Ballblazer (Atari 800 & Atari 7800) - Let's Play 1001 Games - Episode 376
12Atari's premiere ball blazing action sport!
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I'm Gaming Jay: Youtube gamer, let's player, fan of retro games, and determined optimist... Join me in this series while I try out EACH of the video games in the book 1001 VIDEO GAMES YOU MUST PLAY BEFORE YOU DIE, before I die. The game review for each game will focus on the question of whether you MUST play this game before you die. But to be honest, the game review parts are just for fun, and are not meant to be definitive, in depth reviews; this series is more about the YouTube gamer journey itself. From Mario games to the Halo series, from arcade games to Commodore 64, PC games to the NES and Sega Genesis, Playstation to the Xbox, let's play those classic retro games that we grew up with, have fond memories of, or heard of but never got a chance to try! And with that said, the game review for today is...
Ballblazer
from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballblazer
Ballblazer is a 1984 futuristic sports game created by Lucasfilm Games. It was originally released for the Atari 8-bit family, then ported to the Atari 5200, Apple II, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, MSX. and later the Atari 7800 and the Nintendo Famicom. The game was called Ballblaster during development; pirated versions of the game went by this name as well.[2] The principal creator and programmer of Ballblazer was David Levine.[3][4]
In 1990, LucasArts and Rainbow Arts released a remake and follow-up to this game, called Masterblazer. This game was released for the Amiga, Atari ST, and MS-DOS. On March 31, 1997, a remake of the original titled Ballblazer Champions was released for the Sony PlayStation.
Ballblazer is a simple one-on-one sports-style game bearing similarities to basketball and soccer. Each side is represented by a craft called a "rotofoil", which can be controlled by either a human player or a computer-controlled "droid" with ten levels of difficulty. (The game allows for human vs. human, human vs. droid, and droid vs. droid matches.) The basic objective of the game is to score points by either firing or carrying a floating ball into the opponent's goal. The game takes place on a flat, checkerboard playfield, and each player's half of the screen is presented in a first-person perspective.
A player can gain possession of the ball by simply running into it, at which point it is held in a force field in front of the craft. The opponent can attempt to knock the ball away from the player using the fire button, and the player in possession of the ball can also fire the ball toward the goal. When a player does not have possession of the ball, his or her rotofoil automatically turns at 90-degree intervals to face the ball, while possessing the ball turns the player toward the opponent's goal. The goalposts move from side to side at each end of the playfield, and as goals are scored, the goal becomes narrower.
Pushing the ball through the goal scores one point, firing the ball through the posts from close range scores two points, and successfully scoring from long range (where the goalposts are not visible) scores three points. The maximum number of total points between the two players is ten, meaning that any points scored that would take the combined total above ten will cause the opponent's score to be reduced by the same amount, resulting in a kind of tug of war scoring system. The game ends when either a player successfully scores ten points or the timer runs out. If time runs out and the score is tied, the game goes into "sudden death", where the first player to score wins.