To some, speedball is a dangerous mix of illicit substances but to others it’s an excellent futuristic sports title developed by the Bitmap Brothers in 1991. Mix the rules of football, handball and rugby, add two teams of psycho-cyborg gladiators locked in a metal arena with a metal ball and you get speedball. The game consists of passing the ball around to reach the other team’s net and score more goals than them in a limited amount of time. However, unlike the sports we play nowadays in speedball you can joyfully mangle your opponents to get the ball back.
Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe is the second release in the series. Teams now have 9 players instead of 6 and you can hit targets on the walls to get bonuses. There’s also a number of power ups and other options strewn across the gaming field. The reason we’ve decided to cover this classic is that Kotaku announced today that Frogster Interactive would be releasing a sequel in the summer of 2007. The gaming blog is worried that it will turn out to be a bad “Unreal Tournament Mod”, however with Bitmap Brother Mike Montgomery on the team we can hope for the original spirit of Speedball to carry on.
What about improvements? Will the game environment move on from 2D to 3D? Any chances of multiplayer or online gaming? What about the tournament modes? Will new challenges be introduced? We’ll just have to wait till this summer to see.
