After producing a sequel to their debut game, Xenon, the Bitmap Brothers turned their attention to creating a follow up to Speedball. Although Speedball won the best 16-bit game at the 1989 Golden Joystick Awards, it has largely been forgotten as Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe surpasses it in every way. The pitch has been enlarged, the graphics and sound improved, there are more players on pitch and the single player game has been greatly expanded.
Even with the pitch only being one screen wide, the original Speedball (left) looks and feels a bit sparse against Speedball 2
The best of the initial releases were for the Atari ST and Commodore Amiga. Graphics are up to the usual Bitmap Brothers high standards with both versions looking and playing identically. Aurally, Speedball 2 on the Amiga is streets ahead of the ST version with some excellent effects and speech.
Speedball 2 is a futuristic handball game played in an enclosed arena with two competing teams of armour clad players. Each game is played over two halves, each lasting 90 seconds. The teams swap ends at half time. The object is simply to score more points than the opposing team. Each team consists of nine on-field players and three substitutes.
Speedball 2 can be played either as a single player or as a two player competitive game. In the single player game you take control of the titular team Brutal Deluxe and can take part in league and cup matches among others.
The game starts in the gym where you can train your squad by spending money on improving their attributes. You can also use your credits to buy star players to greatly boost your team. Additionally, the gym allows you to change your player’s position on the pitch (midfield, defence, goalkeeper etc).
It's easy to distinguish my four 'star players' in this team.
There are eight customisable attributes for each player – Aggression, Attack, Defence, Speed, Throwing, Power, Stamina and Intelligence.
When playing the game you control the player who is nearest the ball. If you are in possession of the ball you can pass it at waist height or choose a higher, longer throw. If you do not have the ball your player can tackle opponents or attempt to intercept the ball if it is airborne. If you win a tackle, your opponent loses energy and vice versa. When a player’s energy is reduced to zero they have to be substituted and are stretchered off. The energy bars for the active player is shown at the bottom of the screen.
The aim of the game is to score more points than your rivals but, unlike it's predecessor, this does not necessarily mean to score more goals. Although scoring a goal awards 10 points there are plenty of other ways to improve your tally. There are two bounce domes on the pitch with 2 points awarded every time you hit them with the ball. Each team has a cluster of five stars at the edge of the arena. Lighting each star garners 2 points with a 10 point bonus awarded to the side which lights all five (2 points are subtracted from your score if an opponent turns a light off). You can also gain 10 points for every opponent who is stretchered off. The amount of points you accumulate can be increased by up to 100% by throwing the ball up the score multiplier ramp. Like the stars, this can be cancelled by the opposing team who can also use the multiplier.
Using the 'multiplier' to boost my score.
Finally there are four electro-bounce units in the arena. Throwing the ball against these electrifies the ball and it will knock over the first opponent it touches. If you retain possession of the ball it will remain electrified. The effect is cancelled if the opponent gains possession or the ball stops moving. On the pitch power ups regularly appear consisting of tokens and armour. Picking up tokens have varying time limited effects such as freezing or slowing an opposing team, making your team immune to tackles or reversing your opponents joystick controls (in a two player game). They can also change stats for the entire team such as increasing all attributes to maximum or reducing the opposing teams attributes to minimum. Armour affects individual attributes for a single player depending on the item picked up. Coins can also be collected to be spent in the gym.
The single player game is fairly solid but, as with most sport sims, Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe is best played against a human opponent. This is how I mostly played it back in the day and it was particularly nail biting if you and your friends are evenly matched. I would go as far as to say is probably my most favourite two player video game of all time. Example gameplay...
First things first - Secret
of the Silver Blades is not one of my Favourite Video
Games of All Time. It’s by no means a bad
game, but the only reason I played it through, apart from completeness, was to
prepare my party for Pools of Darkness.
Secret of the
Silver Blades is the penultimate title in the Pool of Radiance quartet of games. Set
in the Forgotten Realms AD&D universe, it follows on from the events in Curse of the Azure Bonds. From what I
read the game is much more linear and has more of an emphasis on combat than
the previous games. There is also no overworld map - travel between areas
is by way teleportation gateways. By all accounts it seems to be one of
the weaker Gold Box titles. My experience bared this out which is why it
doesn’t deserve a ‘proper’ entry on my blog.
Secret of the
Silver Blades continues to use the venerable Gold Box engine as
before but eschews the 16 by 16 level layout for much of the game. Instead it contains
several sprawling levels filled with random encounters. The maze-like area of the map below
is supposed to represent a ruined town but is made up of corridors, rooms and
doors and took several hours to create. Apart from one place you are directed
to, I only found two other caches of treasure. As much as I like mapping and
combat, this is too much and feels like padding – it was unrewarding and added
nothing to the story.
A more minor issue is that I had to answer riddles at
the end of several levels to continue. This breaks the fourth wall as I had
seven characters in my party, two with 18 intelligence. Surely one of them would
have been able to solve them?
There were a couple of riddles that weren't this simple to solve.
The game did have a wide variety of opponents and
some nice fixed combats, but they were just too few and far between to make up
for the innumerable random encounters.
As I said, Secret
of the Silver Blades is far from being a bad game, but much of it
felt like a slog which I only played to completion as a means to an end. I’m
hoping this is the weak link in the series and that Pools of Darkness won’t be as disappointing when I get
to it in 1991.
Prince of Persia is a platform adventure game designed and
programmed by Jordan Mechner. It was
released on the Apple II computer in 1989 and was subsequently converted to
most of the popular (and not so popular) systems through the early ‘90s. Using his younger brother as a model, Jordan built on
the same rotoscoping technique he first used in Karateka. This allowed for the
fluid, life-like animation that the game has become known for.
I first came across a garish CGA Prince of Persia
over 20 years ago on a PC in my first job.
I thought it was okay but pretty samey and too hard. Having played it again (this time with
instructions at hand) I have found the controls to be pretty intricate and give
more control over the character than I initially thought.
I may be in a minority but I find the MS-DOS and Commodore
Amiga versions to be the most aesthetically pleasing. They build on the Apple II graphics and I prefer
their simplicity. Of these two, the PC
version has slightly better sound effects than the Amiga so, in my opinion,
comes out on top. Releases on the Atari ST upwards feature more and more detailed graphics
that move further away from the ‘classic’ Prince
of Persia look.
The Atari ST version, also from 1990, has slightly more detailed graphics. The 1994 Mega Drive release loses the clean look of the original altogether.
The scene is set in the game's intro. While the Sultan is away fighting a war, his Grand Vizier Jaffar, has seized control of the throne. He orders the Sultan's daughter marry him within the hour or else she will die. You take control of the unnamed adventurer who must make
his way through twelve hazard filled stages in order to rescue the Sultan’s
daughter. There is a time limit of 60
minutes in which to complete the quest.
The
player has a health bar, initially consisting of three red triangles. One of these is used up if the player gets
hit by a sword or falls from the height of a couple platforms. Small red potions can be found that can restore one
triangle while the larger red potions can add additional triangles to the health bar.
The small blue potion reduces your health whilst the small red one restores it. The large red potion increases the total amount of damage you can take.
Falling too far, taking too much damage or
getting killed by a trap results in the character dying. Although there are no ‘lives’ the player has
to restart the current level resulting in a tighter time limit.
One of the many ways to instantly die
Another obstacle are Jaffar’s guards. They can be defeated in a simple combat using the sword that can be found on the first level.
Fight moves are limited to strike and block.
Among the puzzles are closed doors which must be opened by a
trigger tile and eventually begin to close.
There are also tiles which can close the open doors but these differ
slightly in look. Other tiles on the
floor and ceiling are collapsible. These
can be spotted by jumping on the spot as they wobble slightly. The tiles can be made to collapse from above
by walking over them. From below they
can be hit by jumping, but the player must then move out of the way to avoid
taking damage.
Things start getting tricky on level 3 but thankfully the game can be saved from here. Skeletons can't be killed in combat.
Prince of Persia is definitely deserving of it's 'classic' status, influencing the look of later games such as Another World and Flashback. It is a challenging, sometimes frustrating, game that is just as playable now as when it was released.
