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Virtual Console: Volleyball

Nov. 16 1:42 AM by Sardius

Remember how some of Nintendo's early titles -- Super Mario Bros., Metroid, and The Legend of Zelda, to name a few -- featured revolutionary gameplay and fresh ideas that created a solid foundation upon which the modern gaming industry is built? Yeah, those were pretty great. The NES's original sports lineup, though? Not so much. Volleyball stands out as the worst of Nintendo's first batch of sports titles, which is quite an achievement, considering that an extra Weather Channel would be more fun to have in your Wii's system memory than either Baseball or Soccer.

To its credit, Volleyball at least plays reasonably enough like the sport it's trying to emulate. Sure, the court looks a little more trapezoidal than most, and the players' unceasing pelvic thrusts are kind of unsettling, but the game otherwise offers a fairly standard, no-frills take on the sport of volleyball. As played by thrusting robots. Six players on each side of the court bat a ball back and forth, and the team who doesn't drop the ball gets points. It's a simple enough concept, but for some reason, video games have rarely been able to pull it off effectively, outside of rare successes like Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball and the NES's own Super Spike V'Ball.

While the argument can be made that Super Spike V'Ball might be worth five bucks if it were a part of the Virtual Console's library, Volleyball is a tough sell. You'll definitely get your five dollars' worth if you intend to play Volleyball long enough to get good at it, though. I personally spent about ten minutes attempting to wrangle Volleyball's mystifying control scheme, which only allows you to move a small number of your team members at any point in time. Which ones do you get to control? It's a surprise! If you like these kinds of surprises, you'll also be happy to know that the teammates you control change seemingly at random every time the ball is hit by either team. Every game is an adventure!

After losing your first game of Volleyball miserably (my match against the Japan team ended in a humbling 15-0 shutout), a method to its madness will slowly begin to surface, and you might even score a point or two before your CPU opponent drills you into the ground once more. At this point, you might be tempted to try out the two-player mode, but odds are that by the time your opponent learns the controls well enough to compete, you'll long be past the point of wanting to play something else. Anything else, really. Soon, you may be tempted by the forbidden allure of Balls of Fury. Don't ever let this happen.

Still, if your own morbid curiosity begs to know what you're missing out on, you can check out a gameplay video here:

And here's Volleyball's original Japanese commercial, which of course makes it look like the most fantastic thing to ever grace our undeserving eyes. Maybe it's more fun with 50 people crammed in your room, I don't know.

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