Premier Manager 64 is the only English football management game on the N64, based off Premier Manager Ninety Nine on PC/PS1. That said, this gave me more of an appreciation for J.League Tactics Soccer, as it’s an immensely more interesting game than this.

The most shocking difference for me was how matches are played out. In Tactics Soccer, you watched the match and could change some basic stuff on the fly, with more complicated stuff by pausing the game. In Premier Manager, you watch a screen of stats and pause the game to change tactics.

After a match is over (or if you choose to just skip it), you can watch highlights, which does use a 3D engine. This is based on Actua Soccer 3 – a game that didn’t get an N64 release. As the engine isn’t used for gameplay, they didn’t refine it as much as they really needed it to, so it runs horribly. It also presents you with virtually zero information, which is really odd.

The big selling point of Premier Manager 64 are the teams included – not just the Premier League, but divisions 1-3 as well, with loads of players with correct names. Again, the PS1 version offers more, as that also includes Italian teams. You can jump straight into any team, but the game recommends starting as a Division 3 team and working your way up. That sounded too tedious for me, though, and there’s really not a huge amount to do between matches, either.

Poor

Indeed, it’s from here, that you start to notice just how much has been sacrificed for this 64-bit venture. Where, for example, are the Sky TV-style replays in the match highlights, where a red line maps out the route of the ball from your foot to the goal, along with the goalscorer, speed and distance? In face, where are the replays full stop? For a game with such a large proportion of spectacular goals, you’d think a replay would have been an obvious inclusion (which it was for the PlayStation version).

Tim Weaver, N64 Magazine #31. Review Score: 82%

Remake or remaster?

The Football Manager games fulfil this niche now.

Official ways to get the game.

There is no official way to get Premier Manager 64.