KlashBall (NES) Playthrough

A playthrough of Sofel's 1991 action game for the NES, KlashBall.
In this video, I play through both game modes as Team Draco. Knockout mode begins at 1:34, and League mode begins at 1:16:16.
In the late 80s, futuristic sports games - more specifically, games that appear to have been influenced by the movie Rollerball staring James Caan - were all the rage on 16-bit computers, and the genre's sudden rise in popularity can be traced directly back to the release of Speedball, a hit 1988 Amiga/Atari ST game by The Bitmap Brothers. The game made its way to several platforms in the years that followed, and Sofel's KlashBall, released exclusively in North America in 1991, was the officially licensed NES version of the game.
KlashBall is posed as a 5-on-5 contact sport that resembles soccer and basketball. Each team has two attackers, two defenders, and a goalie, and the aim is to get the ball in the opposing team's goal as many times as possible before the clock runs out.
The game's "futuristic" slant is reflected in the team upgrade system, the court's bumpers and ball-warping tunnel, the mechanical ball launcher, the randomly appearing power-ups, the metallic look of the court, and the way the ball inexplicably explodes whenever a goal is scored. I haven't played the computer versions of the game, but as far as I can tell, KlashBall retains all of Speedball's original options and features.
The graphics and sound have seen some heavy downgrades, though, and given the popularity of Speedball, I suspect that KlashBall's moment-to-moment gameplay wouldn't hold up in a direct comparison, either. The choppy animation and the mushy controls rob the gameplay of any sense of fluidity, and in turn make the action hard to follow when the pace picks up.
And why does it take so long for things to get moving again after someone scores? Arrrgh!
But the thing that ultimately killed the game for me was the complete and utter lack of difficulty. The CPU player leaves giant holes in its defense, and once you learn how it behaves, it's easy to exploit its stupidity to score goal after goal virtually unopposed. And if you get bored with running circles around your opponents, you can always just trap them in a corner to run down the clock with minimal effort.
If you've ever played Bill Laimbeer's Combat Basketball ( • Bill Laimbeer's Combat... ), you know exactly what I'm talking about here. In all ways, KlashBall is a game cut from the same cloth.
Or, you know, hacked out of an unwholesomely soiled cloth with a blunt instrument.
I'm not a fan. I would've preferred a Wall Street Kid sequel.
_____________
No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
NintendoComplete (www.nintendocomplete.com/) punches you in the face with in-depth reviews, screenshot archives, and music from classic 8-bit NES games!

[@NintendoComplete]

Remember Bill Laimbeer's Combat Basketball? This NES port of Speedball feels pretty much like an 8-bit version of that game.

[@SonicTheHedgehog17]

I'm pretty sure this is just a port of Amiga's Speedball - from the music, to the window with the arm banging against the leg and the gameplay overall.

[@JP88276]

Thanks for making this

[@mnemonichotpocket]

Crushed it

[@MBRetroGamer]

the best game play top

[@NintendoComplete]

Thanks! 😊

[@bigduke5902]

Bill Laimbeer, huh? Boy did I dodge a bullet! I used to see this in the rental store and assumed it was a lesser rip off of the Genesis game Powerball, which I loved. I'm really glad I never rented it.

[@NintendoComplete]

Oh God, did you. This is ass, seriously.

[@superstaramyrosethehardcoreyt]

Magnificent video.

[@hardyjoe4278]

You know what? Most of these one-off games would have been interesting to see sequels to, or at least an updated series of them. I am not sure about VICE Project Doom, but it would have been cool to see the story continue on after that plot twist crash of an ending...

[@NintendoComplete]

This had a sequel on the computers. It was called Speedball 2 Brutal Deluxe.

[@murder.simulator]

Bitmap Brothers sounds like a Super Mario clone

[@AlastorRadio1929]

Man idk how you are not verified yet 😢

[@theodorehsu5023]

They knew the NES was no Amiga/Atari ST, so they had to compromise. It did the game no favors, though they were quasi-faithful given the “hardware limitations.” But “Wall Street Kid 2: Stocks and Foreign Cash” where you trade “foreign exchange” (money from other countries) would have been good for the SNES.

[@jasonweiss7757]

Had this game as a kid, Never realized just how stupid it was till now.

[@vincently1995]

Request: Snatcher (PC Engine, Japan) Translated-Playthrough

[@NintendoComplete]

I'd love to, but that would take too much time for something that's already in English on a different platform. If I were to translate a 7 hour VN, I'd prefer doing something that's not already otherwise available in English.

[@starlightwitch12]

Seems the new Jeff Gerstmann video made you inspire making this, apparently.

[@NintendoComplete]

Haha I wish I could blast out a video that quickly on such short notice, but this video was already recorded a few weeks ago.

[@KrunchyTheClown78]

Did you play this just because Jeff gerstman streamed it yesterday? Lol

[@isaacman4157]

The scrolling is very choppy, and there's not even much happening on-screen.

[@d_valroth]

Being a port they probably deferred a lot of processing, like only updating certain things every other or even every third frame to keep everything within the NES frame time.

[@retrocatalog]

​​@@d_valrothThere are a lot of fancy demoscene-esque effects though in the title screen and menus and goal screens and other fluff. It looks like they either didn't have their priorities straight or they wanted to distract the player from how poor the gameplay is by shoving in all that extra jazz.