Your Personal Text Sim History

[Marc Vaughan]

My first text sim - wasn't a text sim per-se, it was a subbuteo* board game which I'd customized with RPG rules and hand written stats on the players.

I played games (largely against myself if I couldn't sucker friends into taking part) - I worked out means for players improving/aging and suchlike and starting off with a 4 team league over the course of several seasons ended up with two divisions of 5 each.

From that I played more computer sims of all sports than is entirely sensible - starting with the original Football Manager, via. Football Director etc. and eventually leading to me working on sims myself.

Non-soccer sims I recall playing include FOF, Fast Break Basketball, World Championship Boxing Manager (the chap who made this used to help write the manuals for the first few CM games - random trivia, I spent a fair bit of time discussing its development with him back in the day), OOTP, Eastside Hockey Manager, Head Coach (American Football sim), Cricket Coach ... there are more apologies to those I've missed.

I tend to try and pick up and at least take a quick look at any sim (especially soccer based ones) which is released - I find playing other peoples games often sparks ideas on possible ways to improve my own.

*A VERY english game - Subbuteo - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Marc Vaughan]

Originally Posted by Apathetic Lurker

Speaking of great games, anyone know if SAAP is still being sold somewhere? I tried but its telling me "page not found"..

I haven't seen Mac around online in years - we used to have some very interesting discussions on sims and where they are/should be heading ... he had a unique skew on such things which while being wholly different to my own was interesting and made for a unique game experience.

I was expecting Saap to pop up on the mobile platforms as I'd have thought that would have been a great way for him to expand his audience somewhat from its prior 'niche' status.

[Cork]

Pro Football
-XOR NFL Football
-Front Page Football Series

Baseball
-Diamond Mind
-OOTP

Pro Basketball
-None yet.

College Basketball
-The college basketball game before the DDS version. I can't remember the games name.

College Football
-Bowl Bound

Soccer
-None yet.

Hockey
-Hockey League Simulator
-Eastside Hockey Manager

Boxing
-Title Bout

[Suburban Rhythm]

Like a few others, my first text sim wasn't truly a text similar, but sort of homemade.

It was a football game I bought on the cheap rack at Electronics Boutique. I can still picture it: 5.25" floppy disk with a gold label.

You could play human vs human, human vs computer, or computer vs computer.

Offense had plays. 4 runs- dive play, off tackle, sweep, and reverse. 3 passes- screen, play action, and bomb. Then there was FG, punt, and the ever popular "Razzle dazzle".

Defenses could choose inside run D, outside run D. Pass coverage short, pass coverage deep. And blitz. And kick return and kick block for special teams.

After playing against the computer for awhile I created a league of fictional teams. I know I specifically picked cities I recognized without NFL teams. I remember the Hershey Chocolates, Las Vegas Gamblers and Honolulu Waves.

Guessing this occurred around 1988-90 span. About 10 years ago, clearing a bunch of junk from my parents house, I found the notebook filled with 30 years or so of seasonal records, all time games, etc.

I love now to find scraps of paper my son leaves behind. He's a hockey nut, and I'll catch him often doing his own play by play for made up games between his mini hockey figures. Random names like Cobras vs Tigers, complete with box scores.

[Alf]

Funny that I didn't see this topic before but here is my take

Football
Football Manager (1982 series) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



Yes, that is the original Football Manager back in the early 80s.

Various
Played also a lot of dice and paper in-house games for Football and Formula 1 racing.

American Football
Front Page Sports Football - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Can't remember which version I initially played, but we even eneded up playing in a league with 4-5 friends living together helps.

Memories

[FBPro]

Baseball
OOTP
Diamond Mind
MVP
MLB The Show
APBA
SOM
PureSim

Football
FOF
Front Page Football
2nd and Ten
Madden
TCY
Bowl Bound

Soccer
FM
CM
Fifa

Hoops
NBA Live

The above lists are only the beginnings of my continual journey....

[Groundhog]

My first ever text sim was a basketball BBS game. It was a career sim but the BBS I found it on hadn't registered so it was only one season. I downloaded the trial and figured out how to edit the files to change player names and ratings and geekily enough came up with my own multi-season manual progression/draft etc. I must have been around 12 or 13 at the time.

Second sim was Jumpshot Basketball. Played the heck out of this for years.

I played a text wrestling sim that was pretty great. You could create fighters from scratch, give them abilities and special moves, then fight in tournaments etc. Wish I could remember the name.

Next up was Arlie's Coaching A Dynasty. I think I tried FOF around this time too.

Fastbreak Basketball finally clicked with me - it was the version that Brian released on disc as well, that had news articles, etc.

Fastbreak College Basketball would've been next, followed by Bowl Bound College Football, then the Wolverine Studios hoops games, which never really clicked with me.