31.12.1999
Ultimate Soccer Manager or USM is a association football management video game serie for MS-DOS, Commodore Amiga and Windows 95, produced by Impressions and distributed by Sierra from 1995 to 1999. The game was a massive hit in Europe (except in Germany, where it was worse received due to some similarities with managers produced by local software houses such as Software 2000 and Ascaron), although it gained little support in Japan.
The series was noted for its micromanagement, where the player had to do the job of the team manager and much of that of the chairman, from player training up to bank balance management. Other well-known features were to bung an opposing team for preferential market treatment, rig or betting on the outcome of the players' team matches. Interviews after the match where some answers were printed with different interpretations on the next days' newspaper (the player could reply a question about the game with "It was a game of two halves", and "He amazed us after the game by giving us an insight into the rules of football" would be printed on the newspapers).