1993 Anco Software
Platforms: PC DOS and Commodore Amiga
Thanks to adverts that appeared in magazines back in the day, it is known that both PC and Amiga versions of Kevin Keegan’s Player Manager was planned. Sadly, only the Super Nintendo version would ever see release. But what of the PC and Amiga versions and how far did they get?
Well, as you can see by the above screenshot, pretty far! Today we have recovered remains of the PC conversion which contains the managerial and arcade parts, and seems to be around 60-70% complete. A lot of menu options are missing, and the game is quite glitchy in places. We believe this is as far as the development got.
Anco were reported to have often changed their mind on what they wanted to release due to changing market conditions or different opportunities arising. For reasons that cannot be exactly recalled, they decided to abandon the home conversions, leaving Imagineer just releasing the SNES edition. They would go on to publish the likes of Kick Off 3 instead.
We may have also found remains of the Amiga version, but need to examine things in more detail to confirm once we have more time. The dates seem to match on the source files, and could be hopefully one for the future to add to this page. We suspect it will be at roughly the same stage as the PC edition.
For now, you can check out the PC version at least – and also a stack of graphical assets that we’ve recovered for both platforms, including some “interesting” early caricatures of Kevin Keegan that were dropped and replaced by ones that look much more like him, and not Mike Baldwin from Coronation Street (if you happen to be from the UK and are of a certain age – you will know what I mean!).
Hopefully over time we will learn more, and of course, bring you something of the Amiga edition. Enjoy!
With thanks to Mark Greenshields for allowing us to preserve.
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Video
Gallery (PC)
Gallery (Amiga)
This is a great find!!
I wanted a successor to the original Player Manager so much!!