Super Dodge Ball is a cult classic from the 8-bit NES. An over-the-top, stylized take on the traditional playground sport of dodgeball, it was the first spin-off sports title in the Kunio-kun series of games developed by Technos. You might know the Kunio games better by the name River City Ransom, as that 8-bit beat-'em-up is still the most popular game in the series to make it to the States. But Super Dodge Ball, in its original NES release from almost 20 years ago, managed to find a following of fans that rivaled the size of River City's audience -- all because of its incredibly addictive, fast-paced gameplay.
You control a team of six characters. Three of your men are in play on one side of the field, and the other three are spread out to surround the out-of-bounds area of your opponents' side. The goal of the game is for you to do enough damage to the three in-play men on the opposing team to kill them, before they do the same to you. And you do that by, of course, throwing a dodgeball, as fast as you can, straight into their faces.
Super Dodge Ball is comically violent, in the same hilarious way River City Ransom was before it -- when a player takes a pounding from a particularly powerful throw, he'll often collapse painfully to the ground or just go flying off the screen from the force of the impact. It's all in good 8-bit fun, though, because even though characters "die" after taking one too many traumas to the head, they simply turn into angels and float up off the screen.
What makes Super Dodge Ball a blast to play is that it's incredibly simple, but also wonderfully deep. With just two action buttons, the original NES design managed to facilitate numerous different movements -- both on offense and defense. You can throw the ball at an enemy or pass it to one of your other players on offense. You can duck to take cover when a ball comes at you, or attempt to ready your hands to catch the throw on defense. You can jump, to get some serious air and set up dangerous aerial attacks. And you can trigger special, super-powered throws that will do huge damage to your foes if they manage to connect.
All that with just two buttons. Super Dodge Ball's gameplay was the stuff of NES legend as a result. But, even though the game found success in adapting to the limitations of the NES controller, it had greater difficulty adapting to the limitations of the NES graphics hardware.
There's a lot of flicker. Sprites will pop in and out of visibility regularly, rendering you and your opponent's men temporarily invisible on frequent occasion -- it's an artifact of the NES hardware's inability to display more than a handful of sprites on the same horizontal line at the same time. This is one of those issues that the rose-colored glasses of nostalgia fade in your memory over time -- I certainly didn't recall it being such a problem, and I played this game a lot as a kid -- but you'll undoubtedly notice it again today. The Virtual Console does a solid job of emulating NES titles, and that means you'll always get the bad with the good.
But don't let that one issue deter you. Super Dodge Ball is still a remarkable game and an amazing value at just five bucks, so put down your Wii Points and enjoy this cult classic. It's especially recommended if you've got a friend to play against you -- two player Super Dodge Ball matches can be epic.