Download Speedball

This is the first game in the series that introduced us with this popular future sport. Gaining above average marks and less popularity than more famous successor, Speedball aims at fast paced and adrenaline filled play combined with simplicity. And it hits the spot!

Speedball is very rough sport, played in the future when science makes this kind of equipment and body-fitness possible. It is more violent variation of today’s violent sports, mostly being similar to handball since players are carrying and throwing the ball. Only here they use a steel ball. Each team has five players, one of them being a goalkeeper. It is played in narrow rectangular arena surrounded by walls, much like indoor soccer, or more precisely like five-a-side football, due to the number of players. Still, goals are much wider, almost like in football (soccer). It may be similar to hockey in some way and it surely has similarities with American football since players use tackles. But it is most reminiscing of another future sport called “rollerball” that was seen in the movie with the same title (1975, starring James Caan), although two sports have many differences. Rollerballers wore roller skates and played with steel ball on the circular field wearing equipment much alike this one in Speedball. There was even a fist hitting a hip, but there are no official relations between the game and the movie.

Five players, goals and only one time period that lasts around two and half minutes, there are no rules about how to play. Combine the lack of rules with the lack of free space and results is a constant fast-paced action and fighting. As you probably understood by now, players will be beating each other as much as they can, including goalkeepers. They will run, jump, fall, throw, hit, kick, push, beat each other up and even cheat... anything to score, save their own goal and win.

Controls are as simple as possible: arrow keys for direction and only one fire button (Enter), joystick being supported. You get a hand of the controls right away, just need some time to work on your speed and skills. Player you control on the field is always highlighted. When carrying the ball, hold a fire button for a second to throw the ball high or just press fire quickly to throw the ball in waist height. When not carrying the ball, press fire button to perform sliding tackle if the ball is in waist height or to jump and try to catch the ball if the ball is higher in the air. When your team has the ball, you will always control the player with the ball, while the player you control when defending is changed automatically. When your goalkeeper is on the screen, you control both him and the highlighted player. This may be tricky. Goalkeeper moves only left-right and will dive when pressing fire. This means that you have to take care what you are doing with the infield player since you may move your goalkeeper in a wrong direction. This may sound unfair, but actually your opponents have the same problem, even the computer controlled team. That’s right, computer uses same patterns for non-highlighted players in both teams and a special ones for highlighted player and goalkeeper.

Naturally, this game is most entertaining when paying against your friends in two player mode. In single player mode you can play either knockout cup or league. You can choose between three strong teams. Each team is represented with team captain and his attributes: height, weight and more important stamina, power and skill. Although there are only three important attributes, they affect everything in the game: shooting, speed, tackling, fighting etc. Captains represent attributes of entire team.

Mechanism in the floor throws the ball out at the start of the game and after goal is scored. There are also several bumpers in the field to make the game more interesting. During the match, upgrades and coins will pop-up from the floor that can be picked up only by the highlighted player of either team. Upgrades may increase your attribute, make the ball invisible for a while etc. Coins are used between two matches for un-fair deeds, like increasing your attributes, decreasing opponent’s attributes, bribing referee or timer and similar.

Technical parts of the game are great. EGA graphics looks very good and everything is well designed. There will be no problems when playing the game, nothing is too obvious nor confusing. It will surely happen that you don’t know where the ball is sometimes, but that will be result of several players battling around the ball. Only PC speakers are supported but they really managed to get the maximum out of it. Tunes sound very good (work of famous David Whittaker), while FX in the game manages to create the atmosphere. Players respond immediately to your controls, so everything is working well and fast.

Game may not be popular like its more advanced successor but at the time it appeared it was a masterpiece for DOS. Two games have some differences in gameplays since arena is Speedball is much smaller and thus the game is faster, so some may still more prefer this one over the sequel. Some parts may not be at top level, player-switching will surely give you headaches, but game is incredibly fun and addictive. Once your skills have improved, you will have a lot of hard fast-playing matches. Sometimes it may seem as if entire match is finished in a few seconds, since you had a non-stop battling in the arena. You can’t go wrong with this one either if you are playing alone or with your friends.

Game works in WinXP, but use DOSBox to lower the cycles. Use EGA.EXE for EGA graphics etc.

Reviewed by: marko river / Screenshots by: marko river / Uploaded by: marko river

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