Super Spike V'Ball

Overview

Super Spike V'Ball is an NES volleyball game released in 1990 by Nintendo. It's based on the arcade hit, U.S. Championship V'Ball, which was released in 1989 to arcades by (developer) Technos. It features three tournament modes (Exercise, American Circuit, and World Cup), and is compatible with up to four players at once using the NES Four Score (or NES Satellite) accessory.

Gameplay

As with any standard volleyball game, players have one button for jumping (B Button) and one for hitting the ball (A Button). The d-pad is used for aim and distance for your spikes and serves. Additionally, players can also hit the jump button repeatedly while airborne and increase the power of their spike before actually hitting the ball. The same technique of powering up can also be used when defending against a spike by simply jumping in the desired place,and then repeatedly hitting the jump button afterward. It can be tricky to gauge exactly where your ball is going to land - it is influenced by where you're standing (and of course aiming). It's almost always best to power up your spikes to maximum and aim where your opponents don't appear to be covering. However, you can also score points when defending players collide with your most powerful spikes (in which he flies into the air and off-screen).

Choosing your Arsenal

When starting the game, you can select from four different teams consisting of two players each. George and Murphy are the default well-balanced team. Al and John are power hitters with bad defense. Billy and Jimmy (the main characters from the Double Dragon game series) are known for great defense but poor spiking power. And finally there's Ed and Michael, who are fast players with average hitting power.

Game Modes

The Exercise Mode is simply one match against a team in a crowd-less court set to easy difficulty. The American Circuit  is set to average difficulty and consists of five teams located in the following locations: Daytona, New York, Chicago, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles . In World Cup mode, you compete against seven teams and they are as follows: Japan, Italy, Australia, Mexico, Brazil, The Navy, and Russia. All opponents in World Cup mode are set to hard difficulty. The background for the Russian stage (seen left) was redrawn in the American release to make it look less hostile by removing "tanks" from the original Famicom version.