Kick Off 2 (along with Kick Off) is one of the most competitive, most demanding and most rewarding soccer game ever developed for the 16bit home systems. The game was created by Anco in 1990.
Review
STORY / GAMEPLAY
This is a soccer (football) game, so there's no actual story. As in every sports games, your main goal is to always win. Kick Off 2 (along with its data disc "Kick Off 2 - The Final Whistle" that followed a year later) is a full size, multi-directional scrolling soccer game that includes everything and in the correct proportions. Both opponent teams play the game based on tactics. The players move into position to receive passes and gain ball possession. The ball, as on a real game, travels ahead of the player thus making tackling a matter of skill rather than a choice. Each tiny player that runs on the pitch has a unique combination of attributes and skills suitable for the skill level at which the game is played. The game includes all details necessary for such a game, like action replays, players with different characteristics, a variety of tactics plus fouls, yellow cards, red cards, injuries, injury time and different referees. Anco released their first Kick Off game for the Amiga and the Atari ST and it was immediately considered pioneering in soccer computer games as it brought some features that were never included in a football game before. Note that the first Kick Off in the series was initially released for the Atari ST. Kick Off 2 is better and more complete than its predecessor, offering great soccer fun, either in Single or in 2 Players mode.
GRAPHICS / SOUND The Amiga version has great visuals, featuring fast animation of the players at the pitch, vivid colors and smooth scrolling. Note that there are significant differences on the pitch details (and scrolling) compared to the ST counterpart as the Amiga version contains more details like pitch lines, goalpost nets and a few more. As with the player models, the animations are minimal due to the game’s camera angle. The sound game's is a real joy and consists of sampled looped cheers for goals, and similarly, jeers for fouls plus some extra decent sounds like when the ball's kicked. Also, there a few sort samples of crowd chants when the ball goes out of play or when there’s a free kick within striking distance.
CPU: Motorola MC68000 7.16 MHz MEMORY: 512KB of Chip RAM (OCS chipset - A500), 512 KB of Slow RAM or Trapdoor RAM can be added via the trapdoor expansion, up to 8 MB of Fast RAM or a Hard drive can be added via the side expansion slot. The ECS chipset (A500+) offered 1MB on board to 2MB (extended) of Chip RAM. GRAPHICS: The OCS chipset (Amiga 500) features planar graphics (codename Denise custom chip), with up to 5 bit-planes (4 in hires), allowing 2, 4, 8, 16 and 32 color screens, from a 12bit RGB palette of 4096 colors. Resolutions varied from 320x256 (PAL, non-interlaced, up to 4096 colors) to 640x512 (interlace, up to 4 colors). Two special graphics modes where also included: Extra Half Bright with 64 colors and HAM with all 4096 colors on-screen. The ECS chipset models (Amiga 500+) offered same features but also extra high resolution screens up to 1280x512 pixels (4 colors at once). SOUND: (Paula) 4 hardware-mixed channels of 8-bit sound at up to 28 kHz. The hardware channels had independent volumes (65 levels) and sampling rates, and mixed down to two fully left and fully right stereo outputs