Speedball
a violent quasi-legal future sport with one rule, slam a solid steel ball into your opponents goal. Or, for a laugh, into your opponents face! That's right there are no other rules. Originally conceptualised as a game of 12 hulking brutes, beating each other to a pulp whilst attempting to score within the confines of a small metallic playing arena, corruption and violence eventually force the game underground. Unregulated and ungoverned Speedball degenerates into a fiasco. However, by the dawn of the 22nd century, public interest in the sport is reorganised and rejuvenated - a new league structure is created. There are new teams, new stadia and new ways to score. The arena is bigger, the players are tougher and the action is faster than ever before. From out of the darkness emerges Speedball 2 and, along with it, a new challenge. A new Speedball team have arrived on the scene, the toughly named Brutal Deluxe. Problem is their name belies the fact they are probably the worst team ever to appear in Speedball history. Worse still, you've been given the honour of attempting to turn them into champions. With only 14 weeks to reach the top division, can you create a team of bloodthirsty super-humans with deft Speedball ability to steamroll over the likes of Fatal Justice and Steel Fury?
Speedball 2 maintains the basic concepts of its predecessor - score lots of goals whilst tackling and pummelling your opponents into the ground - but improves immensely on said flaws. The Bitmap Brothers added two masterstrokes of pure genius to the erstwhile simplicity of Speedball. The first was the addition of a management feature in order to enhance the single player game. Now, not only would you partake in the in-game bashing, you could also transform your team into winners with a canny bit of training before every match. Furthermore, you could now purchase a couple of star players to beef up the bunch of weaklings at your command. Of course, these features require the use of cold, hard cash.
The second masterstroke consists of the actual matches. Gone is the tiny playing arena with its functional two-way vertical scrolling. Instead the Bitmap's have replaced it with an eight-way multi-directional scrolling pitch that seems about 8 times the size of the original. To say the pitch is vast is somewhat of an understatement. With the incorporation of nine brutes playing against nine to make use of the bigger playing area, the player graphics have also been updated and are speedier and more easy to control, resulting in some fast and furious action. Of course, a bigger pitch provides much more scope for added variety in gameplay and, again, the Brothers don't disappoint.
The variety of features ensures that how you go about winning games is completely up to you. For instance, there is more than one way to score. Not content with the normal route to goal (and the ten points awarded for such a feat) you can also hit either of the two bounce-domes for a couple of points, cripple an opponents player for another ten points or hit one of five stars on the sidewall of the arena for a couple of points each (light up all five stars and you're awarded 10 points). Alternatively, you can also deduct two points from your oppositions score if you hit a star they have managed to light up. Already you can see the scope for more strategic play coming to the fore - you don't even have to score a "proper" goal to win.
And yet there's still more! The point multiplier (an invention of pure genius) can provide a slight advantage by doubling the team's points for each score obtained thereafter, once the ball is sent up the multiplier's chute. Such is the advantage half the game can be spent battling against opposition around the multiplier with little intention of scoring until you've obtained the multiplier's bonus. Other pitch features include an electrobounce (electrifying the ball so that it tackles the next player) a warp gate and a vast array of tokens to collect that have a variety of in-game effects (power-ups), all of which keeps things interesting when thinking about strategies to apply during a match.
All this added variety and tactical splendour could have collapsed under the heavy weight of expectation, yet Speedball 2 entails perfection in all other departments as well. Despite the additional complexities, which adds weight to the games longevity, Speedball 2 remains ever so simple a game to play. Essentially, the Bitmap Brothers recognised what worked in the original game and kept with said features. Therefore the match time remains at two halves of only ninety seconds each. It ensures the game is played at a furious, breathless and often reckless pace. Furthermore, the arena furniture stays the same throughout. Whereas the Bitmap's could have been tempted to move the point multipliers, bounce-domes, etc. around the pitch environment in every subsequent game, they realised that with only 90 seconds on the clock the player just wants to get into the game, not spend half the match searching for the integral tactical components of the pitch. Again, damn right simplicity is the way forward, with every arena for every game being identical, allowing the player to get on with the simple leg breaking tasks at hand.
To this day I've only won the top league the once and yet I'm still playing, attempting to gain that achievement for a second time. Likewise, I've very rarely managed to beat my arch nemeses of the game, the deplorably fantastic Super Nashwan (or utter bastards), but when you do, the sense of achievement is, well, rather immense. Speedball 2 is quite simply a fantastic challenge. No game grabs you with such fiendish addictiveness (due to the exquisite learning curve and the marvellous simplicity) and over fifteen years later, it still hasn't let go.
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