Football Manager 2006 goes gold!

Chris Pickering

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Blatant copy and pasting of a press release, but hey ho!


Football Manager 2006 PC/Mac To Hit Shelves October 21st, Final Features and Gold Demo Details Announced!


LONDON, UK - September 29th, 2005 – SEGA and Sports Interactive are today proud to announce the new release date for the next instalment in the genre-defining Football Manager series. SI and SEGA are now delighted to confirm that Football Manager 2006 for PC and Mac has today gone into production and is set to hit the streets across Europe* on October 21st, 2005.

Christmas really has come early for FM fans as news of the release date arrives on the same day that SI and SEGA confirm that the Gold Demo is now available for download. By visiting http://www.sigames.com fans will be able to download and freely play a half season of the game and at last find out about the raft of improvements that SI have brought in over the summer!

Two versions of the demo will be available for download, catering for all tastes. The “vanilla” demo is a lightweight file for those that don’t have quick net connection, including as it does the English and Scottish leagues, with English language only. The “strawberry” demo brings with it 200Meg worth of depth to your gaming pleasure with 8 languages and a massive 16 leagues to try out.

“We can’t wait to see the reaction of the Football Manager community to Football Manager 2006, having hit our optimum release date, rather than the previous announced estimated date” commented Miles Jacobson, Managing Director of Sports Interactive. “The team at SI have worked amazingly hard this year to improve on Football Manager 2005 and we are all delighted with the outcome. We all look forward to losing many hours playing the game properly, rather than testing it!”

The new set of features being announced today are the final selection being implemented into this year’s game. Football Manager 2006 can now reveal that it boasts a massive 34 NEW ANNOUNCED FEATURES on top of last year’s version and offers a whole host of surprises for consumers whilst exploring the FM world. As well as new features, Sports Interactive have in excess of 270,000 players and staff in game with more than 5,000 playable teams in 50 countries leagues.

FINAL FOOTBALL MANAGER 2006 PC/MAC FEATURES:

• FM06 Is Quicker To Set Up! – Creating new games and loading times are now significantly reduced, despite the huge level of detail remaining.
• Tutorial – For those who have found previous SI games a bit daunting they will be happy to know that a huge 30,000-word tutorial has now been implemented. Each screen has it’s own tutorial with hyperlinks to any area of the game you need help with.
• Quick Flicks – SI have introduced quick flicks at the top of the screen, this makes browsing easier around the football gaming world.
• Internet Play Improvements - Packet size has been optimised on screens with a large bandwidth requirement in order to improve network play.
• Graphical Attributes – If all these numbers seem too much then why not use bar graphs instead. A quick change in the preferences section means your player’s stats will be shown in graphics, rather than numerically.
• New Comparison Screen – Comparing two players has never looked better.
• Fair Play – Manage your team well by reducing your amount of bookings and for those teams in the top flight who play fair, extra places will become available in continental competitions.
• Finance Graphs – In one user-friendly overall analysis, tracking your finances is now much easier with finance graphs.
• Height & Weight – Adding to an already impressive database of player’s stats, Sports Interactive have now introduced player’s heights and weights for the first time.
• Tactic Change Panel – This is an easier way to edit your whole teams individual tactics rather than having to change each player separately.
• Saved Game Compression – Running out of disk space? Saved game compression makes your saved game…smaller!
• New Match Engine Composition – For the first time dugouts now appear in Football Manager 2006. Not only this but technical areas and a small icon when a player has a minor injury all make your management experience more authentic.
• New skins! - Thanks to Kev Radestock (Chameleon) & Gavin Thomson (Cappuccino) from the Sports Interactive community, we are proud to present the 2006 versions of the their hugely popular skins in the box of Football Manager 2006.



Now to check my email every 15mins or so for nws of my review copy which I'm hoping will be available vry soon indeed! Nice of them to save it for going gold til my birthday too ;)
 
Looking forward to the review of this :) Looks like it should be a good game!
 
Had myself a fair wealth of time with the gold demo so far, and it's more or less merely a tweaked version of FM05. That is, until you've got into a match situation. The matches themselves feel so much more organic, unlike before where you'd be able to really predict whats about to 'go down', this time there's no such problem.
 
Thought I'd up this since release date is in a mere few days time.

I've decided to start a new game on the Gold demo (though I'm expecting full review code tomorrow, so a review should be fairly soon :)) with my beloved Sheffield Wednesday. Realising that it's up front where my main faults lie, I signed the aging Dion Dublin on a free transfer, and partnered him with David Graham up front. I've proved myself to be quite a Kevin Keegen style manager, with 28 scored, and 31 conceded in a mere 15 league games so far!

Anyway, last night I managed to most exciting and intense managerial gaming experience I've ever had the pleasure to play! I'm away to a lowly Ipswich Town, expecting to come away with a point at worst. Things start off very poorly indeed with my left back Hills sent off for a professional foul with only 6 mins on the clock. However, with the defence shored up with the introduction of Lee Bullen, and Rocastle providing a fantastic marking job on McPhail, things are a bit scrappy. But, a break from midfield by Chris Brunt brings about a goal after 20 mins from Dion Dublin, to give me a 1-0 lead, but still down to 10 men. After that, it's a total bombardment from Ipswich as they put me under some incredibly intense pressure. Not only does my main central defender find himself needing to go off injured, by my keeper also suffers from a poor ariel challenge and requires a bit of attention. But despite everything Ipswich could throw at me, a combination of luck,hard work (helped out by a half time team talk to gee the players up) and the 'quick tactics' allowing me to make sure Ipswich's danger men are kept under wraps, I manage to come away with a single goal victory :)

Needless to say, I'm loving this game!
 
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