Dino Dini

Dino Dini (born 5 June 1965) is an Italian-British video game developer and creator of the Kick Off series of football games.[1] He was a lecturer at the NHTV Breda University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands, teaching game programming.[2]

Career

In 1989 Dini's football game Kick Off was published by Anil Gupta's publishing house Anco, for the Atari ST & Amiga to critical acclaim and high sales.[3] Dini followed it with Player Manager and Kick Off 2. Goal! (also known as Dino Dini's Soccer) was then released after Dini left Anco and moved to Virgin Games in 1993. Goal! was critically acclaimed worldwide.[4] Goal! introduced more user friendly controls compared to Kick Off 2 and entertained a wider audience than its predecessor. It was also called the real Kick Off 3 by the Kick Off fans. In 1996, Dini moved to the United States to work as Project Director for the Z-Axis football game Three Lions. It was released in 1998.

In 2001, Dini moved back to Great Britain and started to work with his new development company, Abundant Software. In 2004, Dini signed with DC Studios to develop a new soccer game[5] which was code-named Soccer 3 and later Total Control Football. The game was cancelled during the summer of 2005.

After 2005, Dini worked as a contractor on a government-funded project. In 2009, he became a lecturer for the International Game Architecture and Design programme at NHTV Breda University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands, teaching game programming. At the 2009 Game Developers Conference Europe (GDCE) in Cologne, (Germany), Dini was guest speaker on the subject of video game design.[6][7]

In 2010, Dino ran unsuccessfully for a position on the International Game Developers Association board of directors.[8] In August of that year, he announced via his blog that he was working on a sequel to his game Player Manager as an independent project.[9] In 2011 he contributed articles and the beta version of his browser-based game Letteroids 3D to DevilsMMO, a website for MMO and MMORPG games.[10]

On 14 October 2015, Dino Dini announced a new game entitled Dino Dini's Kick Off Revival. It was released on the PlayStation 4 on 24 June 2016, with poor reviews from game journalists,[11] and from players.[12] Metacritic judged Dino Dini Kick Off Revival the 2nd worst game of 2016,.[13] Vice elected Revival as the worst football game ever made.[14] A PlayStation Vita version was delayed and released nine months later in March 2017[15] with bad reviews.[16]

The PC version, released on Steam in September 2017, was an exact port of the PlayStation 4 version. Whilst maintaining an overall "mixed" summary status, it has similarly received bad reviews for being a very basic game missing many features of the original Kick Off games.

Games

Games developed by Dini include:[17]

References
  1. Calvert, Justin. "Soccer deal for Dino Dini and DC-Studios". GameSpot. Archived from the original on 22 April 2017.
  2. "mADE Staff >Dino Dini". my Academy for Digital Entertainment. NHTV University of Applied Sciences. Archived from the original on 13 April 2014.
  3. "Reviews: Kick Off". Amiga Magazine Rack. Amiga Magazprogrammerine Team. Retrieved 15 April 2014.
  4. "Goal! Reviews – GamesNostalgia". GamesNostalgia.
  5. Calvert, Justin. "Soccer deal for Dino Dini and DC-Studios". GameSpot. Archived from the original on 18 July 2012.
  6. Lecturer, Video Game Programming, NHTV Speaks at The Game Developers Conference Europe 2009.
  7. GDCE09: Dino Dini on Design, Constraints and Integrity
  8. Candidates for the IGDA board of directors Archived 2 March 2010 at the Wayback Machine
  9. "The return of Player Manager?". 16 August 2010.
  10. "Letteroids 3D Beta".
  11. "Kick Off Revival review: Why does this game even exist?". 5 July 2016.
  12. "Dino Dini's Kick Off Revival Playstation 4 reviews". Metacritic.
  13. "THE 10 WORST VIDEO GAMES OF 2016". Metacritic.
  14. "Congratulations, 'Kick Off Revival', You're the Worst Football Game Ever". Vice. Archived from the original on 20 June 2018.
  15. Dino Dini Kick Off Revival PS Vita GameFAQs
  16. "Dino Dini Kick Off Revival on PS Vita Reviews". Metacritic. Retrieved 7 September 2017.
  17. Dino Dini entry at Kick Off Association Wikipedia Archived 2 November 2007 at the Wayback Machine
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