#ballz 3d snes

[worstvideogamesong-poll]

Worst Video Game Song Tournament - Round 3 Match 16

Title Screen - Ballz 3D (SNES)

VERSUS

Imp's Song - DOOM

FIGHT!

I would recommend listening to as much as you can of each song before voting, but how you choose is up to you! Remember to be civil in the tags and replies!

Propaganda under cut:

Ballz 3D Title Screen:

(none included)

Imp's Song:

"'This sounds like a smoke detector going off while a car sits outside with its bass turned up too high.' - Dan Ryckert, Game Informer. Listen from 1:12 for the jackhammer starting."

"john carmack had no idea how to program the genesis sound chip and it shows"

Feel free to add more propaganda in the tags and replies, or send it to me in the ask box and I'll try to share it as soon as I can!

[vgadvisor]

[obscurevideogames]

"the Jester" -

Ballz 3D (Cave Logic Studios - SNES - 1994)  

[z2z-gaming-and-random-art-ai]

Console Fighting Games of 1994 - Ballz 3D Fighting at its Ballziest

A very unique fighting game with all playable characters made out of balls, developed by PF Magic, the game released on the Genesis and SNES in 1994.

[devileaterjaek]

Ballz 3D (SNES)

[bangjiazheng]

SNES Longplay [246] Ballz 3D

Ballz 3D,A weird fighting game, probably meant to show off the performance of SFC machines.

[samdelurvanrafigon]

I know actually playing the games is sometimes a dud for them, but I’m so happy the McElroys decided to stream NES/SNES games occasionally. My life was incomplete before learning the existence of Ballz 3D

[nintendroid]

Ballz 3D for Super Nintendo.

[futuristicghost]

BALLZ 3D

[vampyreyes]

Friendly reminder that ballz 3D exists

[clownsoftheday]

Today’s Clown is: Boomer from the game Ballz 3D! 

[worstvideogamesong-poll]

Worst Video Game Song Tournament - Round 1 Match 62

Vital - Fortnite

VERSUS

Title Screen - Ballz 3D (SNES)

FIGHT!

I would recommend listening to as much as you can of each song before voting, but how you choose is up to you! Remember to be civil in the tags and replies!

Propaganda under cut:

Vital:

"it starts out so promising...and then the chorus hits, and it just becomes annoying."

Ballz 3D Title Screen:

(none included)

Feel free to add more propaganda in the tags and replies, or send it to me in the ask box and I'll try to share it as soon as I can!

[retro-roulette]

Retro Roulette #99: Ballz (SNES, 1994)

Nothing truly encapsulates the 16-bet era more than, well, balls.

Sorry - ballz. My mistake. Ballz, or Ballz 3D as it’s sometimes known, was released for 16-bit consoles in 1994, to the joy of at least one juvenile advertising person, who was having the time of his or her life:

The mid-90s were interesting times. As we’ve discussed several times before, it was also a time when every studio was making a weird fighting game, to hypothetically cash in on the craze fueled by Street Fighter II, Mortal Kombat and so on. One of the more heavily marketed titles of the era was Ballz, a game by PF Magic and Accolade. Accolade are also the folks that brought us Bubsy, so I guess keep that in mind.

Anyway, Ballz is a 2D-ish fighting game that did a remarkable job of pushing the graphical envelope while still daring to look super dumb. You have a weird cast of characters made from balls, including a clown, a ballerina, a caveman, and a rhinoceros. Your nemesis is a jester, who is also made from balls. Did I mention that there are balls?

Okay, yes, there are plenty of “balls” jokes to be made here, but ultimately is the game any good? Ehhhh, not especially. In most resepcts, Ballz struggles to offer much in the way of reliability or variety. There aren’t a lot of game modes, the hit boxes are weird, there isn’t an enormous amount of variety between the game’s characters, and the pacing of any particular fight feels awkward. The result is a rather clunky product that’s somewhat functional, but just isn’t well executed.

Still, I can’t resist giving it some minor points for being so weird. As you may have noticed, there’s a video screen in the background in every arena that just spits out weird phrases to punctuate how much “action” you’re “enjoying” with your “balls.” Balls!

I guess there’s something to be said for being so goofy that it somehow becomes endearing? Kind of? Anyway, as with a lot of games of the era that had even marginally objectionable content, Ballz is censored a bit on the SNES. Where as the Genesis version uses the original tag line, “You gotta have Ballz!,” the SNES version says this instead:

Now this is just a travesty - it’s not enough to play Ballz, you’ve gotta have them, too! I like to think that by being so dumb, this phrase is what made Nintendo change its mind about this sort of thing and not, say, Mortal Kombat’s sales numbers.

Ultimately, while it’s not without its charms, Ballz is a game that relies a bit too much on its uniqueness and not enough on being a quality experience. I can’t fully recommend this one, but if you simply must have a quality 16-bit balls experience, let me introduce you to this fellow:

Now here are some balls of a different color!

Here’s something I definitely didn’t know until writing this week’s article - remember the “Petz” series, which included Catz and Dogz and...this?!

This means that Petz Hamsterz did well enough to get a sequel! That says a lot about our society. Anyway, some of the tech used to make Ballz went into these games - if it weren’t for Ballz, the entire Petz Hamsterz franchise wouldn’t exist. What a time to be alive.

Speaking of which, next week’s game is the 100th in the Retro Roulette series! It’s a good one, too - one of my 8-bit faves. Until then, let me know your favorite balls-related games, and remember to have your Petz zpayed or zneutered.

[obscurevideogames]

“YOKO” -

Ballz 3D (Cave Logic Studios - SNES - 1994)  

[z2z-gaming-and-random-art-ai]

Console Fighting Games of 1995 - Ballz The Director's Cut

Ballz The Director's Cut is an updated and improved version of the Genesis and SNES release Ballz 3D Fighting at its Ballziest. This updated version released on the 3DO in the UK, US and Japan in 1995.

[devileaterjaek]

Ballz 3D (SNES) //community discord// //ko-fi// //twitch channel//