Granny Vinnie Reviews

7800 Rank: 11th Genre Rank: (Action/ Adventure) 7th Awards: Best Sound, 5th Best Originality The Game Where the Name Says it All....err .... um.... yeah.... Pros: Blow-you-away sound/ Fun Sci-Fi sport gameplay/ Good computer A.I. Cons: Small quirks in gameplay A Virtual Geometric Sports Fantasy

Overview: The year is 2049, no, I mean 3049, wait....it is 6674...whatever.......my point is it's a long time from now. Football, basketball, baseball, midget tossing, wrestling, and real TV have all faded away, and what turns the universe's crank is the exciting game of Ballblazer. I personally have hard time believing this would be an exciting thing to watch, but it ain't to bad too play. Kinda like watching a dart tournament would be death, but playing in one might be amusing. Regardless, the game of Ballblazer in its most basic form is a variant of the game of soccer: shoot a ball through your opponent's goal. This may be over simplifying it a bit, but that's the gist of the game. Instead of a team of players, it's just you in your Ballblazer machine against the other guy in his Ballblazer machine. This machine can do four things: 1) go really fast 2) retains the game ball in its force field 3) knocks the ball out of your opponent's force field and 4) shoots the ball. With these and other cool options at your finger tips, Tuesday in your home might be renamed to "Family Ball Blazing Night!"

Graphics: This game features a really tacky color scheme, with the main colors being purple, orange, lime green, dark green, and blue. Ick! But if you can get past that, the graphics are really slick looking and suffers from no blinking nor jittering. The game is real smooth, and when you race across the game board, the visuals are pretty amazing. My only little beef besides the tackiness of the color scheme might be the lack of an audience! If this is supposed to be the best game in town, where the heck are the peeps? the cheerleaders? the media? the guy that shoots T-Shirts into the stands with that fire extinguisher thingy? They are just not there, and without those, this game makes you feel like you are Gulliver and you are playing the mouse on a giant man's game table for the amusement of his party guests. Oh well, just a tiny pet peeve of mine: lack of atmosphere.

Sound: Sit down...you won't believe this....but the sound for this game is actually........brilliant. Yep, you heard me.....brilliant. Lucasarts Games should have done 100 games for the Atari 7800, because the sound on this game is breath taking. Lucasarts were bright enough to use the superior 5200 Pokey Sound chip in this game, and the result was amazing. Why other game programmers shied away from this, we'll never know. Ballblazer delivers quality sound, and the tune that plays can and will get stuck in your head. The tune kinda sounds like Herby Hancocks' Axel F's cousin. It's pretty catchy, and it has a space age feel to it. Other audio in the game is solid, complete with great noises for the force field functions: stealing, retaining, and shooting. A quality tune plays when you score, and when the game is decided, the losing Ballblazer machine spins in circles so fast it sounds like an earthquake. 5 star audio across the board!

Gameplay: Gameplay is good, but not great. The fast action of the game is simply impressive. Colors and tiles fly by at a blinding speed. The controls are simple, and easy to master. The frustrating part in all of this to me is the "Stealing the Ball" part of the game. Many times, you'll knock the ball away from your opponent, it bounces off the wall, and goes right back to him. This cycle can happen several times a game, and it gets old. Another thing that is annoying is the stalemate that can happen in the corners of the game board. If the computer is charging towards the goal, and you are ramming him away from the goal, you can easily get caught in the corner. You can stay here until times expires for all he cares, he's not budging. If you are in the lead, you can jam him up...keeping him from scoring, but what fun is that? The game would have benefited from Mills Lane separating the two Ballblazer machines briefly and then yelling, "Let's Get It On!" for the restart of the action. Anyway, to fully enjoy the game, you must concede these types of goals. This is a crippling blow to its fun factor, since there is nothing you can do. Nice touches in gameplay also includes: the varying points from different ranges, shrinking goals, the unique scoring system, and auto turns. Your Ballblazer will always be facing the ball, even when you can't see it. This keeps you from wandering aimlessly like a drunken fool while the computer racks up goals at your expense. Even when you stray away from the ball, the computer will turn you towards the object of desire. Pretty neat.

Originality: Ballblazer is another one of those "7800/Atari" only games that are both quirky and unique. I was always happy to see games of this quality and uniqueness rolling off the 7800 assembly line. Sadly, it was a rare thing. Ballblazer really is just Sci-fi air hockey from the paddle's point of view....take away the drops of sweat splattering the playing surface and the loud CLANKS of the discs slamming into the goal. But, I have never played another game like it on any other console.

Value: There are 9 difficulty levels of computer droids, ranging from what I would call a blithering idiot to a 12-year-old kid. (12-year-old kids are pretty good at video games). With practice, even the 12 year old can be crushed, and then the playability wears thin. A tournament, season, or a round robin mode would have absolutely rocked, but sadly, it's not there. The two-player game can be fun, and you can vary game length from a minute on up to 9.

Overall: All in all I would have to say that this is one of the 7800's crown jewel games. It definitely has the best audio in the library, and it is a pretty good game to boot. If you can get past the Brady Bunch color scheme, and the few flaws in the gameplay, Ballblazer might make your Atari 7800 top ten list. This split level Sci-fi sports game has what it takes to be an addictive cart today, but I doubt it will last until 3049...or whatever the heck that year was we were supposed to be in...


Other Reviews:

The Atari Times: 10 out of 10
Video Game Critic: B+
Atari Gaming Headquarters: 8 out of 10
CV's Atari 7800 Panoramic Froo-Froo: 4.0 out of 5.0 (Very Good)
Jose Q's Emuviews: 7.5 out of 10


Additional Info: I would like to take this time to thank Mitch Orman, owner of The Atari 7800 Page for allowing the use of his screenshots for this review.

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