Super Dodge Ball

Arcade game later ported to the Nintendo Entertainment System. You play as Sam, John, Mike, Randy, Bill, and Steve also known as the American team. You command the dodge ball with incredible powers that allow you to transform the ball into a football, or launch it completely off the screen, or even around the world colliding with the back of you opponent's head. You play your way through a tournament against such teams as: Kenya, India, Russia, China, and Japan. If you progress to the final match you play against... YOUR OWN TEAM!.

Super Dodgeball for the NES was a sports game by the team who developed Double Dragon for the Nintendo. In it, two teams of six squared off in a game of dodgeball, where you had three people on your side of the court, and three standing on the sidelines of the opponents side of the court. The objective was to mash your opponents three core players into the concrete by slamming them repeatedly with a seemingly ordinary volleyball. Each player had a "super" throw that could be executed with a little skill. Some examples of these include causing the ball to fly in a spiral pattern, fly super fast, split into three balls temporarily, and my personal favorite which was throwing the ball VERY high and out of sight, where it seeked onto an opponent and then came down at light speed, obliterating them. You could also throw the ball to your teammates on your opponents side, or they could retrieve balls you threw that missed your opponents. This was a great two-player game, although the single player mode got somewhat repetitive. There was a Japanese sequel for the SNES that never reached the US.

In some versions of Super Dodge Ball, you don't fight your own team, they don't throw the captain in the air, and you just get the winning team plaque. It's terrible. But you know, if you look at it right, it looks like they're throwing the captain up and down in front of a giant bonfire. This is no good. However, a fun addition in this game, that I don't remember being at the arcade, is the free form style of 'bean ball'. Everyone goes in the back court of the schoolyard and attempts to brain each other with their elite skills. This isn't an incredibly hard game, a la Megaman (the first one, it was a total bitch), but as a two player, it can be fantastic in every way that you'd imagine.

Technos of Japan, now owned by Atlus, I salute you!

Something that should be corrected...Technos, and not Tecmo, made this game. As far as the Famicom/NES version goes, it was part of the Kunio series in Japan along with Riki Kunio and River City Ransom. More specifically, the sports sub-series along with the Crash and the Boys games that came at the end of the NES' life cycle. At the time this was made Tecmo was too into setting up their Ninja Gaiden/Tecmo Bowl empire.

Still a damn fun game though...just like all the Kunio games.