Championship Manager, 1992.

Text, numbers, and poor graphics. This doesn´t seem to be the recepie for succes in computergames. None the less this is what the football managing game-series Championship Manager lookes liked when the first game was released back in 92.

The game was written by the two brothers Paul and Oliver Collyer in their bedroom. They later went on to found the company Sports Interactive in 1994. The cover claimed that Championshipmanager were "The most realistic football management simulation ever" - but the first game was only a moderate succes, maybe because it didn´t have real player-names and only 20 teams in each division despite the 22 - 24 teams in real life.
The best new feature was the avarage rating for each player which made it easy to see how they performed during the season.

Later the game developed with a french, an Italien, and a norwiegian version - and with real player-names and when Championship manager 2 was realesed the game got improven graphics which held the series to more and more succes. By the 96/97 update it became possible to play up to 3 different countries in the same game. 

The last game in the series to be realesed in the 90s were Championships Manager 3 in 1999. This was later update both for the 1999/2000 season and for the 2000/2001 which by many is concidered to be the best game in the series. Championship Manager 00/01 version was also released as freeware in 2008 and has a wide fanbase whom is still playing the game and making season update of player names and transfers.