Premier Manager on the Sega Genesis was my first taste of soccer management sims back in the day—and man, did it ruin me for other sports games. You start off picking some lower-league team (I always went for the underdogs) and suddenly you're sweating over transfer budgets, training schedules, and whether your star striker will recover from injury before the cup final. The interface is pure '90s—spreadsheets, basic menus, and pixelated player portraits—but there's something weirdly addictive about dragging your team up the ranks.

Matches play out in text commentary, so you're basically imagining the action while nervously watching morale bars and stamina stats. And yeah, the AI managers will absolutely lowball you on trades if you're not careful. It's rough around the edges now, but back then, this was as close as you got to being a real football boss.