Championship Manager 3

Championship Manager 3 is a game in the series of soccer 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 Windows.

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. The most immediately striking feature of Championship Manager 3, is its new user interface and menu system. It primarily uses 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 are mostly relevant to whatever screen the player is viewing.

There are many small changes and improvements to the gameplay, including an improved match-engine, customizable 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 is the ability to play multiplayer games via a local area network (LAN), allowing up to 16 people to compete against each other in the same game "world". This option can also be used to play over the internet. The hotseat mulitplayer mode also expands to allow up to 16 people to play on the same machine.

The database of players and staff has 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 needs to do, a "multi-tasking" design is used. This allows 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.

As customary, the number of playable leagues grows again in this installment. This time, the league systems of fifteen nations are selectable and, more importantly, all fifteen can be run simultaneously (if the user has a computer powerful enough to allow this). Another major milestone is the inclusion for the first time of playable leagues outside of Europe. All of this creates a level of depth never seen before in a management game.