The Ball Game.
You know, it's not just the words themselves that make this sound suggestive, it's more
like the way it’s said.
You know like, if you just say “hey did you see the ball game last night,”
nobody bats an eye.
But if you say “do you want to play The BALL Game?” it’s like, “ooh, maybe,
who’s asking?”
And I’m not just trying to be lewd, the back of the box straight up says The Ball
Game provides “ball busting action.”
Mmkay.
That reminds me of the board game from 1975, Ball Buster...
Commercial narrator: "Make offensive and defensive moves!"
"Then try to bust your opponents' balls."
"BALL Buster."
They knew what they were doing there, and they knew it here too.
I mean there's a flaming naked guy on the front of the box.
Literally, he’s naked and on fire.
There's also a frozen naked guy with some icy butt action going on.
What the heck am I getting into?
Well, it’s a 1991 MS-DOS PC game from the UK-based Electronic Zoo,
and I have Joshua to thank for donating it.
Josh sent a bunch of neat computer games my way a while back, and while there were several
that I found intriguing, for whatever reason The Ball Game stood out.
Couldn’t tell you why, it’s a real mystery.
The Game of Balls comes in one of these small boxes that was popular for Amiga and Atari ST
games in the UK and Europe for a while, which makes sense as this was
made for those systems first.
But as mentioned earlier, this is the DOS version for IBM PC-compatibles, distributed
on a double density 5.25” floppy disk.
And the documentation is pretty standard fare for these kinds of releases; just a thin,
multilanguage black and white booklet that provides the basics of gameplay and a strategic
waft of early 90s cigarette smoke.
The Ball Game begins with a bunch of blue balls, har har
and a pretty radical Adlib intro tune.
*pretty radical Adlib music plays*
Hehe, and ya gotta love these credits.
Who did the graphics?
Steve.
Who did the music?
Oh that was Mike.
Who did the PC version?
Oh that was Tim and Jules, you know them!
After that charmingly amiable introduction, you’re dropped into a rather dark and stark
menu with an assortment of function key options.
And without actually playing the game first it’s not very useful to mess with anything
here yet, so just press F9 to start playing.
*PC speaker beep and bloop sounds play*
And yep, this is The Ball Game, folks.
Not quite sure what I was expecting, but this wasn't it.
Not only has that ball bouncing FM synth music been replaced by silence and PC speaker noises,
but there’s precious little ball-busting action happening.
I am sad to report there are precisely
zero balls busted throughout the entirety of this game.
In fact, despite the suggestive name and marketing,
The Ball Game is about as tame a game as you can ask for.
So much so that I am now questioning whether or not it’s
even worth a video at this point, hrm.
Lemme go clear my head, I’ll be right back...
*DUKE NUKEM 3D PLAYS*
*DUKE RPGs HIMSELF*
Ahem, right, where were we.
Yes, the distinct lack of ball-busting action.
Or really, the lacktion--*laughs*
"the lacktion?"
The lack of action!
Ah I like that better, yeah. It's really the LACKTION of any kind.
The Ball Game is not an action game, but rather a virtual board game of strategy and tactics.
And a rather simple one at that, as there are only two ways to interact with it.
Regardless of how you choose to control things, be it the mouse or the keyboard or a joystick,
The Ball Game gives you one button for choosing your move and one button for making your move.
When it’s your turn, press the movement key to rotate through a selection of possible
moves highlighted on the board, and then press the select key to make it happen.
That’s it.
The entire rest of The Ball Game depends on what
order you make those two decisions for each turn.
As you might’ve guessed just by looking at the footage, the goal of The Ball Game
is to have the most number of your color of balls on the board.
You can only move in the four cardinal directions on an isometric plane, there’s no diagonal
movement, and you can only move one or two spaces at a time normally.
Moving one space will blorp a ball behind where you just moved from, and moving two
spaces will activate a jetpack and then set you down with no balls being placed.
But if you land in a space next to an opponent’s balls, then each of those balls will be converted
to your balls, even those diagonal to you.
And if you can’t make a move or a jump, you can press the select key to teleport to
a random free spot on the board.
Once you run out of moves, your game is over, and whoever has the most balls with the most
points at the end wins the round.
And that’s the gist of it!
The Ball Game is one of those grid-based Reversi-inspired thingies where you always have to think a
couple steps ahead or you’ll screw yourself over quickly.
It reminds me an awful lot of the game Spot from a year before.
No, not “Cool Spot,” just “Spot.”
To be more specific, games like Spot and The Ball Game share
the same core DNA as the arcade game Ataxx.
That is, they’re all video board games with players starting off in a corner, with the
goal being to strategically touch pieces with your own and convert its color.
But The Ball Game is still its own thing in the sense that it’s got balls.
Blue balls, red balls, dark blue and red balls, just lots of balls.
But none of them are busting and I feel deceived.
For that matter, where are the naked dudes on fire and stuff?
These guys are cool, but I signed up for frozen man butts and dang it, I deserve them.
Instead you get these little Smash TV contestants, who are apparently supposed to represent the
four elements of Earth, Air, Fire, and the other one.
Hrm. Yeah I’m not seeing it.
Unless the elements are all identical balls now, and in that case Captain Planet just
got a lot more bizarre.
So yeah, this was a bit of a bummer.
The Ball Game isn’t the worst thing I’ve played, or even the worst virtual board game,
but I also don’t think it was worth my time.
And it sure isn’t my idea of fun these days.
Especially not versus the computer,
they move instantly so playing for time bonuses makes no sense,
and it uses cheap AI that rarely makes an exploitably crappy move.
See, the key to enjoying these kinds of games is
to play against someone objectively worse than you.
Or maybe that’s just how I play Othello.
But in this case, all you can do is enter your name into a high score table no one will see
because no one wants to play this game.
The Ball Game!
It’s pretty much just balls.
Well I believe I've said the word "balls" enough for the entire year.
And if you enjoyed that I'm confused!
But awesome, thank you very much for watching.
And I hope that you stick around and see some more stuff I make, because I'm making new
things and Monday and Friday.
And yeah, uh, thanks.
Um.
I'ma go now.