Speedball is a different kind of sports game, made by the bitmap brothers in the Early 90s that mainly appeared on the Amiga. It offered a futuristic version of handball, rugby and ice hockey, that had no real rules in place. Recently Empire re-released the game on the Xbox Live Arcade, and it mimics the original to a tee, but still has the same learning curve problem as the original.

Gameplay:

The rules of Speedball are as follows, 9 players on a team, 90 seconds a half and you score by throwing a ball at targets in the middle of the arena, hitting stars on the walls and throwing into a goal; all of which you can get more points by hitting the set multiplier bonus’. You can also get improvements for your players by picking up the randomly placed power ups. It sounds simple enough but straight away this doesn’t appear to be so obvious, and at the blinding speed the game tries to play, it doesn’t help itself straight out of the gate. For new fans of the game I’d suggest you study the game's help section in the menus, to try and make sense of it all. Thankfully the control scheme is very simple, involving two buttons and either the d-pad or analog stick. Seeing that Speedball is a sports game at its core, it plays just like one. The only thing is, that despite the different amount of ways to score points, each match lacks something that gives it uniqueness, each game feels the same. It’s this that ultimately brings the game down. For any fans of the original, the game plays exactly the same as the original, so take this as either good or bad. Good that it will please any fans, but bad because there is not much new, and anything they have added doesn’t help the game; such as the bad online and the even worse manager mode (We will get to those later). That’s not even mentioning the graphics.

Graphics:

There are two main faults about the presentation and graphics in speedball 2. The first becomes apparent when you boot the game up for the first time. The game presents itself with bad menu design, and the same font that can be seen on most XBLA titles, this cannot be changed but is minor compared to the 2nd problem. Which are the new updated graphics, and these replace the old retro ones with a weird and off putting new 3D world, with slow and sluggish animations making what should be a fast paced game more akin to walking in mud. Thankfully you can turn these off and switch to the old original graphics, which like the gameplay are still intact.

Sound:

Minus the awkward looping sound effects, the sound is pretty average. All the sounds from the original are here, and that’s pretty much it, as there are no new additions to the game as far as sound is concerned. Maybe some commentary or even player’s voices would have been a nice touch. But what is here does the job of emulating perfectly.

Longevity:

While the game does have the same feel to it for every game, you can try a number of different game modes such as knockout-tournaments, leagues, and cups. There is also a practice mode which helps new-comers into the game, as you get to play against nobody to try and figure out the arena design. They’ve also included a league manager mode where you get to spend money on players and then pick the team. This is quite boring as there are no tactics involved and no substitutions (apart from when a player gets injured), all you do is pick the team and then skip through the match. While online multiplayer is present, it lacks a community. There are few players playing online and when you do finally get into a game, it’s normally brought down by lag. It’s a shame as with the option to take your improved league team online it really could have been better.

Overall:

If you take away all the bad things in this version, and you are still left with the same game as the original. Add in achievements and online leader boards, and you’ve got something that might appeal to fans of the original. New comers will have to take the learning curve and the slightly overpriced 800 points price tag into consideration. With what they have tried to add to the original game, it’s a shame it didn’t provide more. I see it as a case of a good job emulating but severely lacking in ambition and originality.