Speedball 2: Tournament
January 14,2008 -

Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe was released in 1990 on the Commodore Amiga and became a very popular arcade styled future-sport game.  It blended fast action, and a little bit of RPG-style character leveling into a fun and exhilarating package.  Over the years Speedball 2 has been released on just about every home computer and game console under the sun, including the Genesis, PC, and most recently the Xbox 360 via the Live Arcade service.  Speedball 2: Tournament isn’t a port of the Live Arcade version, rather it’s a game specifically built for the PC.

The main game concept has been left well enough alone.  Your goal is to lead a team of tough men, women, and androids to victory in the Speedball arena.  You do this by taking possession of a steel ball that is served up via cannon in the center of the arena and successfully deliver that ball into your opponent’s goal.  The opposing team will try to stop your drive and take possession of the ball for themselves in any manner possible.  Physical contact is not only allowed, it’s encouraged. 

Speedball 2: Tournament has undergone a significant control tweaking since its early Amiga days.  Passing and shooting have been mapped to their own buttons, with Low and High passes possible for each.  New to the series is the ability to target your nearest teammate as well as being able to quickly snap over to the goalkeepers to defend an incoming drive.  It would have been nice to have an indicator that tells you who actually has the ball though.  This all works well for the most part. If you play the game with a gamepad, the experience is pretty much seamless.  Trying to play it with the keyboard and mouse on the other hand is an exercise in frustration and should be avoided at all costs.

The game offers up a few basic modes of play.  There is the single Knockout game, the League and Cup modes, and finally there is online play.  It’s possible to upgrade your players between League games, which is a nice touch.  Speedball 2: Tournament also features an online multiplayer mode, though its implementation is a little shoddy.  Before you can even access the multiplayer you’ll need to register at the Speedball 2 website.  You’ll have to quit out of the game to do this, since there’s no way of doing so from within the game itself.  After you’ve overcome that little hurdle, the online mode is functional, albeit rather Spartan.  Once you’re in an online game, things work well.  There may be some lag depending on the connection of the player you’re playing with, but for the most part, things work as they should.

The most noticeable change to Speedball 2: Tournament is in its visuals.  The previous games were all 2D sprite based.  Tournament is now fully 3D.  The game’s default camera view has been raised up a little bit from the original.  This means you’ve got a better view of the arena, but it also means that things are smaller overall.  There are a few different camera modes available to you, so finding something you’re comfortable with shouldn’t be difficult.  The game looks pretty good, all things considered.  The character models are relatively well done, although there seems to not be that much variety in their appearance and animations.  That said, the game does a good job of retaining the original’s art style while moving to the 3D space.

The original Speedball 2 was known for having some great audio for its day.  Speedball 2: Tournament feels like they were trying to retain as much of the original’s style as possible.  In that regard they’ve done a decent job, the game does sound authentic to the source material.  Unfortunately because of this, the game also ends up sounding somewhat dated.  There’s nothing here that’s overly bad, it’s just we’ve heard electronic music and robotic voices so many times already.

On the whole, Speedball 2: Tournament is a solid game.  It may have a few visual and aural quirks that may annoy some, but it makes up for it by doing what the original did all those years ago.  It takes the concept of the original, tweaks the controls to make them work better on a modern setup, but otherwise doesn’t try to mess with the formula too much.  The end result is a high speed, high contact game that is just as satisfying now as it was back in 1990.

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