Championship Manager 3 is a game in the Championship Manager series

Championship Manager series

The Championship Manager series is a series of British football-management simulation computer games, the first of which was released in 1992.The Championship Manager brand and game was conceived by two brothers: Paul and Oliver Collyer...

 or football management computer games, the first in the third generation of the series. It was developed by Sports Interactive and released in the Spring of 1999, exclusively for the PC

Personal computer

A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...

.

New features

Many new features were added for this generation of CM games, mainly consisting of graphical/visual changes, gameplay changes, and technical changes to the way the game ran and processed information.

Graphical

The most immediately striking feature of Championship Manager 3 was its new user interface and menu system. It primarily used a vertical menu bar on the left-hand side of the screen, as well as the traditional horizontal menu bars across the top and bottom of the screen. As well as the new menu system, many more high-resolution background images were added - these were mostly relevant to whatever screen the player was viewing.

Gameplay

There were many small changes and improvements to the gameplay, including an improved match-engine, customisable training schedules, more cup competitions from around the world, a more in-depth tactics system, realistic reserve and youth squads, and improved player scouting.
One major new addition was the ability to play multiplayer games via a local area network

Local area network

A local area network is a computer network that interconnects computers in a limited area such as a home, school, computer laboratory, or office building...

 (LAN), allowing up to 16 people to compete against each other in the same game 'world'. This option could also be used to play over the internet. The hotseat

Hotseat (multiplayer mode)

Hotseat or hot seat is a multiplayer mode provided by some turn-based video games, which allows two or more players to play on the same device by taking turns playing the game...

 mulitplayer mode was also expanded to allow up to 16 people to play on the same machine.

Technical

The database of players and staff swelled to over 25,000 for this version, again increasing the depth and realism of the game.
Due to the hugely increased player database and the massive amount of processing that the game needed to do, a 'multi-tasking' design was used. This allowed the computer to process data in the background while still allowing the player to do things like browse around the game, search for players, change tactics, etc.

Playable leagues

As was becoming customary, the number of playable leagues grew again in this installment. This time, the league systems of fifteen nations were selectable and, more importantly, all fifteen could be run simultaneously (if the user had a computer powerful enough to allow this). Another major milestone was the inclusion for the first time of playable leagues outside of Europe. All of this created a level of depth never seen before in a management game. Below is a full list of the playable leagues included.

For the first time, the Football Conference

Football Conference

The Football Conference is a football league in England which consists of three divisions called Conference National, Conference North, and Conference South. Some Football Conference clubs are fully professional, such as Luton Town, but most of them are semi-professional...

 in England

Football in England

Association football is a national sport in England, where the first modern set of rules for the code were established in 1863, which were a major influence on the development of the modern Laws of the Game...

 was included, and the player now had the opportunity to manage a club at this level.

Europe

• Belgium
• Denmark
• England
• France
• Germany
• Holland
• Italy
• Norway
• Portugal
• Scotland
• Spain
• Sweden

Asia

• Japan

This version marked the debuts of playable leagues from Argentina, Brazil and Japan.

The game is incompatible with Windows XP

Windows XP

Windows XP is an operating system produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops and media centers. First released to computer manufacturers on August 24, 2001, it is the second most popular version of Windows, based on installed user base...

. However, in some cases it can be made to work with the use of "Windows Application Compatibility Toolkit" or the Windows Compatibility Mode. Microsoft Virtual PC is also a useful program which will allow the user to install an earlier version of Windows to enable the game to run.