kevin Toms — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 17:14:12 +0000

Lots of people are interested in the era I was part of, the 80s when the games industry was so new, not even a retail outlet to be found at first. It was a great time, nobody knew what they were doing, just learning as they go, and the business men were also coders.

A time never repeated, great to be there.

My iPhone/iPad Football Manager Game 41 – More on it

Kevin Toms — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 07:30:33 +0000

Next week I will be developing the game further, I am looking forward to it. Whilst in the UK, it’s been good to meet a number of former players too, and reconnect with those times. Seeing plenty of old computers at the Vintage Computer Club was also quite nostalgic. Time just drops away looking at an old BBC or Spectrum. I was present when a lovely old couple brought in a perfect looking BBC micro which had been carefully preserved by them and cared for. It was like somebody bringing something onto the antiques road show!