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Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe

Ice cream! Ice cream!

Classic GamesSource-checked

The Bitmap Brothers' 1990 sequel to Speedball, published by Mirrorsoft's Image Works: a violent future sport of nine-a-side teams in a steel arena, 90-second halves, bonus stars, score multipliers and a league of sixteen teams in which you start with the worst of them, Brutal Deluxe. Reviewers called it the best two-player game since Kick Off 2, and its Nation 12 soundtrack won a Golden Joystick.

Brutal Deluxe are the worst team in the Speedball league, and in Speedball 2 they are yours. The game is a sport of the year 2100, played by armoured nine-a-side teams in a steel arena with no referee. You score by throwing a metal ball into the opposing goal, by lighting up stars along the walls, by rolling the ball up a spiral ramp to double your points, and by injuring opponents until robot medics stretcher them off. Each half lasts 90 seconds. Between matches you spend the prize money on training and new players, and try to drag Brutal Deluxe up through two divisions. The Bitmap Brothers released it at the end of 1990, and ZZAP! called it “without doubt the best two-player game since Kick Off II”.

Fast facts

A bigger game

The first Speedball (1988) had been a five-a-side game on a pitch three screens high. For the sequel the Bitmaps made nearly everything larger. CU Amiga’s Steve Merrett counted the new features: a much larger arena, nearly three times as many warp gates, a spiral channel that multiplied the value of goals, and pinball-style stars and bumpers along the walls. Teams grew to twelve players, nine on the pitch and three substitutes, and each had ratings for attributes such as aggression, attack, power and stamina that you could raise in the gym.

The scoring rewards variety. ZZAP! listed it: ten points for a goal, ten for injuring an opponent so badly that he is carried off, two for hitting a bounce dome, two for each star lit on the opposing wall, with a ten-point bonus for all five. A ball thrown up the spiral ramp twice doubles every point you then score, until your opponent cancels it by doing the same. Electrobounce pads charge the ball so that it knocks down the next player who touches it, and tokens freeze the other team, reverse their controls or give you the ball. The league has two divisions of eight teams and a 14-week season; there is also a four-round cup, a knockout mode and a two-player game.

The Bitmaps spent about 40 per cent of the development time on the computer opponents, ACE reported, though its reviewer still thought the game was at its best with two people playing. Retro Gamer later singled out one fix: in the first Speedball, the team attacking down the screen almost always lost the ball at the restart. Mike Montgomery admitted it had been a bug in the random number routines, and it was corrected for the sequel.

Sound and “Ice cream!”

Much of Speedball 2‘s character is in the sound. The title theme came from Nation 12, a group put together through the Bitmaps’ links with Rhythm King: CU Amiga named John Foxx of Ultravox, Tim Simenon of Bomb the Bass and Simon Rogers among its members, and reported that Rogers wrote the music. Richard Joseph programmed the tune for the Amiga and made the sound effects: crashing, scraping and grunting samples, and a sampled salesman in the crowd who, as Amiga Format put it, “shouts out ‘ICE-CREAM!’ at every possible opportunity”. Montgomery credited the idea to Joseph, who found crowd noise alone “just boring”; later versions added hot dogs and popcorn. The Amiga version was always meant to sound better than the ST one, CU Amiga said, and at the Golden Joystick Awards in April 1991 Speedball 2 won the prize for the best 16-bit soundtrack.

Reviews

The ST version came first. The One reviewed it in November 1990 and called it “a tremendous improvement over its illustrious predecessor”, adding that the Amiga version, with 32-colour graphics and better sound, would be “marginally more impressive”. The Amiga reviews followed over the winter. Amiga Action thought it “the best I have ever seen” of all the sports games around. Zero’s David McCandless admitted defeat in his hope of one day being able to criticise the Bitmaps: “Speedball 2 is typically Bitmap, i.e. brilliant.” CU Amiga called it “easily the Bitmap’s best game – a genuine classic”. ZZAP!, reviewing the Amiga game in March 1991, described the graphics as “a kind of neo-fascist brutalism” and gave it 96%. Amiga Format’s Maff Evans in the same month thought it “not as good as the original … it’s miles better”.

Other versions

Carl Muller, a programmer from New Zealand, wrote the Commodore 64 version, which Commodore Format reviewed in September 1991 and called “utterly brilliant”. Mean Machines found the Mega Drive version “the best future sport game available on the Megadrive” in February 1992, and Virgin Games advertised Mega Drive and Master System versions later that year. Mindscape published the Game Boy version in the United States in January 1993, and Krisalis converted it to the Archimedes around the start of 1994.

The game stayed in print. By 1993 the Bitmaps’ own label, Renegade, was selling it in a Bitmap Brothers compilation. A budget re-release in 1994 was the first to run on the A600 and A1200, and AMIGA POWER gave it 92%. Renegade’s CD32 version followed in 1995; AMIGA POWER’s Paul Mellerick was pleased that the teams now wore completely different colours instead of different headbands.

Later remakes

Speedball 2100 (2000) rebuilt the game in 3D for the PlayStation, keeping camera angles close to the Amiga original. Montgomery said it was his favourite of the series, but Edge gave it 4/10 and found its slowdown “almost unforgivable given the game’s name”. Crawfish Interactive built a Game Boy Advance version from “the Bitmaps’ original Mega Drive and Amiga code”, and Broadsword Interactive converted the game for Pocket PC in 2002. According to public sources, Speedball 2 Tournament (2007) remade it for the PC, Speedball 2 Evolution brought it to phones and tablets, and Speedball 2 HD followed in 2013. Rebellion, which bought the Bitmap Brothers’ games in 2019, now owns it.

Sources

  • The One issue 26, November 1990: ST review by Gary Whitta (the quotes above; Amiga and PC versions to come).
  • Amiga Action issue 15, December 1990: Amiga review.
  • ACE issue 40, January 1991: review (90-second halves; Eric Matthews as designer; 40 per cent of development time on the computer opponents).
  • Zero issue 15, January 1991: review by David McCandless (£24.99; twelve players; the attributes; Brutal Deluxe at the bottom of division two).
  • CU Amiga, February 1991, p. 54: review by Steve Merrett (Rob Trevelyan and Dan Malone; the arena and features; Nation 12, Simon Rogers and Richard Joseph; Mirrorsoft, £24.95).
  • ZZAP! issue 71, March 1991, pp. 70–71: Amiga review (Image Works, £24.99; the scoring; league and cup; “neo-fascist brutalism”; “the best two-player game since Kick Off II”).
  • Amiga Format issue 20, March 1991, pp. 58–59: review by Maff Evans.
  • Computer+Videogiochi, July 1991: the Golden Joystick Awards of 4 April 1991 (best 16-bit sound, Speedball 2, Mirrorsoft).
  • Commodore Format issue 11, August 1991: Carl Muller on the C64 conversion. Issue 12, September 1991: C64 review.
  • Mean Machines issue 17, February 1992: Mega Drive review. Issue 24, September 1992: Virgin Games advertisements (Master System and Mega Drive).
  • Nintendo Power issue 44, January 1993: Game Boy version (Mindscape, $29.95).
  • Amiga Format issue 50, September 1993: Speedball 2 in a Bitmap Brothers compilation from Renegade.
  • Acorn Action game guide, January 1994: Krisalis’s Archimedes version.
  • AMIGA POWER issue 35, March 1994: budget re-release (A600 and A1200 compatibility; 92%). Issue 50, June 1995: CD32 review by Paul Mellerick.
  • Edge issue 73, July 1999: the Bitmaps on Speedball 2100. Issue 90, November 2000: Speedball 2100 review. Issue 107, February 2002: its score recalled as “E90, 4/10”.
  • Edge issue 102, October 2001: Crawfish Interactive’s Game Boy Advance version. Issue 115, October 2002: the Pocket PC version by Broadsword Interactive.
  • Retro Gamer issue 1, 2004: Mike Montgomery on the first Speedball’s bug, “Ice cream!”, the CD32 additions and Speedball 2100. Issue 20, 2005: “The Classic Game: Speedball 2” (the ZZAP! 96% score).
  • Wikipedia, “Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe” and “The Bitmap Brothers” (web, secondary): Speedball 2 Tournament, Evolution and HD. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speedball_2:_Brutal_Deluxe

See also

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