Skip to main content

NES Volleyball: Is this the worst NES sports game?

Volleyball, Pro Wrestling, and Slalom constituted the second wave of games for the NES's sports series, which launched with 10-Yard Fight, Soccer, Tennis, Baseball, and Golf. These games were popular in the early days of the NES, but they don't hold up today, and Volleyball is no exception.

Watch a video version of this review

As in those other games, the players are small, identical sprites. You can choose from several different teams, as well as men or women. I'm not sure if these changes are merely graphical, or if the different teams and genders have different difficulty levels. Different sources give conflicting information. It could be tested, but honestly the game isn't worth it, and it doesn't matter. This is in large part because the controls are bad. At any given time you control two or three players that move together. There's no easy way to tell who they are, which caused me frequent confusion and missed balls. This is the game's greatest flaw.

These options may or may not affect gameplay.

Gameplay is straightforward. When the ball comes to your side, you move a player underneath it, then hit A to bump (pass) or set the ball or hit B to spike it. Once you set or bump the ball, you need to move a second player into position to either set it again or spike it. Bumping and setting the ball is easy, as you just follow the ball's shadow, but spiking is frustratingly difficult.

Spiking involves jumping, so you need to move quickly enough for the player to have time to jump up before the ball lands and also get the timing right so that they reach the height of their jump at the right moment. I missed about 90% of the spikes I tried. If you don't spike, the third press of A just hits the ball gently over the net, and the computer will rarely fail to return it. Even when you spike it, the computer still saves it sometimes.

You play best of three, fifteen points per game. In volleyball you only score when serving, so if your opponent fails to return the ball while you are receiving, service passes to you, but you don't score a point. Depending how good you are, a match will take around ten to twenty minutes. During that time, you'll listen to the same annoying ditty play continuously.

I played a few matches in the belief I would eventually figure out the controls well enough to win, but I didn't even get close. There's almost no enjoyment to be had moving the little guys around, bouncing (or failing to bounce) the ball back and forth, so it seemed like a waste of time to continue. I assume that, once you master spiking the ball, you can beat the computer. No doubt the game is more fun against a second player, but that's not going to change how primitive and limited it is.

Like all the sports titles, this game was a hit in the mid-80's. Sports are very popular and these games made a reasonable approximation of them. But once more sophisticated sports games appeared on the NES, these early games were left in the dust. You'd certainly be better off playing Super Spike V'Ball, for example, if you really want some 8-bit volleyball action.

Grade: F

Linked Reviews
"With its unattractive aesthetic, boring gameplay and frustrating mechanics, it’s very apparent that Volleyball has not aged well at all, if it was ever any good to begin with."
— Ron DelVillano, Nintendo Life, 2/10

"I would venture to say that Volleyball was the most accurate Nintendo published sports title in capturing the gameplay spirit up to that point in time."
— Pat Contri, Ultimate Nintendo: Guide to the NES Library, 3/5

"It doesn't do anything to set itself apart, and it has no particular place of importance in the NES catalog."
— Jeremy Parish, NES Works

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Final Fantasy VI: 30th anniversary

Final Fantasy VI is widely regarded as the greatest of the original six FF games. Its decision-based story events, fully customizable magic system, and gritty sci-fi/fantasy setting set the standard for the series moving forward. The enormous cast of characters and elaborate plot-line built on the promise of FF4 (“Final Fantasy II” in the U.S.), shedding many of that game’s cliches (while sticking with the tried-and-true Evil Empire trope) in favor of something more adult. The game’s villain, Kefka, embodies evil, playing on the sci-fi trope of the person driven mad by experimental technology. Final Fantasy VI begins with an amnesiac girl named Terra (you can change her name, of course). Controlled by a psychic “crown”, she pilots a magic-driven suit of tech armor (called “Magitek”). After forming a psychic connection to an “Esper” (what were called “Summons” in FF4), she breaks free of the empire’s control. A thief named Locke, who belongs to the resistance group known as the Returne...
Post a Comment
Read more

Super Mario Land: A short, oddball entry

Super Mario Land was a Game Boy launch title, but not the pack-in game. That honor went to Tetris. Tetris is an incredible game with perennial appeal, and it propelled the Game Boy's explosive success. Super Mario Land is not as impressive but still fun. Super Mario Land is a bit odd. It doesn't feel like other Mario games. Only four of the classic enemies appear: Bullet Bills, Piranha Plants, Goombas, and Koopa Troopas. Even the koopas behave differently: their shells can't be kicked and instead explode like bombs. Most of the enemies are assorted creatures, like spiders, robots, ghosts, and Moai heads. The Fighter Flies from the original Mario Bros. arcade game also appear. The Super Mushroom, coins, and Super Star appear, as well as question blocks. The Fire Flower, however, has been replaced by a similar flower power-up. It lets Mario throw a bouncing ball. It ricochets off walls like an old screen saver, and only one can be on screen at a time. Weird! Extra-life mushr...
Post a Comment
Read more

Dragon Buster: It's a bust

On paper, Dragon Buster sounds like a great Japanese arcade game: a side-scrolling dungeon crawler in which you (a boy named Clovis) slay monsters and wizards and collect potions, jewels, scrolls, and other treasure. But when I actually played it, I was disappointed. The stages (dungeons) are made up of hallways, monster rooms, elevators, and a few drops and ledges. Smaller enemies roam the hallways, but each room contains a big monster to fight, such as a Golem or the hilariously-misnamed Bishop, who is an ax-wielding fighting-man. When you defeat it, you collect an item, then continue on your way. In a certain room, defeating the monster will produce an exit instead. Some of the stages are labyrinthine. There are a total of twelve worlds (maps), and you have some choice of which dungeons to do. In the last dungeon of each map, you have to fight a fire-breathing Dragon. Each one has a different weak point that flashes red. The number of dungeons on each map varies greatly, from just o...
Post a Comment
Read more