274 · Super Spike VBall
Super Spike VBall challenges players to bump, set, and spike their way to a beach volleyball championship. Teams of two travel the USA and the world, visiting venues like Chicago, Los Angeles, Hawaii, and Australia. This game can be played by 1-4 players simultaneously, although on the NES a Satellite or Four Score device (and extra controllers) are required for three or four players.
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Show notes
- Bump Set Spike Kaboom
- NES Longplay
- Introductions
- Volleyball having a moment or just a bunch of duplicate games hitting the NES lately?
- Overview
- Composed of four screens, which, by proportion, would be about as long as two standard pinball tables if it were a real table.
- Character Select
- Al’s screen has a different color text just for the letter U in the word YOU. Symbolic?
- Billy and Jimmy (the heroes of the Double Dragon series)
- Unusual STATE SELECT
- The stages in the game are (Daytona Beach, New York City, Chicago, Las Vegas and Los Angeles
- Gameplay
- Tons of controls and moves
- Am I missing something in the early game? Provided you can time your jump and spike, the rest of the game is just kinda autoplay? Essentially, as long as you’re spamming the A button when the opposing team returns the ball it seems like your players automatically target and volley the ball.
- Tournament
- Different circuits
- The World Cup mode consists of seven teams in the following order: Japan, Italy, Australia, Mexico, Brazil, the Navy and USSR, all set to a hard difficulty. The background for the Russian stage was also redrawn to make it look less hostile with the omission of the tanks in the Famicom version.
- Different circuits
- The real game is the cooperation between 2 players. I don’t think there’s enough here solo
- Female teams
- Four additional female teams are present in the game but are inaccessible to the player under normal playing conditions. Using a cheating device the teams become selectable.[2] Even though they are fully playable in-game the images representing the female teams in the team selection screen are missing resulting in garbled graphics being displayed instead.
- Sequels and Spinoffs
- We will cover this game again in our Super Spike VBall/ Nintendo World Cup 2 pack episode
- Aracdes
- The Japanese release (U.S. Championship Beach Volley: V'Ball) features an opening cut-scene explaining the plot. Between matches, intermission sequences depict the main characters visiting a car dealership to purchase a vehicle. As the player progresses, the cars increase in quality, shifting from used cars to new cars during the Major Circuit. The American release (U.S. Championship V'Ball) removes these cut-scenes but extends the multiplayer support to up to four players with multiple game modes (1 or 2 players against the computer, 1-on-1, 2-on-1, or 2-on-2).
- Aracdes
- We will cover this game again in our Super Spike VBall/ Nintendo World Cup 2 pack episode
- EGL
- Next week - SUPER MARIO BROS 3
- NEStalgia Byte - Cocoron