My brother bought one of those knock-off chinese 10.000 games in one console for twenty bucks and we decided to try this bad boy out. My foot immediately started tapping to the familiar 8 bit beat and we teleported in front of the old CRT TV we used to have back in the early 2000s. Way back then we didn’t know how to operate this; come to think of it, we didn’t even know what volleyball was. Just people moving about and we lost interest. He even might have not developed his speaking capabilities yet, still talking in baby simlish and holding the sega genesis controller. Our eyes lit up when we saw it on the list and we had to see what tortured us so as children.To my surprise, we found out a really fun game.
I don’t know if there are any famous volleyball sporting games right now, like football has FIFA and basketball NBA, but it was interesting to find that volleyball works really well for 2D space. It simplifies the sport to a couple of variables. After a ball is served you have to receive it by trying to place your player below the landing trajectory of the ball, nothing too fancy. After that he automatically passes it to the setter who also automatically raises it to the attacker. At this moment comes the most playing you have to do in this. First you have to time the hit, because there exists a risk of the ball just falling on your side of the court if you fail to touch it. Second, you have to decide to either spike it directly below or chip it to the back side. If you are being attacked, you have to either time your block or move your back player to receive the ball. That’s it. At any moment there exist only one or two things you can do, so it creates this really fun rock-paper scissors-scenario. It’s the minimum input a player can be asked to do, but it catches the spirit of volleyball to a degree I didn’t think it could with a game this simple. Really fun for half an hour with a friend. Give it a try if you and your homie love the sport.