Speedball IBM PC Version versus Amiga Version 1988 Bitmap Brothers Mike Montgomery

Speedball Version Comparison

The Bitmap Brothers released Speedball for IBM PC MS-DOS and Amiga in 1988. This is a comparison of the IBM PC and Amiga versions of Speedball, which is a future-sports game. Speedball is notable for its smoothly-scrolling pitch, high-quality pixel art, excellent music, bribery mechanic, on-pitch collectable tokens and accurate and responsive controls.

Speedball was programmed by Mike Montgomery; its graphics were drawn by Mark Coleman; its audio was composed by David Whittaker.

Speedball is quite simply one of the best arcade-action computer games of 1988. Speedball is the predecessor to Speedball 2 of 1990-91.

Speedball IBM PC 1988

The IBM PC version of Speedball displays in 16-color 64K, 128K and 256K EGA 320x200. The vertical scrolling is quite smooth but the sprite-shifting is not and the sound is awful. IBM PC Speedball requires 512K free conventional RAM and was distributed on 1x 3.5" 720K DS DD diskette or 2x 5.25" 360K floppy disks; it is not hardisk-installable.

Speedball Amiga 1988

The Amiga version is a port of the Atari ST version. Thus, its 16 from "512" color palette is superior to the 16 from 64 color palette of the EGA version (the Amiga can display 32 colors from 4096 as standard, but this is a 16 from 512 ST port). Speedball furnishes a great example of how the Amiga destroyed 286 EGA in 2D games.

As regards scrolling and audiovisuals, the Amiga version is by far and away the best version of Speedball.

Speedball Feature List

• Run with ball, tackle to get ball, catch ball, throw ball (high and low)
• Playing pitch or field is 160 feet long by 90 feet wide
• 3 teams to choose from with different stats
• 5 players per side
• 8-way player-sprite movement
• 2-way scrolling pitch (up and down)
• Bounding box indicates player-unit being controlled (based on proximity to ball)
• League and Knockout modes of play
• Selectable league duration & League Table
• 2-player simultaneous or versus computer
• 11 computer-controlled teams
• 10 different "power-up" tokens that can be collected during matches
• Bribery via token collection (Bribe official, timer or trainer)
• Increase (player) or decrease (opponent) Power, Skill and Stamina stats via token collection
• Side-wall warp tunnels and on-pitch ricochet domes (think Pinball)

Indexes:

• Amiga Games Reviews (Index to all Amiga game reviews)
• Computer Game Reviews (Index to all computer game reviews)
• History of Computer Games (Master Index)