I’d pretty much given up on the Playstation platform. I like the sports games, but most of the other games I’ve tried bore me. Then by accident the other day I read that Bitmap Brothers had recently released an update to one of the best games I’ve ever played, Speedball. Excellent.
Fortunately for me (but not for Bitmap) the game isn’t selling too well — already discounted to $9.95 at the local department store. So since late last night, I’ve been playing Speedball 2100, and the game still rocks.
Speedball was/is simply the best ripoff of one of the best scifi films of all time, Rollerball (yes, I’m serious about that). Two teams face off in an enclosed arena trying to put a metal ball through a goal. The game superficially resembles hockey, except there are no sticks and you can score points for severely injuring people on the other team. Of course you’ve also got power-ups to deal with and a few other ways of scoring, which aren’t really implemented well in this version for reasons I’ll get into in a bit.
It’s still one of the best implementations of a “future sport” for a home console that I’ve seen, but the update of Speedball does have a few problems.
First, although they are a lot better than the Sega Genesis/Amiga graphics of the original Speedball, the Speedball 2100 graphics are definitely subpar for a Playstation game. In addition the instruction manual is horrible (as are most Playstation game manuals, but this one really blows.)
The biggest problem, however, is that the game forces you to play two 90 second halves. I would have liked to have been able to alter this, as some of the alternative ways of scoring — there are a bank of targets that can be lit up as well as a nifty way to multiply your score — are too hard to carry out in only 90 seconds. A two and a half minute period would have allowed for more strategic games.
Also hardcore gamers, this game is probably way too easy. When I can get a good third of the way through a console game, there has to be something wrong (it took me weeks just to figure out NFL Blitz).
Still, if you can find it for $10 like I did, you won’t go wrong with Speedball 2100.