The best football game ever - Kick Off on the amiga.

jp-30 · 05-18-2004, 07:57 PM

Many an afternoon was spent at my buddy's house, playing football (that's "Soccer", for you americans who are still here despite the fucking atrocious language) on his Amiga.

Kick Off (and Kick Off 2) was an incredible, top down, tiny-sprite, vertical-scrolling-screen game. The banana kicks, the passing, the shots at goal. The humiliating action replays when you got a goal scored against you. Brilliance!

I've never really played any football games (except some side scrolling arcade thing I recently rediscovered on MAME) since those heady days of my early 20s. And I have no wish to.

In fact, I think I'm going to have to track down Kick Off & Kick Off 2 and an Amiga Emulator, track down my old mate too and relive those misspent days of the early 90s one of these upcoming winter evenings.

Anyone else a fan?

Edit: Screw the Amiga emulator, I just found a DOS version of Kick Off 2 at the Underdogs.

Kolzig · 05-19-2004, 02:41 AM

I played Kick Off 1&2 ALL the time.

I even once destroyed my 512kb memory card accidentally when I lost in a Kick off 2 match against the computer, I'm a little bit crazy you know.

Kick Off 2 is definately the greatest football game ever created.

The banana curve ball control was so perfectly made, I've never seen in any other game so total control for the ball movement.

Only game that has even come close is Total Soccer, the new millennium clone of Kick Off.

Blau Blau · 05-19-2004, 02:45 AM

Quote:

Kolzig:

Kick Off 2 is definately the greatest football game ever created.

The greatest? lets be Sensible about this!

RemiO · 05-19-2004, 06:47 AM

Kick Off owns Sensible Soccer. Owns, I say! Nothing beats the adrenaline rush you got from the sheer speed of the Kick Off games.

Blau Blau · 05-19-2004, 07:02 AM

Quote:

RemiO:

Nothing beats the adrenaline rush you got from the sheer speed of the Kick Off games.

Thats all it was though, one short dash to the final spurt. Repeat.

Sensible was more about skill!

This could get dirty

RemiO · 05-19-2004, 08:06 AM

Skill? Pffft! With the goalie's complete lack of anything even resembeling AI?

Kolzig · 05-19-2004, 10:29 AM

Quote:

RemiO:

Skill? Pffft! With the goalie's complete lack of anything even resembeling AI?

Yep, this is very true.

In fact Total Soccer is a combination of Sensible Soccer and Kick Off, but where they made the wrong decision was to give the goalies the stupidity of Sensible goalie AI.

Sensible is one of the football legends, but Kick Off kicks Sensible off very clearly.

jp-30 · 05-19-2004, 01:18 PM

I can recall the different refs having totally different styles. That prick Screech would book you for looking at him funny.

We'd often restart the game if we got a sucky ref allocated.

Kolzig · 05-19-2004, 01:25 PM

Quote:

jp-30:

I can recall the different refs having totally different styles. That prick Screech would book you for looking at him funny.

We'd often restart the game if we got a sucky ref allocated.

Hehheh, Screech was the best, he's like the Kick Off lookalike of Pierluigi Collina.

I always got at least 2 or 3 yellow cards when Screech was the ref.
And I usually picked him as the ref, and didn't use the random option

*Nick* · 05-19-2004, 01:59 PM

World Cup Italia 90 was the one football game that always came out top for me.

The diving headers, sliding tackles and intense shouting of 'GOAL!'

ahhhh, what a game

RemiO · 05-19-2004, 02:25 PM

I'm sorry, but WCI90 sucked ass. >: All ball glued to foot and stuff, no way!

ThunderPeel2001 · 05-20-2004, 06:38 AM

Lol! It's very interesting to hear the Kick Off fans come out. I hate footy games, but even I can tell Kick Off was horribly flawed... but it still has this die hard contingency. Interesting!

SWOS kicked it's ass though, I'm sure they fixed the "stupid goalies" in it too.

As for best footy game ever: Surely Winning Eleven 7 International or Pro Evolution Soccer 3 kicks both their asses to high heaven.

ragnar · 05-20-2004, 10:17 AM

When it comes to old football games I think I prefer Microprose Soccer for the C64. A really fun game. I never really liked Kick-off/Sensible soccer, the controls were rather lousy imho.

*Nick* · 05-20-2004, 03:20 PM

Quote:

RemiO:

All ball glued to foot and stuff, no way!

I know, beautiful wasn't it?

jp-30 · 05-20-2004, 03:23 PM

I couldn't get that PC version of Kick Off working under dosbox, so I think I will try Amiga Emulation and Kick Off this weekend.

Quote:

I hate footy games, but even I can tell Kick Off was horribly flawed... but it still has this die hard contingency. Interesting!

Well, it wasn't a "soccer simulator", but it was a hell of a lot of pure gameplay fun, especially in 2 player mode. If we got stuck in Monkey Island, we'd just put on Kick Off* "for one or 2 games" as stress relief. Then, 3 or 4 hours later...

* Or, sometimes Speedball 2

Kolzig · 05-20-2004, 04:11 PM

Quote:

jp-30:

* Or, sometimes Speedball 2

Oh, don't start suddenly talking about Speedball 2 :9~

You are trying to push me to the sweet memories of Amiga classics, now where's that Amiga of mine? Hmm, I guess that emulator will have to do for now!

RemiO · 05-20-2004, 06:53 PM

Quote:

Nick:

I know, beautiful wasn't it?

FFS >: I ban you from talking about football games.

ragnar · 05-21-2004, 01:21 AM

Quote:

Kolzig:

Oh, don't start suddenly talking about Speedball 2 :9~

You are trying to push me to the sweet memories of Amiga classics, now where's that Amiga of mine? Hmm, I guess that emulator will have to do for now!

Oh, speedball 2 is a very good game.

Ahem, ICECREAM!

ThunderPeel2001 · 05-22-2004, 09:10 AM

Speedball 2... now THERE'S a game that hold up to your memories of it! I recently played it and MAN, it's still fun!

:9~ :9~ :9~

I still dream of a 256 color version... (although, techinically there was one, look how they messed it up... the fools!)

EDIT: NO IMAGES HERE!

Kolzig · 05-22-2004, 12:06 PM

People please, don't link straight mobygames images, they don't show.

jp-30 · 05-22-2004, 02:10 PM

So I see. You don't notice while they're cached either.

A good, simple, free image host is http://www.photobucket.com

ragnar · 05-23-2004, 12:53 AM

Quote:

ThunderPeel2001:

Speedball 2... now THERE'S a game that hold up to your memories of it! I recently played it and MAN, it's still fun!

:9~ :9~ :9~

I still dream of a 256 color version... (although, techinically there was one, look how they messed it up... the fools!)

EDIT: NO IMAGES HERE!

Umm, why just 256 colors? Why not 16/32-bit colors?

By the way, The Bitmap Brothers did a sequel to Speedball 2 in 2000, called Speedball 2100, which was only for Playstation, but anyway.

And you might want to know that there now exists both GBA version and Pocket PC version of Speedball 2. See http://www.bitmap-brothers.co.uk/our...esent/body.htm

~~And they seem to work on a new Speedball game too, called Speedball Arena: http://www.bitmap-brothers.co.uk/our...rena/index.htm~~ Sorry, that seems to have been old news and that game seems to have been cancelled.

StarEye · 05-23-2004, 01:56 AM

I must say, this is one good looking site. Congratulations to the chaps that made this, I like it a lot.

But on-topic, Sensible World of Soccer have miles better gameplay than Kick Off, and generally better graphics too. I have both on my Amiga playable from harddrive (along with 3-400 other amiga games), and while Kick Off have lost some of it's appeal over the years, Sensible is still on my favourite games list (where Pirates! and Monkey Island 2 is too).

Kick Off 2 feels more like a pinball game where most depends on luck. SWOS feels like a soccer game in a much more genuine game. And skill is very much an issue with SWOS. Everything is just so smoothly implemented, dribling, running, tackling, heading (both diving header and normal headers), bicycle kick, aftertouches both on and above ground, lobs, shots, passes. The keeper have also been improved from every game, and the last game (SWOS 96/97) actually has a very good keeper that stands heads above the Kick Off keepers. So that's not really an issue with the correct version of the game anymore, like some people pointed out.

Oh, and Speedball 2 is fantastic too! But Speedball 2001 wasn't very good, I have it. I actually gave it away, wasn't even worth keeping just for the name.

Blau Blau · 05-23-2004, 03:02 AM

Checked them both back out using Winuae and I'm sorry but Sensi still has it in bucket loads

Anyone fancy giving Kaillera a try with it?

Lays down gauntlet.

Dogman · 05-23-2004, 06:31 AM

Quote:

Blau Blau:

Checked them both back out using Winuae and I'm sorry but Sensi still has it in bucket loads

Anyone fancy giving Kaillera a try with it?

Good luck with that! I think the latency will kill you. A few of us tried Kaillera with WinUAE last year, and 'Atoms' was about as much as it could take.

Let us know how it goes if you try it though.