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Hey, console game developers: we need more indoor volleyball titles!

One thing that's bummed me out about console gaming has been the total lack of indoor volleyball titles in the PS2/XBox reign.  Beach vball titles will continues to thrive, especially now that we're able to integrate what's essentially softcore porn into the gameplay.  But I'm a purist...I gots to have my complex offensive plays. 

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  We had a few with the old Sega Genesis (6 players that air-humped), the original 16-bit Nintendo had Kings of the Beach, Super NES rocked a couple like the excellent Power Spikes Beach Volleyball, and GameBoy had a beach game that was nice.  But rhe best game ever was Dig & Spike Volleyball by Hudson Soft, which featured loose translations of the teams that competed in the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, including the infamous "volleybald" Team USA with middle blockr Bob Samuelson.  The crowd even cheered "Nippon...Nippon!" every time Japan had the serve.  The gameplay was accurate, simple, and amazing.  There hasn't been a title since that captured the essence and excitement of the indoor game since.  The funny thing is that title also featured a sweet-ass training mode to perfect timing for quick sets, combinations and shoot sets to the outside, and 2-on-2 beach competition, the latter of which I never played.  The indoor action was too hot.



I realize that it's not the most popular or profitable sport, but with NFL, NBA, golf, fishing, and ehll, even bowling titles in perpetuity, someone do my beloved sport some justice and put one out.  Please???
Posted: Oct 07 2005, 10:36 PM by guam-aspdev | with 5 comment(s)
Filed under: ,

Comments

Jeff said:

I remember picking up that game in the bargain bin years ago. Barely played it.

I got the Gamecube beach game (Beach Spikers?) two or three years ago and it wasn't bad. Very good arcade-like controls, so people could pick it up quickly.

The tough thing about the indoor game is a control scheme that makes sense. I mean, I have some ideas of what I'd like to see, but as a coach with very specific systems (swing offense, rover defense), it would probably drive me crazy to have to live in someone else's world! Volleyball can be too technical to implement as a game.
# October 7, 2005 1:48 PM

Jason Salas said:

Hi Jeff,

I'll admit, D&S VBall took awhile to train on before being able to play at a very high level, but once you got the hang of the new controls and leveraged the buttons, you could really do some cool things with tandems, dinks, and placed hits. The only other game where you had that much real-world control, IMHO, was Kings of the Beach, which was good.

I agree, capturing the quick set or backrow attack is hard to do, but if we can come up with the complex AI engines for football, baseball and soccer, certainly it's possible.

I come from the old skool of indoor using VERY complex offenses, which is why I dug the game (pun intended). The one criticism I had about D&S VBall was tgat the players would only hit in their rotation positions, so you couldn't have a guy swing from the middle to the outside, or vice-versa for new plays.
# October 7, 2005 3:41 PM

Jeff said:

Yeah, I run a swing with inside-out approaches and put my hitters all over the place, where ever I can get the best match up or fastest attack. Even with average kids, it absolutely stuns the other team and they can't react. Good stuff.
# October 8, 2005 12:44 AM

Jason Salas said:

Funny you bring up complex plays...one of the weirdest ways to really catch a human opponent off-guard in D&S VBall was to run a play were the each outside hitter would jump, as if to quick attack, and then the middle hitter would be set a high "3" set.

It would never work in real life, of course, but this was a play that if used sparingly, would catch someone napping and deliver a monster hit.
# October 9, 2005 4:52 AM

zEdPoonorow said:

A little off topic, Guys... I have a question. Two days ago I had fun with this site:

<a href=http://www.rivalspot.com>Rivalspot.com - Wii tournaments for money</a>

They say you can play online NHL game tournaments on any console for cash... had anyone tried that before? Looks like a cool idea...

Are there any other sites where you can play sports games for real moneys? I Googled and found only Bringit.com and Worldgaming.com but it looks these guys don't specialize in sport gamez. Any suggestions?

# November 11, 2009 1:01 PM
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