KlashBall (NES) Playthrough

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Published on May 4, 2024 1:09:29 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVvgbZn-8P8

Game:

KlashBall (1991)

Category:

Let's Play

Duration: 2:03:04

3,531 views

147

A playthrough of Sofel's 1991 action game for the NES, KlashBall.

In this video, I play through both game modes as Team Draco. Knockout mode begins at 1:34, and League mode begins at 1:16:16.

In the late 80s, futuristic sports games - more specifically, games that appear to have been influenced by the movie Rollerball staring James Caan - were all the rage on 16-bit computers, and the genre's sudden rise in popularity can be traced directly back to the release of Speedball, a hit 1988 Amiga/Atari ST game by The Bitmap Brothers. The game made its way to several platforms in the years that followed, and Sofel's KlashBall, released exclusively in North America in 1991, was the officially licensed NES version of the game.

KlashBall is posed as a 5-on-5 contact sport that resembles soccer and basketball. Each team has two attackers, two defenders, and a goalie, and the aim is to get the ball in the opposing team's goal as many times as possible before the clock runs out.

The game's "futuristic" slant is reflected in the team upgrade system, the court's bumpers and ball-warping tunnel, the mechanical ball launcher, the randomly appearing power-ups, the metallic look of the court, and the way the ball inexplicably explodes whenever a goal is scored. I haven't played the computer versions of the game, but as far as I can tell, KlashBall retains all of Speedball's original options and features.

The graphics and sound have seen some heavy downgrades, though, and given the popularity of Speedball, I suspect that KlashBall's moment-to-moment gameplay wouldn't hold up in a direct comparison, either. The choppy animation and the mushy controls rob the gameplay of any sense of fluidity, and in turn make the action hard to follow when the pace picks up.

And why does it take so long for things to get moving again after someone scores? Arrrgh!

But the thing that ultimately killed the game for me was the complete and utter lack of difficulty. The CPU player leaves giant holes in its defense, and once you learn how it behaves, it's easy to exploit its stupidity to score goal after goal virtually unopposed. And if you get bored with running circles around your opponents, you can always just trap them in a corner to run down the clock with minimal effort.

If you've ever played Bill Laimbeer's Combat Basketball (https://youtu.be/SLZrmcKRsCk), you know exactly what I'm talking about here. In all ways, KlashBall is a game cut from the same cloth.

Or, you know, hacked out of an unwholesomely soiled cloth with a blunt instrument.

I'm not a fan. I would've preferred a Wall Street Kid sequel.
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