Speedball 2

Malice

I had a quick look in the Games and Retro forums but couldn't find a mention of this. Apologies if it's already been posted. It looks as if the Bitmap Brothers are involved with a company called Frogster Interactive to produce a new version of the Amiga and to a lesser extent PC classic Speedball 2. I don't know why they're not calling it Speedball 3

If it turns out to be even half as entertaining as the original I can't wait. I have many fond memories of abusing those nasty leaf-switched joysticks in 2 player mode with friends after school. Yes kids, that was before ergonomic joypads were invented

Anyway, check out Speedball 2 the website for more info!

r3nu4l

Ah, an Amiga owner! I played Speedball2 on the Commodore 64 and it was an incredibly addictive game. The ability to player components such as armour, boot type, speed etc was a very big leap forward in bringing strategy into a sports game.

I spent many, many hours playing this with friends, great game.

humanji

I think there's actually some copyright reason why it's not called Speedball 3. That's why they had Speedball 2000 a while ago (and I don't even remember if that was released).

Well it's fancy looking and has a flashy site, so that's enough for me!

Malice

r3nu4l wrote:

Ah, an Amiga owner! I played Speedball2 on the Commodore 64 and it was an incredibly addictive game. The ability to player components such as armour, boot type, speed etc was a very big leap forward in bringing strategy into a sports game.

I spent many, many hours playing this with friends, great game.

Unfortunately I never owned an Amiga. A couple of my friends did though and that was enough to feed my addiction to games like Kick Off 2, Shadow of the Beast, Lemmings, Chaos Engine, Xenon 2 and many more that I can't think of right now! I had a C-64 though. Oddly enough, I never played Speedball 2 on it. Maybe I should look it up.

humanji wrote:

I think there's actually some copyright reason why it's not called Speedball 3. That's why they had Speedball 2000 a while ago (and I don't even remember if that was released).

There was something called Speedball 2100 released for the PS1 a few years ago. It was terrible if I remember correctly.

Just checked the Wikipedia page for Speedball 2 and it mentions that the new version is coming out for XBox 360. Fingers crossed there's a PC version although to be honest if the game is good enough I'll buy a damn 360 for it! I did the same with Tekken for the PS1 and Tekken Tag for the PS2

Without wanting to go too off topic, did anyone ever play Chaos League on the PC? It was released a few years ago and I had high hopes for it based on a demo and the fact that it shared quite a lot of similarities with Blood Bowl. Unfortunately there just seemed to be too much going on and the controls were more than a little confusing. It was fun in 2 player mode for a while but I could never get too much success against the CPU :mad:

Canis Lupus

Speedball 2. Many is the hour I played that with my cousin. Fab game. That Chaos League was muck tho

Malice

Canis Lupus wrote:

That Chaos League was muck tho

Damn computer lost my last reply :mad:
Part of the problem for me with Chaos League was that I used to play it and Pro Evo a lot. When you're used to the AI in Pro Evo, the shortcomings of the AI in Chaos League is really highlighted. The commentary was entertaining though.

According to here, the new Speedball game is to be developed on PC only. This game and Starcraft 2 should serve as a perfect excuse to justify upgrading my PC

humanji

malice_ wrote:

There was something called Speedball 2100 released for the PS1 a few years ago. It was terrible if I remember correctly.

Ah, that explaing why I couldn't find Speedball 2000 anywhere, lol

Anyone ever play Hyperblade? It was the same basic principle of Speedball, but had you in a 3d arena on rollerblades knocking 7 shades of shìte out of the opposition (oh, and I think you could score too). It was obviously a rip off of the Speedball idea, but was a lot of fun.

Zombrex

I LOVED Speedball 2 ... that and Sensi Soccer pretty much defined early 90s gaming for me ... ah the Amiga

Never took to the console versions, or either games. Playing it with a game pad just felt "wrong" some how ... give me a cheap plastic one button serial port joystick any day ... at one point my brother and I were going through about one of those a week

ICE CREAM!!!!!

Owen

I play Speedball on the C64 too, and loved it. The graphics were just fantastic. Must get Frodo for my phone and fire it up again!

Malice

Wicknight wrote:

ICE CREAM!!!!!

On a more serious note, I'm not liking some of the text on the official site.

Subscribe to the Gold area and get access to worldwide rankings

or

You can download new, exclusive ingame content via micropayments

Now maybe it's the old fuddy duddy in me but is that not a load of rubbish? Is this something that is common in new releases?

I play Warcraft 3 online a lot and while I'm not very good at it, it would annoy me no end if I had to pay to be ranked on Battle.net or to add new units or buildings to the game. If you have already paid for the game why would you want to keep paying for it? Of course as soon as I typed that sentence I thought of World of Warcraft. I suppose that's a perfect example of paying for something and then continuing to pay for it and six million people can't be wrong can they?

steviec

malice_ wrote:

I play Warcraft 3 online a lot and while I'm not very good at it, it would annoy me no end if I had to pay to be ranked on Battle.net or to add new units or buildings to the game. If you have already paid for the game why would you want to keep paying for it? Of course as soon as I typed that sentence I thought of World of Warcraft. I suppose that's a perfect example of paying for something and then continuing to pay for it and six million people can't be wrong can they?

No different to the expansion pack for Warcraft 3 really, except split up into smaller pieces so you pay a fiver here and there, rather than say twenty quid for one big expansion, doesn't really work out any differently.

As long as the game is good then why not. One of the biggest offenders was Oblivion, and the makers got a lot of stick for it. But in reality the amount of content you got when you bought that game was huge and it was great value for money. So if you want to add even more stuff, you can buy it. If not, don't. Seems reasonable to me.

So I'd just ignore that and see how good the core game is. If it's good then great. Any additional content is a bonus that you may or may not want to splash out on in future. It's irrelevant to the core game really.

Malice

steviec wrote:

No different to the expansion pack for Warcraft 3 really, except split up into smaller pieces so you pay a fiver here and there, rather than say twenty quid for one big expansion, doesn't really work out any differently.

I see what you're saying and I agree with you to a certain extent. I just feel like it's the thin end of a wedge aimed at screwing as much money out of the consumer as possible.
I bought both the original and the expansion from Play.com for around €20 a few years ago. Without getting into the specifics, in my opinion the expansion added a lot to the game. Had I paid full price for the original though I probably would have been slower to purchase the expansion. By paying for the expansion bit by bit you can be sure that I would have ended up paying far more for it.

steviec wrote:

Any additional content is a bonus that you may or may not want to splash out on in future. It's irrelevant to the core game really.

Hopefully that'll be the case

AntiVirus

Bring it on!

I used to play league games with my mates and lots of beers. I only lost my virginity because my Atari ST broke, what a sad day.

This and Kick off 2 are the 2 games that give me my best gaming memories.

Malice

Did anyone take a look at the trailer? It's a whopping 106Mb download from the site but it's worth a look. One thing that struck me is the absence of the score multiplier on the side and the bouncy zapper things (sorry for the technical terminology) in front of the goal. The pitch looked very empty. Hopefully they'll be in the final version as their presence made the old games very tactical affairs at times.