At the start of 1990 the first version of the game was released as 'Football Crazy' (inspired from the song lyrics ''Football Crazy, Football Mad....''). At this time it was the most advanced football management game available on a computer because it was solely written for the Atari ST, the latest affordable 16 bit home computer. A Commodore Amiga conversion was also quickly released. The name of the game changed to Football Masters at the start of the next football season along with many improvements and each and every year thereafter a new improved version was released until in 1997 when it changed to the PC format and sold via retailers. The improved capability of PC allowed us to include 10 fully translated languages and new international collaborations meant there were full localised releases in Germany (as Club Manager), Italy (Campioni) and Netherlands.
In 1998 after almost 10 years of sole development Football Masters underwent a major rewrite by a development team. The game match routine was totally rewritten by Jim Humphries, tactical match options were added in anticipation of a future MMOG (massive multiplayer online game) type version, international management was added, major artistic improvements were done by graphic designers, a major increase in researching team details and collating player statistics was also needed. At it's peak there were 10 employees and eventually the new version was released for the 2002-3 season but unfortunately an alternative business idea Simon Rush pursued at the same time as this overhaul started had become a major success and therefore Football Masters was put into hibernation.
We have since often been contacted by several fans of the early game versions to ask if or how they can play such games on their current PC. So here are some instructions from a guy called Arne that contacted us from Netherlands to ask if Simon Rush would meet his group of mates that still 30 years later regularly got together to play Football Masters:-
''What you need for playing Football Masters with emulator is:- UAE for pc, UAE4droid on mobile. We tried Apple too, but that doesn't seem to work. Newer Android versions are also difficult. - download an adf file, we use v2.08: https://www.oldgamesfinder.com/?m=2&q=Football Masters - download a rom file: kickstart v3.1: we used Romcollector, but there are other sites too.
After you startup UAE first Configure/choose the Rom file and the adf file in the first disk slot.
Good luck!''
We have yet to test this but a provisional check looks like it might need a fair bit of effort to implement. More detail to follow soon.
It is very satisfying to receive ''fan mail'', especially when the original game is over 30 years old! In fact, fan mail received regarding the first public domain release of the originating game, called Football 88, encouraged the production of the commercial version. There are now plans to get Football Masters running as a massive multiplayer online game (MMOG) so if you are interested in such a release please email to show your interest.