When The One previewed Kick Off 3 in June 1994, it reminded readers that they might know Steve Screech already, “for being the card-heavy ref in the first Kick Off game”. He had been part of Dino Dini’s football games from the start, and five years on the series was his. Dini had left Anco for Virgin, Anco had kept the Kick Off name, and Screech wrote the next Kick Off on his own.
Fast facts
- With Anco: worked on Kick Off (1989), Kick Off 2 (1990) and Player Manager (1990) alongside Dino Dini.
- Designed: Tip Off, a basketball game built on the Kick Off formula, reviewed early in 1992.
- Programmed and co-designed: Kick Off 3 (1994).
- Programmed: Player Manager 2 (1995).
- Later: the Kick Off games Anco published after 1994, according to Retro Gamer.
Alongside Dini
The magazines never quite agreed on what Screech had done on the first games. In October 1990 The One ran his tips for Kick Off 2 under the heading “Designer Steve Screech offers some advice for beginners”. In January 1991 the Italian magazine K called him the designer of the tactics in Kick Off and Player Manager. Anco’s managing director, Anil Gupta, told The One in 1994 that “Steve was an advisor with the original games”; the German Amiga Joker called him Dini’s former play-tester; and in 2012 Retro Gamer said he had provided the graphics for the original Kick Off.
He also played it well. At the European Kick Off championship in London, reported by K in January 1991, when the French champion could not travel, Screech took his place in the round-robin group. K reported the final, between the Italian Luca Caldiero and the German Michael Sandmann, which Caldiero won while the organisers were already packing away the computers and cables around them.
Tip Off
Screech’s first game of his own was a basketball game. K explained in November 1991 that he had taken “the gripping routines that made Kick Off a success” and moved them to a basketball court, and that he believed it was the most action-packed sports game yet. When The One reviewed Tip Off in February 1992, it found the resemblance was the problem: “everybody was expecting Tip Off to be another Kick Off”, and it was full of bugs. “Tip Off just isn’t worth the asking price,” the reviewer concluded.
By then Screech was already talking about the next football game. Asked by Amiga Format at the start of 1992 what he expected of the coming year, he named Kick Off 3, which would use a joystick with two fire buttons, as Tip Off did: “You can barge, jump sliding tackles, perform diving headers and volleys.” He also promised Player Manager 2, “a lot deeper and multi-player — hopefully”.
Kick Off 3
Dini was working on Kick Off 3 for Anco in 1991. Early in 1993 he signed for Virgin, and Anco kept the name. The One’s preview dated the start of Anco’s own Kick Off 3 to January 1993, with Screech as programmer and designer and Gupta among the designers. Gupta said Screech had done “50 percent of the design, and 100 percent of the programming”, and that the game had taken “about a year and a half from start to finish”. Anco made it with the Japanese console company Imagineer.
It was a different game. The pitch was seen from the side instead of from above, each player had his own statistics and role, and Anco claimed more than 2,000 frames of animation. Gupta admitted he had never been able to control the original games, and the preview explained that the new one would let players take the ball in stages, with the one-touch play of the original still there for its fans.
The Amiga reviews were poor. AMIGA POWER’s review in August 1994 carried the header “Publisher: Anco. Author: Steve Screech. Runs on: A1200. Price: £26”, and Steve McGill gave it 69%. He wrote 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 has a stupid fault of its own”: accurate passing needed a two-button joystick. He recommended Wembley International Soccer instead. Removing the pinball feel was not a new idea. The complaint that Kick Off played like pinball was old, and Dini himself had told CU Amiga in 1993 that Goal!, his game for Virgin, was meant to answer it.
The One called Kick Off 3 “without a doubt the weakest of the trio”. It noted that the Super Nintendo and Mega Drive versions had been well received, but that the Amiga conversion came “nowhere near their same levels of excellence”. Amiga Joker was kinder: Screech had taken the old Kick Off formula and turned it sideways, and the result earned “only a good mid-table place”.
The Amiga version also reached the magazines late. Anco kept it from reviewers before release, and the press took it badly. AMIGA POWER said Anco had “decided that the computer press couldn’t be trusted not to copy the game and distribute it to their piratey friends”. Gupta told The One that “no-one outside this office sees the game before release, we eliminate every possible risk”.
After Kick Off 3
PC Gamer previewed Player Manager 2 for the PC in June 1995, “programmed by Steve Screech, one of the guys behind the hugely successful Kick Off series of footie games”. Its new feature was a live-action option that let a manager play the matches, viewed from any of five angles.
Anco went on with Kick Off 96 and Kick Off 97. In 2012 Retro Gamer wrote that Screech had stayed with Anco when Dini left and that “all subsequent games under the Kick Off name were his work”. In July 2001 PC Zone reported that he was working on Ultimate Kick-Off, “a remake and remix” of the original game. According to public sources, the last Kick Off Anco published was Kick Off 2002, and the company closed in 2003.
Sources
- The One issue 25, October 1990: Kick Off 2 tips by Steve Screech.
- K (Italy) issue 24, January 1991, p. 26: the European Kick Off championship in London.
- K (Italy) issue 33, November 1991, p. 11: Tip Off preview.
- Amiga Format issue 30, January 1992: predictions for 1992 (Steve Screech, “Kick Off, Tip Off”).
- The One issue 41, February 1992: Tip Off review.
- CU Amiga, March 1993: Goal! preview (Dini on the pinball complaint) and news of his move to Virgin.
- The One issue 69, June 1994: Kick Off 3 work in progress (Anil Gupta; Screech as programmer and designer; the card-heavy referee; Imagineer).
- The One issue 71, August 1994: Kick Off 3 review.
- AMIGA POWER issue 40, August 1994: Kick Off 3 review by Steve McGill, 69%.
- Amiga Joker (Germany), August 1994: Kick Off 3 review.
- PC Gamer (UK) issue 19, June 1995: Player Manager 2 preview.
- PC Zone issue 104, July 2001: Ultimate Kick-Off news.
- Retro Gamer issue 104, 2012: Kick Off series retrospective.
- Wikipedia, “Kick Off (series)” (web, secondary): Kick Off 2002 and Anco’s closure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kick_Off_(series)