MAME Mine: Wacky Sports
What can MAME teach us about game design?
by Ben Garney and Eric Hartman

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Figure 1 - This is how we play football.

In our quest to find gems of game design wisdom in the vast mines of MAME, we've turned to the genre of wacky sports. There are a lot of sports games on MAME and we've played an embarrassing number of them. Most of them fall into the sim category, and most of them just aren't that interesting. The old sports sims aren't as realistic as modern sims, and their gameplay isn't as good as old titles from other genres. Furthermore, we don't play or watch any sports. In fact, even the rules are often a mystery to us.

Luckily, there's a genre for the people who don't know all the rules for managing a baseball goal or scoring a football point. That genre is wacky sports. As Mario Kart is to racing, these games are to the traditional ball sports. They are a fantastic example of how to take an established design and give it new life and broader appeal.

Before we go further, what's good about sports? They're one of the basic forms of play. They're an opportunity to play with other people, both competitively and cooperatively. In modern society, a tremendous number of rules, traditions, and a huge quantity of pomp and circumstance go with most professional sports. But at their core, it's about two sides competing for some goal.

The sim market for sports games is huge and successful. Madden is the prime example, but the inclusion of rules, rosters, and stats excludes a lot of people, including all the nerds reading and writing this article.

With that - on to our first game, Power Spikes 2.

Figure 2 - Power Spikes 2 knows how to sell games.

Wacky sports games change the setting of traditional sports for broader appeal, but it's not just a matter of taking a sim and reskinning it. Power Spikes 2 (1994 Video System Co.) is a perfect example of the failure of the reskin approach. It only changes the graphics, and the result is less than compelling.

A brief history lesson: Power Spikes (1991 Video System Co.) the original was a mediocre volley ball game without any real distinguishing characteristics or fun gameplay. Power Spikes 2 is exactly the same game with slightly tweaked controls and some optional flashy powered armor graphics. When we say optional, we mean there's a mode where you can play volleyball sans robot armor, and it's the same gameplay.

Power Spikes 2 does have a few things going for it. It has head to head multiplayer, which immediately adds a lot of potential fun. It has some stylin' future arenas to battle in. And no matter how pathetically the other team fails to make a point, your team always celebrates with a dance sequence. Even if you miss the serve and the ball falls straight to the ground, your opponent's team will celebrate with the same glee that they would give if they had made a well-timed spike.

Figure 3 - Failure to innovate.

Unfortunately, even these elements can't make up for the mediocrity that thoroughly pervades this game. The ball moves like it's filled with helium. Your gameplay options are very limited, distilled down to picking one of perhaps three maneuvers. And despite the fact that you can outfit your team in robotic future suits, they move the same speed, jump the same height, and do the same moves. Apparently, the armor is so heavy that jet thrusters are required to jump a normal height. What benefit does the armor provide? Is small arms fire a danger in the future sports arena?

Although Power Spikes 2 was disappointing, we ran across many more wacky sports games that were fun.

Figure 4 - In the future, buttons are scarce.

The first of these is Super Baseball 2020 (1991 SNK/Pallas, review here). Although SB2020 is, superficially, a reskinned baseball game, in contrast to Power Spikes 2 the developers run with the futuristic theme. Additionally, the basic game behind the theme is well done. Gameplay is straight up traditional baseball. You pitch, bat, toss the ball around, make runs, and so forth. But they add a few extra elements. First, if you hit someone with a pitch enough times, they're teleported away by a flying ambulance and replaced by a robot. You can do this an unlimited number of times, until the entire opposing team is made up of robot replacements.

Second, they modify the field slightly. Without going into too much detail, the home run zone is smaller, and most of the crowd is covered by glass so that a ball that would normally go over the wall rolls back into play. This works very well because you're still rewarded for hitting the ball further (in that you get more time to run until the ball rolls back into play), while home runs are even more rewarding because they're a bit more rare. These changes are subtle and well balanced.

Finally, as the game progresses, they add futuristic "crackers" to the field. "Crackers" would be known in our "modern" society as antipersonnel mines. What game wouldn't be better with arbitrary explosives? This element adds a lot of chaos and fun to fielding - in addition to running from point A to point B, you have to dodge bombs.

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