All is right with the world again. Dino Dini is back making football games. The legendary game developer who created the classic Kick Off franchise back in the 80s is now returning to bring Kick Off Revival exclusively to PlayStation.
The new, top-down arcade footie game has today been announced on the PlayStation Blog, coming to the PlayStation 4 and PS Vita next year.
For the uninitiated the Kick Off games of the 16-bit era redefined the way football was represented in gaming thanks to the revolutionary way the ball interacted with the players. It was the game which begat Sensible Soccer.
Where previously - and still today - the ball would always magnetically stick to the foot of a player, in Dino Dini's games you actually had to be skillful enough to manoeuvre your little computer person around the ball, shepherding it towards the goal.
It was tough to get used to, but made for seriously frantic, epic, hopelessly addictive one-on-one footie battles.
In the push towards greater graphical realism, bigger budgets, fully licensed teams and all the legal woes that entails, the smaller developers, like Dini, struggled in the new era.
Let's call it a comeback!
But now it's making a comeback and as someone who was hopelessly addicted to both Kick Off 2 and the brilliant Player Manager, it's tough not to get giddy with excitement about it.
"As one person, I had managed to beat large companies in sales figures without having licenses and gigantic budgets," says Dini on the PlayStation Blog. "I did this by focusing on what is the most important part of games: gameplay, and I am very good at that."
That's music to our ears.
But it's not just going to be some pixelated redux, as there will be a full 3D graphics engine and analogue controls which take full advantage of the controllers we have now. The analogue control is going to be especially useful given the accuracy needed to keep your players on the ball.
"The important things will not change," explains Dini. "The ball is not stuck to your feet; you can shoot the way you want; aiming and swerving the ball will be 100% under your control. The effect is that the feel and the spirit of the original game is retained, but the possibilities for precision and skill are vastly improved."
This is going to make office lunchtimes a very noisy place....
Via PlayStation Blog
