Football Manager games on the Android platform

UPDATE on 15th April 2012!! – A month after I wrote this, Sports Interactive announced they were releasing FM Handheld for Android! I’ve not downloaded it yet, but can’t wait to try it.  According to the Google Play, (The official Android Market) it will work on my phone, so will purchase it in the next week or two and try it out.  The rest of this article remains for posterity.

I previously said I’m not a huge fan of loading up my smartphones with games. But, one thing I’ve often looked for are Android versions of games I’ve grown up with, particularly strategy games and simulations. Games like Civilization, Colonization, Frontier: Elite 2, and perhaps the type of game that has eaten up most of my free time for the past 20 years, Football management games.

I’ve played a lot through the years, starting with the original Kevin Toms’ Football Manager, first released for the Spectrum ZX81, 30 years ago, and many others through the years on Commodore 64s, Amigas, Playstations and PCs. I also remember playing Match of the Day, On The Ball, Premier Manager, Tracksuit Manager, Ultimate Soccer Manager, Tactical Manager, Player Manager and Sensible World of Soccer. There are probably even more that I’ve forgotten, but one game that stands head and shoulders above all others as the daddy of management games is the Collyer Brothers/Sports Interactive series, Football Manager (nee Championship Manager). Starting with CM ’93, I’ve played every version since then, except for I think, CM2, which I think was the reason I bought a PC.

So, if there was one type of game that I would love to put on my android phone, it’d be a football management sim. Unfortunately having looked through the Android app market, and reading on forums, it seems there is not one stand-out management game available. Certainly, there are games in that genre available, but it seems there is no candidate that jumps out ahead of the others. They are all distinctly average.

So it was with great pleasure that I found out this morning that Kevin Toms is working on a new Football Management game. The original, iconic, bearded father of football management sims, back doing what he arguably does best. Not only that, but he intends to bring it to the Android platform, once he completes the iPhone/iPad version, according to the comment on that post.

For now, I’m going to have to either install a GBA emulator and play Premier Manager 2005, or, if I can get the screen resolution and scaling right, leave my home PC on with FM12 running on it, then remote connect to it. Thankfully my commute is above ground all the way, so other than a drop in connection when reaching Liverpool Street station, I should be able to spend most of my journey connected to my home PC and playing FM12. I just hope don’t suffer a drop in my internet connection during a match!