Life's got no restart button . . .

A Wonderful Discovery!

On one of my many sojourns into webland recently, I stumbled across an absolute gem. A potent reminder of a wasted youth, to be frank. But before I get to that, allow me to digress.

I've always been drawn in by computer games. Always. They are an excellent form of entertainment and escapism, and I am constantly thrilled at seeing what is new in the virtual world. Admittedly, since my Xbox360 is still in Ireland, I have rather less access to it than I would prefer, but how and ever, I can still keep track to some degree. Despite what some people may think, they can be a social device through the use of multi-player options, be it on the single console or through LAN and/or Internet connections.

From a young age, I can remember playing a very, very basic Golf game that ran on an old MS Dos system. It had probably no more than 4 colors available to it (green, brown, blue and purple) and a very flat renditioning of several of the world's great golfing venues. On that format, I was unbeatable. The infamously difficult St. Andrews course was my bitch. Roadhole bunker on the 17th my ass! I was a virtual Tiger Woods. Before he was the big thing in golf, and sexual rehab clinics.

As I grew older, my gaming taste evolved somewhat. I got hold of a Super Nintendo at the age of 12 and finally got properly into console gaming. Sure, I played the standards like Super Mario World and Donkey Kong, and I dare not tell you how many countless hours our family spent playing the original (and in my humble opinion still the best) Super Mario Kart. But through my SNES, and later N64 days (I'm a loyal customer if you treat me right) I was always drawn to Sports Simulations, and I'd play them all. NBA Live, Madden, FIFA, ISS (later ProEv) - I played them all. And there wasn't one of them where I couldn't figure out a defensive glitch to exploit when the "game" was on the line.

Regardless, I did eventually make my way back to PC gaming. And I have to say, it was largely due to the fact that I discovered the wonderful world of Soccer Management games. The first was a game called Ultimate Soccer Manager, a wonderful little piece of software where you could actually bet against your own team and then employ your star striker as goalkeeper for a day. The sad thing was, this game consistantly crashed at approximately the 6 and 1/2 season mark. And from there, I moved on to the series that defined the genre - Championship Manager, beginning with the 01/02 edition. To put it mildly, I was a Management GOD, delivering successive league and European successes wherever I went.

Now, back to the wonderful discovery - the game itself was made available (clickity) for free download, and there is a wonderful group of people who dedicate themselves to "Keeping the Game alive" at champman0102.co.uk who will happily provide you with patches and updates and so on and so forth.

So at the weekend, I fired it up, and it quickly brought back memories. Armed with the latest patch (dated Feb 2010), I once more sallied forth into the great wide world of football management. Taking charge of my beloved Bohemian FC, I embarked on a mission to defend the League title, humiliate Shamrock Rovers at every possible opportunity and make some headway in Europe.

It would be hard to argue that my old skills came back to me a little bit too quickly. Racing out to an early lead in the league, my sights turned rapidly to European competition. Making the Champions League group stages clearly wasn't enough for a small group of upstart LoI footballers, for under my watchful eye, they saw off the challenges of Olympiakos and Wolfsburg, and sauntered into the final 16 stage of the tournament.

And now here is where I started to draw the line. For, without any new signings, the great Bohemian FC marched into the Bernabeu to face Real Madrid and came away with a 4-2 victory. I pretty much switched it off right there. Sure, Real had 2 players sent off, and yes, I have long prattled on about the virtues of League of Ireland football, but even still, is Anto Murphy capable of marking Kaka out of the game? It just came too easily to hold my interest.

By all means, go download it and use the built-in editor to make it that little bit more difficult. But it got me thinking that maybe I'd have been better off not spending a sizeable portion of a youthful summer in front of a PC marching Ireland to World Cup final glory over Uruguay. Or that maybe Doncaster Rovers didn't need to do back-to-back Champions League winning seasons. Maybe I'd have been better off going out and doing the coaching badges to get a start in the real-life game that I'm now looking to do this year.

If only I could reload the summer of 2002 and take a second shot at that life. But to be honest, even if I knew then what I know now, I'd probably still go down the same road, with a few minor changes perhaps. After all, don't some of us long for a chance to replay life and do it slightly better?

Well, in a way you can. It's called The Sims . . .