Vectorball Download (1988 Amiga Game)

This is one of the the oddest and most original sports games I ever had the pleasure of booting up on my Amiga. It is set in a surreal world of vector and shaded landscapes where the inhabitants of the planet watch their national sport, Vector Ball, whenever they have time. This is a complex blend of ice hockey, netball and green bowling. If that sounds difficult to comprehend wait until you see the bizarre pitch of heavy contours, ditches, hills, ridges and valleys.

The object of the game is to out-score your opponent, manoeuvring the ball past the droid and into its goal area. As in netball, players are not allowed to move with the ball so they must stop and throw the ball to advance. The wacky pitch is bounded by a fence so it is possible to bounce the ball off the side of the pitch to avoid contact with the opposing droid. One nifty feature which the programmers at Binary Design have added is a method of judging the power of the shot from a droid by the length of the robot's neck.

Plenty of alternative options can be selected before each game - different style pitches and custom robots with improved speed and shot power. The pitch can have shaded or dot graphics. You can decide on the length of the game and the mass of the ball - a light ball needing less shot power to move a given distance. Vector Ball can be played by either one or two players and the ability of the computer-controlled droid can be changed to suit the player. Although the one player mode is highly enjoyable, you don't really get to appreciate the intensity of the gameplay until you play against a friend. The pace is frantic.

Both sonically and graphically the game is highly polished with excellent scrolling and well designed sprites. The one annoying feature is that you have to wait far too long for shaded pitches to be generated. This continues Mastertronic's excellent track record in budget games. Excellent VFM. The most innovative sports game I've ever seen, the gameplay is from another dimension.

How to run this game on modern Windows PC?

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