97

UEFA Champions League 1996/97 is the second in a series of games based on that sporting event with that catchy theme tune.

Unused Graphics#

Kits#

The NDATA\TEAMS\HOMETEAM folder contains three unused kit textures. The file names BAYERNH.TEX, BRUGGEH.TEX, and VALENCIH.TEX imply that FC Bayern München, Club Brugge KV, and Valencia CF could have featured in this game somehow. (None of these teams were in the Champions League group stage in 1996/97, though Club Brugge did play in the qualifying round.) There are no corresponding away kits, logos, or data for these teams.

There’s also one unused kit texture in the NDATA\TEAMS\AWAYTEAM folder: SCOTLANA.TEX, which is an exact duplicate of the used SCOTLNDA.TEX.

Flags#

To do: Confirm which flag size is used where, and find out what palette to rip the graphics with.

Although there are Austrian and Hungarian clubs in this game (because, inexplicably, Steaua Bucharest is considered a Hungarian club in this game!), their national teams are not included. Nonetheless, the flags of Austria and Hungary are present amongst the flags used on the national team selection screens.

Unused Team Data#

To do: Is this from one of the other football games developed by Krisalis? What season are these rosters from?

Starting near offset 0xE5D50 in UEFACODE.EXE, there’s what appears to be team data for Manchester United and Sheffield Wednesday. Manchester United is in this game, but its in-game roster (which is stored in a separate file, TEAMSAV\DEFAULT.TMS) is different than this one. Sheffield Wednesday has never been in the Champions League and certainly isn’t in this game. That said, as Krisalis was formed from ex-Gremlin staff and based within South Yorkshire, its presence may indicate that during development testing was done with one of the local favourites. The format of this data isn’t quite the same as what’s used in the final game, so it’s hard to say exactly what it all means. The text is in mixed-case, whereas this game uses all caps, all the time. Here’s a text dump:

Manchester Utd
Alex Ferguson
England
Old Trafford
Red Devils
Mark Hughes
Peter Schmeichel
Ryan Giggs
Paul Ince
Roy Keane
Eric Cantona
Paul Parker
Lee Sharpe
Gary Pallister
Steve Bruce
Dennis Irwin
Lee Martin
Bryan Robson
Andrei Kanchelskis
Dion Dublin
Mike Phelan
Les Sealey
Brian McClair
Danny Wallace
Clayton Blackmore
Colin McKee
Darren Ferguson
Craig Lawton
Mark Robins
Danny Wallace
Sheffield Wednesday
Trevor Francis
England
Hillsborough
Owls
Des Walker
Williams
Andy Sinton
Chris Waddle
Andy Pearce
David Hirst
Paul Warhurst
Roland Nilsson
Nigel Pearson
Chris Woods
Chris Bart-Williams
Nigel Worthington
Mark Bright
John Sheridan
Phil King
Nigel Jemson
Gordon Watson
Graham Hyde
Carlton Palmer
Julian Watts
Ryan Jones
Simon Stewart
Lance Key
Kevin Pressman
Unknown
Nigel Jemson

Unused Text#

To do: It looks like there’s other assorted remnants of deleted strings in the team data files.

Deleted Stadium Names#

A few clubs and nearly half of the national teams have stadium names that appear completely blank in-game. In the data files (TEAMSAV\DEFAULT.TMS for clubs and TEAMSAV\WORLD.TMS for national teams), all of these stadium names are present, but the first letter of each has been replaced with a null byte (denoted as \0).

Placeholder Teams’ Data#

The 16 placeholders for user-created clubs also have fragments of deleted strings in their data.

Except for the first player, “ANY NAME”, the entire roster of these placeholder teams is filled with a dummied-out copy of the Yugoslavia squad.

Match Report#

At offset 0x20AB98 in UEFACODE.EXE is a series of strings that form a bizarre match report. “Paul tester” might refer to Paul Dobson, who is credited for the 3D graphics. The entry after that could be commentary on either a notoriously corrupt organisation or a competing video game franchise.

Red card 
Slarghti Bartfarst
Slarghti Bartfarst 133'
Forest Trumped  12'
James DidnotLast   8'
Gino Ginelli  8'
Alphose Capone   8'
2'   Paul tester
42'  Fifa Stinks
102' Peer Gynt
102' Elliot Ness
102' Major Jump

Hidden Credits#

At offset 0x219F1C in UEFACODE.EXE:

Capt. Amanda Pugh.
Capt. A. Kavanagh.

Amanda Pugh is credited as “Management” in other Krisalis games, though not this one. It’s unclear who A. Kavanagh is, though it could be a relative of Krisalis co-founder Tony Kavanagh, or him himself (Anthony often being shortened to Tony). It’s equally unclear how the two of them got promoted to the rank of captain, aside from a reference to their roles in leading teams within the business.

Version and Build Date#

At offset 0xEBE29 in UEFACODE.EXE:

#Master 2.03 Date 18-4-97