Game:

Powerball (1991)

Duration: 7:54

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Powerball (known as Wrestleball in Japan) is a pretty cool futuristic sports game developed by Namco Hometek which is like a combination of Football and Soccer, with a hint of fighting action. It was enhanced in Namco's "Namco Anthology" (only in Japan) and ported to the Wii Virtual Console in 2008. You choose a team of your choice from various countries each with different strengths and weaknesses, and then you face off in a futuristic arena.

The object of the game is to score goals against your opponent and you can track where all your players are and pass the ball around like you would in Football. There are almost no plays in which to speak of outside of foul ball tactics; all your actions take place in realtime and you have different skills for offense (when you don't have the ball) and defense (when you do have the ball). You can knock the ball around to other players like you would in Soccer and throw off the opponents' defense.

The main skills in a teams' arsenal comes from charging the A, B, and C buttons, which grant you additional powers in defensive play and give you greater means to attack in offensive play. You can push players, trip them, punch them out, flatten them, and even jump in the air and stomp on them. It's pretty fun and can be played with a friend. The game has decent audio/visuals and uses anime-style characters to portray cutscenes and special events like the end of a quarter. The U.S. version has different anime-style artwork and teams from the Japanese game (both nice in their own rights, though I liked the "Namco" team with Pac-man in Wrestleball as well as its red-head chick between quarters).

This video shows some stuff in the game. Enjoy.