Super Dodge Ball Advance
Reviewed by Yardbird
Super Dodge Ball is an addictive, fun game. There was
a version of it on the Nintendo circa 1989. This game
is just as good as that one, and in some ways it
improves on it. There are more things to do in this
game, but mainly there are more teams to choose from.
Plus, it's portable. You can't go wrong with portable dodge ball.
Graphics
While the graphics of this game are good, they aren't
the best on the system. That honor probably goes to
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 at this point. However, the
game's graphics are nice looking, colorful, and
varied. The backgrounds, while not extremely
detailed, change from a stadium or just to a murky
looking body of water. The players have different
faces, but appear to suffer from big head syndrome.
Each super throw has its own graphical effect, but
this is one fault I have with the graphics. The
throws don't look different enough from each other,
and to me, they don't look as fanciful or spectacular
as they should have. But still the graphics are good.
Audio
This is one area of the game I didn't pay very much
attention to. The same song seems to play during
every match. For this reason I mostly listened to the
radio instead of the game. However, when a player
runs in preparation to take a jump, you can hear his
feet smacking against the surface. That is one effect
and detail of the game I really liked.
Gameplay
In dodge ball there are two teams. Each team has
seven players on the court. Four are on the inside of
the court on one side and three are on the outside
court of the other. Your opponent has the same thing.
The object of the game is to totally knock out your
four opponents on the inside of the court. You do
this by hitting them with a dodge ball...duh.
There are different types of throws. Each player has
a super throw. There are air and land throws. There
are also just regular throws. You can dodge the ball
or catch it when your opponent throws it at you. When
you kill a player he turns into an angel and wears
all white and floats out of the screen. Do this to
all 4 on the other team and you win.
The main mode of play is Championship. The goal is to
be ranked number 1 and maybe unlock the secret teams
in the game. There's also exhibition and versus, but
no bean ball. Bean ball was in the Nintendo version
and it was actually pretty good. Too bad they left
that out of this game. At least, I think they did. I
didn't see it anywhere.
There are also other minor little tweaks you can do
the game. You get to select the team you want to play
as in Championship mode, which is good since in the
Nintendo version you had to play as the United
States. There are quite a lot of teams in the game. I
think there are 10 total at the front and then five
more later on if you can find them. You can change
the playing style of each player on your team too, so
this makes for a more customizable experience.
Replay Value
There is a good amount of replay in the game. It's
not very deep, but there are around 15 teams. With
that many teams, the different ways you can set up
the players, and the different difficulty settings,
you'll probably play it for a long while. Plus, it's
a lot of fun.
Challenge
There are many different ways you can set up the
challenge of the game. You can change the difficulty
between five levels, and you can also set the level
the other team has in categories such as offense and
defense. With so many different variations, the
challenge level is hard to pinpoint. In general, once
you get used to the game, you should be able to beat
it fairly easily on any level. The learning curve
isn't too steep on this one.
Control
The control has an all right layout. I don't really
care for the fact you have to hit both A and B in
order to do a jump. You use one button to pass
between teammates and one to throw it at your
opponents. You can hit the L shoulder button to call
out one of your teammates. He will then jump up in
the air and you can pass it to him and then he can do
a super throw. Super throws take a combination of
buttons and there are a TON of them in the game.
There are around 50 different ones, but not each team
can do all of them. Each player has only one or two
throws, so to use them all you have to try each team out.
Fun
Yes, the game is quite fun. It is so much fun I
didn't want to put it down at all. I played the game
a lot in the first week, because it was so much fun.
Even after beating it and unlocking everything it is
still a lot of fun to play.
Stress Factor
The game isn't too stressful. On the higher levels it
gets annoying, because the team doesn't take much
damage and they seem to catch all my throws, even my
super throws. It still wasn't so bad that I wanted to
throw my GBA though.
The End
One thing that surprises me is how much this game
sells for at online auction places. I paid a lot less
for this game than I could sell it for. If nothing
else, buy it cheap, play it for a while, and sell it
while you can still get a high going price for it. I
could probably make a $20 profit off it, but
instead...I'll keep it around. It's a fun game and it
helped me through some boring times.
Overall: 8 out of 10