System: Atari ST/ Amiga (reviewed)/C64/Spectrum/Amstrad/Sega Master System
Year: 1992
Developer: Anco

The Skinny:
    •Ridiculously fast paced, top-down arcade soccer at its finest.

The Good:
    •Simple exterior belies a great deal of depth
    •More addictive than crack
    •Incredible multiplayer
    •Unscripted Ball Physics
The Bad:
    •Super-steep learning curve
    •Incredibly sparse option set
    •Arguably, not as good as Sensible Soccer 96/97 or SWOS

If it were a footballer it’d be:
- Marco Van Basten; a legend.

Overview

            Sequel to Anco’s 1988 Kick Off, Kick Off 2 made its appearance on a variety of systems including the Commodore Amiga, Atari ST, Sinclair Spectrum, Amstrad, Commodore 64, and the Sega Master System. This review will cover the Amiga version since it is widely regarded as the best incarnation of the game. When it was released in Europe in 1992, Kick Off 2 was a phenomenon that had soccer gamers glued to their TV sets playing an over-the-top, super-fast, super-addictive arcade football title.

Graphics 

            The screenshots for Kick Off 2 more or less speak for themselves. The game takes a top-down/birds eye view of the pitch so you don’t get to see much of the player models at all, the only time you see them sideways on is when they walk out for the kick-off, score a goal, or are reprimanded by the ref. There’s little variation between player models except for skin colour and some players looking a little wider than others. Interestingly though, the player kits are fairly detailed for a game released in 1992. You don’t have any sponsors on the jerseys but colour schemes and designs are pretty varied and there’s an excellent kit editor included. You can make simple single colour jerseys and shirts, vertical or horizontal stripes, two colour Blackburn Rovers-type jerseys and even jerseys with a single River Plate-style diagonal stripe.

            As with the player models, the animations are also minimal due to the game’s camera angle and the most impressive animations are those for bicycle kicks and the odd somersault goal celebration. This isn’t such a big deal as the game moves so bloody fast that you hardly have time to appreciate the player models or animations – you’re too busy trying to follow the action.

            The pitch models themselves are also fairly plain; muddy pitches have a slightly darker look to them, plastic/synthetic pitches look a little more yellow than green and the details around the pitches are minimal with just advertising hoardings present. The pitches themselves are massive in comparison to the players and the discrepancy in scale is at first stunning. The pitch is approximately 3 or 4 times the size of a regular pitch but this works in Kick Off 2 because of the lightning fast frame rate. The gameplay radar is located in the top left corner of the screen and though you can’t change the radar’s position you can change the size.

            It’s hard to evaluate Kick Off 2’s graphics because the visuals don’t play as large a part in the action. The frame-rate, however, is ridiculously fast (no shit, since the graphics are so simple!). To give you sense of the game-speed, though the pitch is at least 3 times the length & twice the width of a regular pitch, the players move so freakin’ fast that you can run from one end of the pitch to the other in just over 5 (five!) seconds!!! The camera always stays centered on the action and there’s no slow-down.

Sound

            Kick Off 2 has an excuse for the sparse visuals because of its choice of playing view. There exists, however, no such excuse for the poor audio. The sounds mainly consist of looped cheers (which sound like they were recorded in a washroom) for goals and when the players come out onto the pitch, and similarly tinny jeers for fouls, as well as half decent sounds for when the ball’s kicked. Oddly, there are also 2-3 second samples of crowd chants when the ball goes out of play for a corner or when there’s a free kick within striking distance. Oh, wait, I almost forgot the ref’s whistle which sounds like the amplified sounds of Florence Joyner’s nails on a chalk-board. The audio is particularly pathetic when you compare it to Sensible Soccer on the Amiga which has a variety of crowd chants throughout matches and better basic gameplay sounds.

Options

            The following gameplay modes are available; practice/training, exhibition match, international friendly, ‘The Cup’, ‘The League’ and ‘Special Events’. The practice/training mode is basically one user-controlled team against a cpu-controlled goalie and an empty field. The exhibition match is always (unless you load a team from Anco’s Player Manager game) between the same two fictional teams – “Team A” & “Team B” (no creative expense spared for those names!). The international friendly, cup and league modes all use the same sparse (an understatement here) roster of 8 international teams; England, Holland, Scotland, Italy, Germany, France, Sweden, and Spain. The international teams all have fictional players (not even any ISS-style pseudo-names) which is a major downer, especially when a striker named H.Goddard is leading the frontline for Spain.

            Fortunately, if you were lucky enough to have the dosh to invest in Anco’s ‘Special Events’ discs you were able to massively expand the roster of available teams and the competitions available. The discs, such as ‘Return to Europe’ (referring to English club football teams’ return to European play after the Haysel ban), featured a variety of club teams for play and were sold for (if my memory serves me correctly) around ₤8-10.

Default gameplay options, however, are much more varied with the ability to change the length of matches, game speed (normal, 50%, and 25%), pitch-type (normal, wet, artificial, muddy), wind (on or off), offsides, extra time, penalties, difficulty level (international, and divisions 1 – 4), aftertouch (on or off) and the referee. Picking the ref/differing strictness by referee is a pretty neat option way ahead of its time (Winning Eleven 8 Internation is the first WE game to feature it and it’s been absent from the Fifa series). There are several different referees each with a difference in how strictly the call the match; ‘R.J. Fernandez’ usually calls the game fairly while ‘S.Screech’ (Steve Screech is one of the real-life lead programmers of the game) gives out cards like they’re going out of fashion. Interestingly, a ref named ‘V.Jones’ tends not to call many fouls at all….hmmm……

 In game and tactical options are limited to setting the formation and substitutions. You can’t select who takes set pieces, there’s no custom formation setting (though you can load up a custom formation that you’ve made in Player Manager), and no team strategy settings. Pretty sparse again, especially when compared to Sensible Soccer.

            Rounding off the options is the ability to save replays of goals to disk which, as far as I know (and please correct me if I’m wrong), is the first time such an option has been available in a soccer game which strikes up a very influential first for Anco.

Gameplay

            As I mentioned earlier, Kick Off 2 is an over-the-top arcade title that makes no excuses for its all-action nature. That said, despite its arcade roots there is a tremendous degree of depth in the game and the non-scripted ball physics mean that despite the fact that the game doesn’t look much like soccer it sure as hell plays like it (albeit soccer on ‘roids).

            Kick Off 2 is largely defined by two aspects of its gameplay; the game speed and the ball physics. I’ve gone over the game speed (fucking fast) earlier in the review, and though you can decrease the speed to 50% or 25% of the default speed, the game’s frantic pace adds to the challenge of the title and to the all-out action nature as you go from end to end in seconds. The ball physics, however, also set this game out from the pack. I mentioned at the beginning of the review that Kick Off 2 features unscripted ball physics, but just how unscripted are they? How about this, the ball doesn’t ever stick to, or even automatically follow, a player’s feet when dribbling! If you’ve never heard of or seen the Kick Off series before, take a second to wrap your head around that - basically, if you control a player (lets say the aforementioned not-so-very Spanish sounding H.Goddard) and run up to the ball, when you touch it you automatically push the ball ahead a few yards. Now if you keep pushing the joystick in the same direction then you dribble the ball in a straight line. However, if after pushing the ball forward, you turn to the side then the ball will continue to go forward while senor Goddard will turn and run away from the ball!

            This is undoubtedly one of the most realistic (not to mention most difficult) dribbling models ever seen in a video/computer game. Like in real-life, dribbling actually involves actually pushing the ball in the direction you want to go, rather than just turning your players direction of movement and having the ball automatically follow as in 99.9% of other soccer games. This complex dribbling model adds a massive amount of depth to the game. It takes many hours of play just to get the hang of turning back and forth and even longer to even try to dribble around players. The dribbling is far easier, as you can imagine, if you reduce the game speed as you have more time to react but then things such as the massive size of the pitch compared to the size of the players becomes more apparent and more of a problem.

            Another great aspect of the ball physics is the addition of aftertouch which, while exaggerated, also adds a lot of depth to the game. Back in 1999, I reviewed a game at SGN named Striker Pro 2000 which featured ‘aftertouch’ and it’s a shame that more games don’t feature it. What is aftertouch? It’s basically user-controlled curve/swerve that you add to passes and/or shots. In Kick Off 2 you apply aftertouch by quickly pulling the joystick in the direction you want the ball to curve after you’ve pressed the kick button. The degree of curve you add depends upon how quickly you move the joystick after pressing the kick button and also how long you hold the joystick down in that direction. Aftertouch doesn’t only work in the lateral direction, you can also use aftertouch to add height and swerve to a shot/pass by pulling the joystick in the direction opposite to the direction you’re facing after pressing the kick button. For example, if you’re running up the field and press shoot, if you then suddenly pull the joystick back you add height to the ball. If you pull it back and to the left, you then have a shot that not only rises but also swerves to the left! It’s a really neat system that adds much more depth to the range of passing and shooting possible.      

            I recently received my copy of Winning Eleven 8: Liveware Evolution in the mail and as I poured through the evo-web forums for the newest game controls it struck me as rather funny that while today’s games feature a gazillion buttons and button combinations for controls, the games of yesteryear featured far more simple control schemes that still allowed for a lot of depth. Kick Off 2 is one such game with the joystick for control and a single action button. Yes, that’s right, one kick button! On offense the kick button’s function is dependant upon where the ball is relative to the player you’re controlling. When dribbling, if you press the button before your player touches the ball he’ll kick it (velocity and trajectory dependant upon where you’re facing, aftertouch, wind, unknown cosmic forces, etc.). If you press the kick button just as your player touches the ball he’ll trap it. From the trapped position if you push a direction and the kick button again you’ll do an automatic pass that goes to a teammate in the direction you’re facing. The accuracy of this type of automatic pass is dependant upon the player you’re using and how far away the receiving player is. When the ball is in the air, the kick button causes your player to jump in the air in the direction you’re facing (so you can’t jump straight up to head the ball, odd but true).

 The offensive controls aren’t solely limited to those however. To perform a short lob you can push the ball in one direction while dribbling and then as you touch the ball again reverse the direction of the joystick (you don’t press the kick button to do this). This type of lob is slower than a regular pass/kick, has a great deal of backspin and is perfect for crosses near the byline. Finally, if you reverse the direction of the joystick when the ball is in the air, the player you’re controlling will do a bicycle kick.

On defense there are two types of ‘tackles’; pressing the kick button when the cpu has possession of the ball will do a slide tackle (in which your player will dive in at what seems like a 100 mph and slide literally 10-15 feet on the floor – hey, I told you this was an over-the-top arcade game!), however the best way to win the ball is to try to nip in ahead of a player and take the ball off them by just using the joystick to position your defender.

 Set pieces are tough as hell. Free kicks within 30 or so yards automatically have three players lined up around the ball and the shooting controls are the same as a regular shot. Unfortunately, since there’s no free kick practice mode it’ll take a while before you score from a set piece. Corners involve a menu that shows a ball and with a 3x3 grid over it. Each cell on the grid corresponds to which particular part of the ball you’re going to strike (so if you strike the top of the ball it stays low, if you strike the top left it goes low and curls to the right) and the longer you hold down the kick button the harder you strike the ball. It’s a neat system for corners however it takes a lot of practice before you even get a header on target. Penalties, however, are much easier and use an arrow that moves from left to right along the goal line and you press the kick button to select where you want to shoot (like free throws in NBA Live). The speed that the arrow moves is far slower than in the first Kick Off and subsequently penalties are fairly easy to get on target.

           The computer AI is very aggressive but there’s no difference, in terms of playing style, between teams. Holland play the same style of mixing long and short balls as Scotland, the main difference being the formations they use. The difference in play between teams from different divisions comes down to speed (the higher the division, the faster most of the players are) but also I found that a team set to a 3^rd or 4^th Division skill level were unable to string together more than 2 passes.

            So how does the game flow? Fittingly, for a game engine that has its origins in late 80s England, Kick Off 2 plays a lot like stereotypical 1980s English football – fast, not very technical, not much defending, lots of long balls, and lots of action. Because of the speed of the game and the size of the pitch there isn’t much build-up play at all. You’ll rarely (if ever) have the time to stop on the ball and pass it backwards and around your defense. Kick Off 2 is all about winning the ball and spraying a crazy 40 yard curling, swerving pass upfield for your ace striker to run onto, or feeding your wingers to send in some teasing crosses for your forwards. The all-action style may seem a little one dimensional but the size of the pitch and the unscripted ball physics mean that no two matches are alike. Once you become proficient at the game, more than half of the goals against the CPU do come on breakaways (either 3 on 2, 2 on 1 or just 1 vs. the keeper), however there’s so much variation leading up to that point and in the other goals you’ll score that you never lose that fist-pumping sense of elation when you score a goal.

            Of course, nothing’s perfect in Kick Off land. If you’re a soccer gaming purist and looking for an old-school, early 90s, soccer game that is a closer representation of real soccer then you’ll likely prefer Sensible World Of Soccer. It also bears mentioning again that this title has a tremendously steep learning curve. If you’ve never played a Kick Off game before and are just looking for a quick pick up and play game to try out on an Amiga/ST emulator then Kick Off 2 probably isn’t going to do it for you (though I still suggest you try it out to experience a piece of soccer gaming history). There also isn’t much, if any at all, of a tactical aspect to the play – you’re not going to beat your opponent by tactics and strategies, its all about the skill of your attacking play.

Longevity/Replay Value

            Kick Off 2 earns its replay value not in the pathetically sparse selection of teams but more so via the depth of its gameplay. However, despite Kick Off 2’s solid gameplay it still come up short in the replay value department once you feel you’ve mastered the game engine. If you can get a hold of the ‘Special Events’ disks (or roms) and if you’re a newbie to Kick Off 2 then the game can provide a ton of replay value.

Overall

As someone who played Kick Off 2 to death when it first came out (on my beloved Atari 1040 ST) I had an absolute blast playing this game. I actually have the original disks and my ST gathering dust in my parent’s basement, but found it ridiculously easy to get the Amiga & ST emulators up and running with Kick Off 2. If you grew up with Kick Off 2 then downloading this rom should be a no-brainer. I played the game for 3 straight hours, smiling with glee when I finally, after many attempts, managed to lob the keeper from the halfway line!

If you’ve never even heard of Kick Off 2 let alone played it, I think its worth a download on a lazy Sunday afternoon to check out a game that played a big part in soccer gaming history. Because of it’s steep learning curve and poor graphics I can't guarantee you’ll like it, but you’ll definitely appreciate where a few of the features commonplace in today’s football games originated.

Lavan Chandran