The start of a new NFL season has seen me rediscover a game called Front Office Football, which is basically the gridiron equivalent of the surely-needs-no-introduction Football Manager series. When I first got the game a couple of years back I began a Miami Dolphins dynasty which, over time, I've had some success with – a couple of divisional championships and even a Super Bowl appearance, albeit a losing one. I managed to turn Matt Roth and Derek Hagan into Pro Bowlers, and make superstars of fictional rookies like safety Frank Basnight (an undreafted free agent in 2009, no less) and defensive tackle Richard McGarigle (my 2012 first rounder) – legends nowhere but my own mind. So when I booted up the game last Wednesday at the outset of the 2016 season, it was with a view to spending this entire weekend trying to guide the Fins towards that elusive virtual Vince Lombardi trophy.
Such was my excitement that during Friday lunchtime I logged onto the FOF forums and downloaded a graphics pack which promised to give the game's somewhat spartan visuals a sprucing up. Arriving home that evening I set about trying to apply this patch to the game, but lovely Windows Vista wouldn't have it. I fiddled with the permissions in every possible way, but no dice.
So I tried another tactic: I downloaded the latest patch for the game itself, thinking perhaps that only this version would be able to utilise the updated graphics pack. I installed it, but that didn't work either.
Finally, after three hours of exhaustively scouring the internet, I found the root of the problem: I had to run the graphics auto-patcher as an administrator (rather than the current user) by going into its Properties menu and fiddling with the Compatibility settings. Having spat a colourful array of curses at Vista, all sorted, and about bloody time.
Except it wasn't.
I loaded up the game and whaddya know? No save file. Turns out that when I installed the latest patch for FOF it had automatically created a new saved games folder, overwriting the old one. Typically – I am a massive donut, as I said at the outset - I hadn't thought to back-up the data. And so the 2016 Miami Dolphins were gone, just like that. All those many, many, many hours and late nights gone to waste, with not even a single 'career stats' screen to show for it.
I was, to put it mildly, gutted.
I've started a new game as the Chicago Bears but even with Kyle Orton showing some early promise and a monster D, it just isn't the same yet. I'll stick with it for now and hope that next year I can find a new McGarigle or Basnight to draw me back in once again, but playing now only reminds me what could have been. Brady Quinn was doing brilliantly as my veteran leader. Danny Carmack was just establishing himself as a top-notch running back. Vinny Cinkovsky had spent two years just trying to stay on the 53-man roster. Now, after a great pre-season, the young wide receiver was finally going to get a shot at starting. It was going to be amazing. Until Vista, and my idiocy, came a-calling.
And the worst bit? The graphics pack turned out to be so naff that I removed it within half an hour of starting my new Bears 'chise.
Typical.
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