In 1992 CU Amiga caught Anil Gupta, the boss of Anco, admitting that he “can’t play the bloody thing to save my life”. The thing was Kick Off, the football game his company had published three years earlier, and which the magazine called “surely the most-played computer game ever”. Before Kick Off, Anco was a small Kent publisher of Commodore games that reviewers rated as middling. Dino Dini’s football games made it one of the best-known names on the Atari ST and Amiga, and the name Kick Off stayed with Anco after Dini left.
Fast facts
- Based: Bexley, then Dartford, Kent.
- Run by: Anil Gupta, managing director, who had earlier co-founded Anirog Software.
- Mid-1980s: games for the Commodore 16, Plus/4 and Commodore 64, including Thai Boxing and Winter Events.
- The Dini years: Kick Off (1989), Extra Time, Player Manager (1990), Kick Off 2 (1990) and data disks.
- After Dini: Kick Off 3 (1994) by Steve Screech, Player Manager 2 (1995), Kick Off 96 and Kick Off 97.
- Closed: 2003.
Anil Gupta and the Commodore years
Gupta was already in the business when Anco appeared. In June 1985 Your Commodore visited him at Anirog, the company he had formed with Roger Gamon, a fellow design engineer from Philips; the name joined the first letters of their names. Anirog had a factory on an industrial estate in Dartford and had sold a string of Commodore games, Flight Path 737 the best known.
By early 1986 “Anco Marketing” and “Anco Software” were advertising from 85 Tile Kiln Lane in Bexley, Kent, and by the summer from Dartford. For a while it called itself the “C16-Plus 4 Centre” and sold games for Commodore’s cheaper machines. It also released Commodore 64 games, which drew modest marks: ZZAP! gave Thai Boxing 55% in 1987. Looking back in 2004, Retro Gamer said that before Kick Off the publisher “had just a handful of middling Commodore 64 games to its credit”. A 1984 Spectrum game called Zapper was also sold under the name Anco Software, but a mail-order business called Anco Software was then trading from Coatbridge in Scotland, and the period press does not link the two.
Kick Off
Kick Off arrived on the Atari ST and Amiga in 1989. By then Anco was at Unit 10, Burnham Trading Estate, Dartford. Dino Dini had written it on the ST, and it looked plain: an overhead pitch and small players. What mattered was that the ball did not stick to a player’s feet. ZZAP! gave the Amiga version 96% in June 1989 and said it “boots all other Amiga football sims over the crossbar”. Amiga Action called it “the surprise hit of last year”, programmed by Dini “and supervised by Anco’s MD, Anil Gupta”.
Retro Gamer noted that the company had little money for advertising, and that the game built its reputation by word of mouth and stayed in the charts until its sequel arrived. The Extra Time data disk followed, then Player Manager (1990), which combined Kick Off’s matches with running a club, and then Kick Off 2 (1990), with aftertouch, banana shots and many more options. Kick Off 2 was 16-bit Game of the Year at the Golden Joystick Awards in 1991. More data disks followed, among them Final Whistle and Winning Tactics.
The game travelled. In April 1990 the Hungarian magazine 576 KByte credited Kick Off 2 to “az ANCO cég és DINO DINI” (the Anco company and Dino Dini), scored the Amiga version 90 and the Commodore 64 version 73, and said that even when you kept losing to the computer, its excellent handling kept you playing. When Anco announced its basketball game Tip Off, the same magazine described it as wanting to be “the Kick Off of basketball games”, and added: “It’ll be hard!”
After Dini
In 1991 Gupta told ACE that he wanted Player Manager 2 to be “the definitive football management game”, and Dini was working on it and Kick Off 3. In early 1993 Dini signed for Virgin. CU Amiga reported that Anco kept the rights to the Kick Off name and that neither side would comment. Dini later told Retro Gamer that Anco had “exploited it in all manner of ways for which I got no reward”. His new game came out from Virgin as Goal!.
Anco made Kick Off 3 in-house with Steve Screech as programmer and designer and Gupta as one of its designers, working with the Japanese company Imagineer. It came out in 1994 with a side-on view. AMIGA POWER gave the A1200 version 69%. Its reviewer, Steve McGill, noted that “Dino Dini doesn’t work for Anco any more, and this Kick Off offering, unfortunately, suffers for it”, and that the game “successfully defeats the ‘pinball’ feel of the previous games” but forced players to use a two-button joystick for accurate passing. The magazine recommended Wembley International Soccer instead.
Anco carried on into the PC era. It advertised Player Manager 2 on a commercial website in 1995, and released Kick Off 96 and Kick Off 97. The Italian magazine Zeta opened its April 1997 review of Kick Off 97 by recalling “the saga begun by Dino Dini in 1989” and “the most distinguished football game of all time”, and credited the loose ball, which never stuck to the player’s feet, as the winning card of Dini’s game. According to public sources, Anco’s last Kick Off was Kick Off 2002. The company closed in 2003.
Sources
- CU Amiga, September 1992, news: Anil Gupta and Kick Off.
- Your Commodore, June 1985: visit to Anil Gupta at Anirog (Roger Gamon, Philips, the Dartford factory, Flight Path 737).
- Commodore User, February and March 1986: Anco Marketing and Anco Software advertisements (85 Tile Kiln Lane, Bexley). Computer and Video Games issue 55, May 1986: “C16-Plus 4 Centre, Anco Software”. Commodore User, June 1986: advertisement with a Dartford address.
- ZZAP! issue 25, May 1987: index (Thai Boxing, 55%, issue 24).
- CRASH issue 8, September 1984: Zapper review. ZX Computing, June 1984, and Games Computing, January 1984: advertisements for Anco Software, Coatbridge.
- ST Format issue 2, September 1989: Anco’s address in Dartford.
- ZZAP! issue 50, June 1989: Amiga Kick Off review, 96%.
- Amiga Action issue 11, August 1990: Kick Off 2 review.
- Retro Gamer issue 4, 2004: football games feature (Anco before Kick Off, Player Manager, Kick Off 2 and data disks, Anco’s closure) and Dino Dini interview. Issue 15, 2005: Kick Off’s word-of-mouth success.
- 576 KByte issue 4, April 1990: Kick Off 2 review by Árpád Jámbor. Issue 18, December 1991: Tip Off.
- ACE issue 46, July 1991: Player Manager 2 and Anil Gupta.
- CU Amiga, March 1993: Dini signs for Virgin; Anco keeps the Kick Off name.
- The One issue 69, June 1994: Kick Off 3 (Anil Gupta, Steve Screech, Imagineer).
- AMIGA POWER issue 40, August 1994: Kick Off 3 review by Steve McGill, 69%.
- Amiga Format issue 76, October 1995: Player Manager 2 advertising on FutureNet.
- Zeta (Italy) vol. 3 no. 25, April 1997: Kick Off 97 review.
- Wikipedia, “Kick Off (series)” (web, secondary): Kick Off 96, Kick Off 97, Kick Off 2002, Anco’s closure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kick_Off_(series)