Super FamiComplete #116: Space Football: One-on-One

 

Title: Space Football One-on-One (NA), Super Linear Ball (JP)

Release Date: June 1992

Developer: Argonaut Games 

Publisher: Triffix

Space Football is the final US developed game for June 1992, and the last game in general that we are covering for the month. Sadly, as often is the case for the blog, this last game of the month is not very good. 

Background

This game really doesn't have a story to it. Sometime in the far off future, a form of entertainment is made that is an evolution of football, but instead of playing with teams or running around on feet, it is a one on one game played in hovercraft like spaceships. Competitions take place in weird pinball like arenas, with the game making use of the system's Mode 7 to provide an F-Zero like perspective to the game. 

The game was developed by British Developer Bit Studios and Argonaut games. Bit Studios made a bunch of licensed titles from around this time, such as Wolverine: Adamantium Rage and Last Action Hero. It was not known for making quality games or selling well with them, and they were shuttered in 2008. Argonaut games had a bit more success, as they were the co-developers of the original Star Fox, specializing in the faux-3D created for that game (some of which you see on display during the character select screen). Recently, they even helped bring Star Fox 2 to the SNES classic. 

Gameplay

So this game is a take not on American Football, but uses football in the way that the entire world aside from the United States means it: soccer. Each player has a goal that they have to defend, and they are trying to maneuver a little puck/sphere/ball/robot around the arena with their hovercrafts. If you manage to touch the ball with the front-ish area of your hovercraft, it sticks to the front for about for seconds, after which it will launch off in the direction you are facing. Unlike soccer, you cannot launch the ball into the rival's goal, but instead have to carry it into the goal yourself. If you score higher than your opponent by the end of the round, you win and move onto the next stage, rinse and repeat. 

This sounds simple enough, but the controls are utterly wretched in the hands. The B button sends you moving forward, while the A button sends you flying backwards, while left and right points you in the direction you want to move; this creates an incredibly fast style of tank controls, which are awkward to control to say the least. The first person perspective, as well, makes the game very disorienting and rough on folks if, like me, you suffer from motion sickness. There is just a LOT of spinning around. 

The mechanic where you can only hold onto the ball for four seconds makes a sense if you are used to sports like basketball or soccer where you have to shoot or pass after a certain amount of time, but this would make more sense if you could score by shooting the ball into the goal. The fact that you have to carry it into the goal leads to some frustrating moments where you are approaching the goal, and then the ball goes flying, careens off a wall, and your opponent catches it. Luckily, the enemy AI is pretty stupid and just kind of goes all over the place. 

Finally, in another baffling decision, they decided to add hazards to the arena: there are bumpers which send you flying in a random directions, spinners which spin you around incredibly quickly (another blow to motion sickness), or boosts which send you jumping upward. This just adds a layer of chaos which makes the controls of the game much more difficult. Add into this the rival player who can bumper kart into you and send you flying too, and the ice like hover physics, and you have a game that is not fun to control, makes you sick to watch, and frustrating to actually win. The game has 32 levels, each with a different layout to the arena, but I can't imagine anyone playing through each of them. 

Music

The music is exceptionally forgettable...

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Overall

This game goes in the category of "slight and forgettable." It is half a game concept that is taken as far as it can go over the course of a playthrough. It reminded me, both in art style and in gameplay, of games like Hyperzone and Cameltry in its slightness. Could you imagine being a kid who gets this for a gift and this is all you have to play? That would be incredibly depressing. Overall, skip this one!