And Speedball 2 for good measure...

Speedball 2 was one of our most played games on the Amiga. Combining thoroughly excellent gameplay with RPG style character levelling, the single player experience was sublime. And in our opinion, multiplayer was only bested by Sensible World of Soccer on the platform. Now after Speedball 2’s not entirely as brilliant as we’d hoped Xbox Live Arcade appearance, Kylotonn have re-crafted the Bitmap Brothers classic and uploaded it to Steam for all to download – at a price. It’s Speedball 2.5, if you will.

Speedball 2 – Tournament features a completely new game engine with proper three dimensional graphics. Infinitely better than the 3-D attempt made in the Xbox Live Arcade remake, but arguably not as good as the original sprite based version. But that’s nostalgia for you. Also, you can see a lot more of the playing area now, which is a welcome change. The original game involved a lot of nasty surprises appearing from the off-screen areas. Usually in the form of a big burly bastard taking you down and stealing your beloved ball. Boooo.

Tournament isn’t all updated graphics, though. Although you’d be forgiven for thinking that it was. The game plays almost identically to how it did back in the day – and that’s no bad thing. Of course, now we’re no longer restricted to our beloved one button joysticks, and the controls have been spread out across a few more buttons. For example, on the Amiga, a low shot was a tap of the fire button and a high shot was a longer press. Now it’s a tap of one button for low and one for high, clever eh? It makes the game a bit easier than we remember, and all the more playable because of it.

Players can now change tactics on the fly with the press of a few pre-assigned buttons, a la Pro Evolution Soccer. And passing is more fluid because now we can actually target a team mate instead of having to hit and hope. Naturally, some will argue that this is a bad thing because it is a bit of a departure from the original’s gameplay. Part of the skill was aiming your passes manually. But, Speedball 2 was always a lightning fast game with very little margin for error and we think it’s a welcome addition.

If you’re playing with a game pad (we like to use a wired Xbox 360 controller), it will take you literally minutes to fathom everything out. But if you’re playing it with the keyboard and mouse set up, good luck. You’d best set yourself a weekend aside to get the hang of it. Or you could go into town and buy a pad.

Online play is excellent if you can find yourself a game with a formidable opponent on the currently rather empty servers. The server browser could have done with a little bit of a sprucing up, but it is functional and that’s what counts here.

Disappointingly, the RPG elements from the original game haven’t been carried over here, it would also have been nice if there were a greater number of customisation options for your team, seeing as you’ll be sticking with them for a long time during a tournament or league, it would have been nice to give them all a handlebar moustache or something.

Considering that Speedball 2 – Tournament comes over 15 years after the release of the original game, and we’ve already been treated to an almost completely faithful port of the original on the 360’s Live Arcade, it’s a little disappointing that we’re left playing essentially the same game with three dimensional graphics. Of course, we wouldn’t change the core gameplay for the world, and we’re glad it hasn’t been messed with here, but more options for tweaking and a few more game-modes wouldn’t have gone amiss.

Tournament is a great purchase for any fan of the original game, or anyone who is interested and doesn’t own a 360, but if you’ve got access to the Live Arcade, just pick up the original. It too isn’t perfect, but it’s less than half the price and it’s more fun.