Soccer Kid

STORY / GAMEPLAY
Deep in outer space, an alien pirate called Scab is scouring the galaxy, searching the planets for trophies to add to his collection. Scabs' radars detect one of the most important human trophies on planet Earth! Without wasting time, Scab fires his magnetic beam to collect his prize ... The World Cup Trophy! As the metallic trophy travels through space, it hits a passing by asteroid and breaks into 5 different pieces. Each piece falls back on earth, in different locations across the globe. Many miles away, Soccer Kid is watching the incident on TV: "Aliens have stolen the World Cup Trophy and the World Cup Final is about to be cancelled!" Sparing not a thought for the trophy's safety, the charismatic kid sets off to find and return the trophy before the World Cup Final begins! The game's objective is simple enough, although it takes some time to learn the controls. Soccer Kid runs through the 6 levels with his favorite ball on his feet! He can balance on the ball, juggle it on his head, perform wonderful overhead kicks and more football tricks! Krisalis have implemented a huge range of trick shots for their hero and, rather than being a diversion, the whole game is built around these ball skills in a quite magnificent way! Each scene from the game's main levels contains 11 football cards. It is possible to complete the levels without collecting all the cards (but within a time limit). Nevertheless, if you collect all the cards, the game will grant you with bonus stages, where an all-important piece from the World Cup Trophy awaits! Many of the cards are hidden in difficult-to-reach places, especially on the later stages. The enemies can be taken down by kicking the ball in their faces. The enemy sprites vary from dogs to cars and even pedestrians that block your way and hit you in the face, causing severe damage to your energy bar. Note that your ball looks and plays like an actual ball. For example, if you kick it towards a wall or towards a similar surface, it quickly rebounds and can be lost or punctured if it strays too far. A certain number of balls is available to you at the start of each section while you can use more, but you won't gain any extra bonus if you do so. Overall, Soccer Kid is a great, extremely playable and highly addictive platform game!

GRAPHICS / SOUND
The Amiga (OCS) version offers pretty good visuals. The backgrounds and the foregrounds are beautifully presented and well worth watching, offering around 50 colors on screen. Soccer Kid is brilliantly animated and in normal mode he runs quickly and smoothly with the ball almost glued on his feet. The obstacles are cleverly done! There are taxi stations, bus stops, fire hydrants, lamp posts and a variety of other ambient details such as rolling meadows, stone fences etc. Compared to the Amiga AGA version, the AGA game offers a few more colors on screen and some more detail at the backdrops. The game's sound effects and music are excellent since the in-game tunes and the sampled sound effects are greatly composed and vary through the different stages.