Piko Interactive has dusted off another retro classic for a Steam re-release. This time it’s the turn of the 16-bit hit Soccer Kid, due out tomorrow (2nd July). If you live in the US, you may know it as The Adventures of Kid Kleets. Ah, good old ‘90s regional marketing.
Originally released by UK-based Krisalis Software, Soccer Kid first launched on the Amiga in 1993 before making its way to PC, Amiga CD32, Atari Jaguar, SNES, and 3DO. In 2003 it then received a second lease of life after budget publisher Telegames released a (moderately) enhanced version on GBA and PSone, becoming one of the last releases for Sony’s ageing console.
Reviews of the original version were generally positive, gaining praise for putting a spin on the platforming genre – the titular star had a long list of attacks and moves, all of which involve kicking, bouncing or standing on his football in various ways. Boss battles and bonus stages featured too (with the former entailing some unfortunate stereotyping.)
In fact, Soccer Kid can be attributed to starting a minor ‘football platformer’ fad – Marko’s Magic Football followed in its footsteps, as did a tie-in of the quintessentially ‘90s cartoon The Hurricanes.
Screenshots on the Steam product page suggest Piko has picked the MS-DOS version for a re-release, which makes sense. There’s no word on pricing, but we’d imagine it’ll be somewhere around £3.99, putting it in line with the rest of Piko’s range.
It’s interesting to see that branding for the breakfast cereal Golden Grahams is still in place – all traces of product placement are usually removed when a game receives a re-release, such as Penguin bars in the recent Switch version of James Pond: Robocod. An oversight, perhaps.