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Soccer Kid

Commodore Amiga 500 disk published 31 years ago by Krisalis Soft., Ltd.

Listed in MAME

Soccer Kid © 1993 Krisalis

Side-scrolling platform video game. Players assume the role of the titular main protagonist who travels across several countries around the world in order to repair the World Cup by retrieving pieces that were scattered by the alien pirate Scab, the main antagonist who failed to steal and add it to his trophy collection in a robbery attempt. Its gameplay mainly consists of platforming and exploration elements, with a main single-button or two-button configuration, depending on the controls setup.

Goodies for Soccer Kid
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TECHNICAL

MEDIA: FD x5

TRIVIA

Soccer Kid was first showcased to attendees of Spring ECTS '93 and it was first released for the Amiga in Europe in June 1993, featuring support with the Amiga 1200 for enhanced visuals.

Soccer Kid was created by most of the same personnel who worked on the Manchester United series including programmer Peter Harrap, who co-wrote the title alongside Nigel Little, artist Neil Adamson and composer Matt Furniss, among other team members that shared multiple roles during its development process, while the overall concept was conceived by Dean Lester, in addition to also sharing the same game engine as with Arabian Nights, another platform game by Krisalis.

Development of the project began in February 1992, when Krisalis co-founder Tony Kavanagh announced their plans for it early in the year and the team wanted to experiment in making a title that mixed football and platforming elements after developing several association football titles. Nigel stated that in order to assure such project would be playable, the team wrote a primitive physics engine early in its development and implemented real-life rules for the ball to react realistically, which would eventually prove to be feasible after multiple testing phases.

Soccer Kid was previewed across several video game magazines early in development under the title Football Kid, featuring different visuals compared with the final release, which were improved from its original incarnation, while some publications compared it with Sonic the Hedgehog due to its gameplay structure and console-style presentation.

The game runs at 50 frames per second, while sprites were made as 64x64 pixel objects.

It was originally intended to be released in November 1992 but due to the interest in porting the title to home consoles, the title was moved to next year and faced constant delays prior to its eventual launch. The name of the project was also changed in order to appeal to consumers when porting across other platforms.

PORTS

All conversions of the game were developed internally at Krisalis Software and each one features several changes and additions when compared with the original Amiga version.

* Consoles:
Nintendo SNES
Amiga CD 32
Atari Jaguar
Panasonic 3DO
Nintendo GBA

* Computers:
MS-DOS

SOURCES

Game's ROM.