The Daily Hilario: Guide to running Championship Manager 01-02 on Mac OS X

Here’s a rough guide to getting Championship Manager 01-02 running on a Mac.

1. Obtain game. I have the original CD, but no longer have a way to read it, so I downloaded the ISO. (Get it at ChampMan0102 or FMScout — the latter is much faster.) Eidos made the game free back in 2008 (CM 97-98 is also free, which was my favorite before 01-02). The Mac should be able to recognize the ISO as a disk image and mount it without needing any extra software.
2. Download a way to run Windows applications on a Mac. Whether that’s BootCamp or Wineskin or whatever. I went with CrossOver, which works very nicely and directly in OS X with complete cross-functionality/copying/control/etc. There’s a 14-day free trial.
3. Install CrossOver. Create a new “bottle” for Windows 98. Install CM from the ISO into the bottle.
4. Download the official 3.9.68 patch. Install it into the same bottle as the main game.
5. You should be able to run the base-game now, and if that’s your goal, then you’re good to go.
6. RECOMMENDED — many years ago, a user named ‘Tapani’ figured out a way to edit the hex code of the game to fix issues, add features, and extend functionality (such as changing the start date from 2001). The Tapani patch is up to 2.21.1 these days and that’s basically a must. What is even better however is the Saturn patch (latest current version is 2.21+ v3), which is Tapani plus updated data as well as other options. That’s what you should roll with — right now, that will give you a game that starts in July 2016 with squads and players up to date as of April 2017 in real life. In a couple weeks, there will be a new patch that should give you a July 2017 start date with October 2017 rosters. The Saturn patch involves downloading a new ‘data’ folder and a new ‘cm0102.exe’ executable. They will have to be placed in the game folder, which if you’re running Crossover, is located at: /Users/<username>/Library/Application Support/CrossOver/Bottles/<cm0102bottle>/drive_c/Program Files/Championship Manager 01-02/

I haven’t played this game in many, many years. At least five.

Loving it.

It’s the perfect FM/CM game for me, with FM Live a close second.