Premier Manager

A text-based management sim that forced you to start with a team in the conference. Seriously. There was, in fairness, a cheat that made it impossible for you to lose, which meant you could whizz through a few seasons in a couple of hours and make it into Division 1, but it was painstaking and thoroughly boring work and it meant that you were sick of the sight of the MSDOS-style text flashing in front of your screen. There were a number of later revisions to the game that improved on the graphics and presumably the engine, but none of them got around that key problem that the game forces you to start in the Conference. Okay, we've all played Football Manager games where we've started with a local side that's way down the leagues and tried to get them up, but unless you support one of those teams, would you ever really choose to manage them first time out? How exciting can a management game be when you have no attachment whatsoever to the club or players you're working with, and know nothing at all about them - a problem that was much, much worse back in 1992 than it would be now, with no Wikipedia or YouTube or television coverage at all? Oh, and good luck winning a game while playing anything other than 4-4-2 without playing a tall striker. English football in the early '90s - apparently it was a pretty dark time.