Super Dodgeball

 You can drop this one straight into the "that exists?" file.

I'm not going to lie, when this game was first bought to my attention I thought it would be a fan-made game or a hack or something along those lines. But nope, there really was a dodgeball video game for the NES, released in 1989 by a company called Technos. This was apparently an arcade port, I am unsure if the original cabinet ever left Japan, but I highly doubt it. Personally I think the name is a bit confusing, so many SNES games had "Super" in the title, it was weird to see it on an NES game other than Super Mario Bros. But I digress.

Super Dodgeball is exactly what it sounds like, a video game where you play dodgeball. There's a one player world cup mode, along with a versus mode and something called bean ball, which can be played with either one or two players. This mode is more like a schoolyard game, with every player out for themselves and able to move freely at any point. The other two modes are like more organized games with a center line, boundaries and players in the "outfield" that can retrieve the ball or play offense behind enemy lines (we never played that way growing up, but I've heard of dodgeball being played that way before). Unlike actual dodgeball, each player can take several hits before they are eliminated, which we will get back to later. But otherwise, it's the same, good old fashioned dodgeball that you played in gym class.

The controls are pretty solid, I felt like they were a little stiff but generally responsive. I will say they managed to make the absolute most of the minimalist controller they were working with. A passes, B throws or ducks and the D-Pad moves players around freely. A  Pressing both A and B together jumps, and you can throw or pass while airborne. Double tapping forward or back allows you to dash and dashing into a jump and then throwing will activate a special move if its done from far enough. It's a lot for an NES game, but it all feels so smooth and easy. It's a shame the arcade game wasn't more popular, I would have liked to see how the controls were laid out.

The graphics are okay, some of the backgrounds are nice but others are pretty barren and the character sprites aren't that impressive. Some of them are more expressive than others, but they are all relatively generic. Each world cup stage takes place in a different country, and all of them are at least somewhat nation appropriate. The U.S.A stage is a New York rooftop with the Statue of Liberty in the background, the England stage takes place in the shadow of the Tower Bridge, the U.S.S.R (remember, it's 1989) stage takes place in front of the Kremlin, you get the idea. Some of the stages are a little simplistic, like the Kenya stage. And is that supposed to be a picture of Mao in the China stage? Whatever. The graphics are good, but I did have one huge problem. Those of you that watched the longplay video might have noticed some flickering. Or more accurately, a ton of flickering. This may just have been me, I only have a front-loading NES and some weird things can happen on those, but I don't think that's it. I'm not usually picky about this kind of thing, but it's really bad here.

I never could quite figure out how exactly the lifebars worked either. As I'm sure most of you know, in real dodgeball its one hit and you're out. That obviously wouldn't work as well in a video game, so they had to give each player a lifebar. Getting a hit will make a number pop up Final Fantasy style, indicating damage. However, I don't know how much damage each chunk of the lifebar represents or how to do more damage. Special moves did more than regular throws, that makes total sense. But even among special moves the damage totals never felt consistent. I think your throws were more effective if you hit your enemies in the back, but I'm not entirely sure. This wasn't a huge problem because it was totally fair, the computer never really put out consistent damage either, but its still weird. This is also where I should note that it's a little too easy to catch balls coming in, all you have to do is make I timed button press. Once I figured this out I was able to progress relatively quickly, though if you skip to the last match in the longplay you will see my try and fail to do it many times over.

My last issue was that the players don't really have stats, at least that you can see. You can definitely feel the difference when you are playing and you can especially tell that some computer oponents perform differently than others, but you are never told about the stats. You can change player positions, but what's the point if you don't actually know who's good at what? The players all have generic names, so it would have been nice to be edit or change them. I guess that's not a big deal and just my being a little upset that I couldn't re-name my starting three as Peter LaFleur, Patches O'Houlihan and Steve the Pirate.

For all the complaints, I definitely had plenty of fun with this game. It may not have been perfect, but it was certainly a good time. I think part of it was learning patterns and figuring out the playstyle of each computer team. Some will use their outfield players while others won't. Some try to intercept your passes while others ignore them. It makes each round feel fun and unique, and really pulls you through the story mode. As long as the video I uploaded was, at no point did I ever feel like I was just slogging through the game. No two matches felt alike and having to switch your thinking on the fly made for a challenging yet fun experience.

I really do wish I could have had a second player, because the beanball mode would have absolutely been awesome multiplayer. I didn't capture any footage of this mode but it was great fun, even alone. Playing games in versus mode would have been nice as well, as you can select from any of the international teams, but hey, I make do with what I have. I know I have complained about games not having enough content in the past, but at the end of the day quality is more important than quantity. There aren't a lot of modes or options with Super Dodgeball, but everything is at least fun. It's not the kind of game you are going to get tons of hours out of, but it's an NES game, what did you expect?

Believe it or not, this is actually a part of a series of games, known as Kunio-Kun in Japan. I was going to include a little information about this series, but it started leading me down a surprisingly large rabbit hole and besides, very few of these games made it stateside. Perhaps the most notable is River City Ransom, a well regarded beat 'em up. I've personally never played it, though its certainly on my list. Even without any frame of reference, it still makes one wonder how they got a dodgeball game out of a beat 'em up. I'm not sure which shocks me more, that Super Dodgeball exists or that no one has tried to make any sort of sequel. I guess kids nowadays don't grow up with dodgeball like I did, so they wouldn't have a reason to. Or maybe the idea is just too silly to begin with. It's not like Super Dodgeball is that difficult to track down (it's available on the Virtual Console for you Nintendo folks out there) so there has to be some market. At any rate, once you get over the fact you are playing virtual dodgeball, you will find quite a bit to like with this title.

8/10