Speedball and Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe/Evolution/HD

[ratsoalbion]

"Ice cream! Ice cream!"

It's only a couple of days until we record this one (apologies for the late notice), so please share with us your memories of either of Bitmap Bros.' violent future sport Speedball titles on whatever format you played them.

[Alex79]

I never played the original, but have fond memories of the sequel. A school friend owned an Amiga, and to the rest of us playing on our Amstrads and Spectrums it seemed like full on arcade quality games in the comfort of your home. We used to sneak out of school on our lunch breaks (highly forbidden) and play this on his computer. We were eventually caught and reprimanded severely, but it was worth it! I got my own copy on the Sega Master System a couple of years later, and thought it was an excellent version (I've played it again recently and its held up surprisingly well). My brother and I absolutely played it to death. We both had our tactics, he'd go for goals and I'd go for the multipliers and various point targets around the arena. I loved the fact you could upgrade your players stats, and from what I remember there was a fairly deep championship/career mode which I ploughed hours/days/months in to. I remember we took our console with us when we went to stay with family in the countryside as kids and our ancient cousin (who probably only would have been about 25 looking back!) played it with us all day long. My school friends and I even named our five-a-side footy team Brutal Deluxe (a reference somewhat lost on our teachers but we didn't care). Really nice memories of playing this game as a kid, yeah. I never bothered playing the remake that came out a while back simply because the original was still so good and whenever I wanted a game I'd just fire up and emulator and spend an hour or so right back there having fun. That was, and always will be good enough for me. Top game.

Three word review : Brutal timeless classic.

[Flabyo]

Nothing to say on the first game, never played it unfortunately.

I first encountered the sequel on a friends Amiga, long before I owned one myself. I was never any good at it, but I liked the setting and the simple management aspects it had in the single player mode. It reminded me a lot of the Blood Bowl board game actually, buying star players, trying to injure the opposition players etc... In the end we never really clicked with it though, and moved on to Sensible Soccer as our game of choice for two player battles.

A couple of years later there was a port of Speedball 2 to the Commodore 64. It's not very well known, but I think it actually plays better than the 16 bit versions of the game. The players are smaller and you can see a lot more of the pitch at once which makes a proper passing game easier to play. The reason the C64 port isn't so well known is that the publisher went under a short time after release and all stock was recalled. (In fact the publisher *literally* went under, the owner Robert Maxwell fell off his yacht and drowned...)



I recently acquired it for my Megadrive, and that's a pretty solid port too, although pretty bare bones when it comes to game play modes compared to other Megadrive sports games like FIFA Soccer and NHL Hockey.

Whatever happened to the 'brutal future sports' genre? There used to be loads of them...

[arry_g]

I had the original Speedball on the Master System but I don't have any anecdote (as I sometimes do) to amuse you with or anything particularly substantial to say about the game. I never liked sports games but I loved Speedball, it was fast and brutal (even in the way it sounded), the AI was difficult to conquer (at least for younger me) and the multiplayer never failed to bring out the rarely seen competitive side of me. Speedball was a game from an age where sports games where more arcade and featured power ups, it was fun and frustrating at the same time.

I will always miss it but likely wont ever revisit it, there's something bittersweet about that.

[seansthomas]

Only played the original after the sequel so it felt slow and plodding in comparison to its slicker sequel. Spent many hours being beaten convincingly on the Amiga version at a 'friends' house, who took great delight in not explaining what the hell was going on.

Later bought it on the Sega Master System and preferred that version even when I had an Amiga a few years later. The campaign mode felt a bit more basic and easier to win the league but it felt more enjoyable to play. What it lacked in graphical and aural finesse it made up for in relentless speed and having smaller, basic sprites meant you could see more of the arena, an issue on the Amiga version. I tended to concentrate play down the side walls due to the cheeky multipliers and to give me context on where I was in the field, something not helped by the camera occasionally losing track of play. Many times a CPU opponent would score due to throwing the ball through a teleport before the screen had caught up.

But conversely that's what I liked most about the game; the variety of ways to win was great. One mate went for the multipliers and hammered those discs that earned two points. Another went for goals or injuring the opposing team. I lit up those five lights and would pass the ball to an opponent near the goal, so I could slide into them, nick the ball back and score. Like many games of the era, there was a lot of fun to be had by just exploring the in game mechanics and mucking about.

I haven't played it for a decade or more but I expect it'd still play better than many games do now by just using that one button.