1991 Anco / Enigma Variations
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)
Kick Off was converted to pretty much every platform of its day, including the NES quite late on in 1991. However, whilst backing up some old 5.25″ floppies from the Enigma Variations archive, we found a big surprise in the shape of a Super Kick Off prototype build for Nintendo’s console, which doesn’t seem to be known about until now (certainly couldn’t find any press mentions).
Super Kick Off was released in the same year on the likes of Game Boy (from Enigma Variations) and Master System (converted by Tiertex), and it seems that there were plans for a NES edition too. The game would build upon the original NES codebase.
Upon loading up, you’re greeted with a familiar intro screen, but with an updated “Super Kick Off” logo and different company graphics, which are also put at the top of the page, and with different credits. There is then a completely new intro screen with the crowd sample, and the well-known Super Kick Off cover artwork. Interestingly, the “Off” text is missing – which could be a glitch with the ROM or something that hadn’t yet been implemented.
Going into the main game, the menus are very similar, with a language selection part missing – and with some areas corrupting or not being present (going to one of the cups will give you a blank screen). When you start a match, it is pretty much the same as Kick Off, with no noticeable difference in the graphics. There’s possibly some gameplay tweaks/improvements that have been made.
It seems clear that the plan was to do a quick update of the original game with some overhauling of the graphics and tweaks to the gameplay, but only the title presentation was finished at this stage. It isn’t yet known if the development got any further and we hope to learn more soon about what happened to it.
In the meantime, if you spot any other new features or differences compared to the original Kick Off game, let us know and we’ll update the page with credit to you.
With a huge thank you to Mark Greenshields for allowing us to preserve.
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