In the year 2095 the sport of Speedball was driven underground. In a desperate attempt to regain public support, a Speedball council was set up. New rules were brought in to make the game more appealing. Teams were renamed and stadiums rebuilt. Speedball 2 was born!

Soon 16 teams were contesting the coveted Speedball 2 trophy. One of the new teams is Brutal Deluxe. You are their manager and as the 2105 season begins your hopes are riding high.

The pitch has changed, it's now 100 per cent larger! In addition to the usual goal-mouths there are now four ways in which to accumulate points.
Scoring goals will earn your team ten points. Hitting one of the two bounce domes will earn you two points Illuminating one of the stars on the side of the pitch will gain you an extra two points, while lighting all five will provide an additional bonus of ten. Taking out an opposing player will also score you ten points.

The game also features a score multiplier. Every time you throw the ball into the multiplier the points you score will be increased. Naturally, if the opposing side has control of the multiplier you can reduce his score by using it yourself.

Speedball 2 also sees the inclusion of pick-ups. Should one of your players collect a pick-up he'll gain a special ability. These range from freezing your opponent and reversing his joystick controls, to giving your team members maximum attributes and making your players immune to all tackles.

In addition to the pick-ups, players may also grab other goodies. Tokens will help you pay for extra training seasons or star players. Amour and weaponry will increase individual player's attributes.

There are two play modes in Speedball 2. The first, like the original Speedball, sees you controlling the team. The second puts you in a managerial role. You train and coach the players while the computer controls them during the actual match time.

There are three competition modes - a knockout tournament, the league and the cup. A special practice mode lets you perfect special moves and tactics. However, your team won't find their way to the top easily.

As well as skill you'll also need cash. Using the tokens you can increase your players' attributes. In addition you can also peruse the transfer tables for prospects.

At the end of the day it's goals that count. Only the elite will win their way to the top, but in the cup games it's anyone's bet.
What are you waiting for? Pad up and head for the tunnel. Speedball 2 is here.

Those of you who are avid fans of American Football may remember back in the late 70s (1977-79 to be precise) when certain players were deemed simply too dangerous. Several rule changes and penalty legislations had to be brought in to maintain the players' safety, covering dangerous tackles and blocking moves and some rather lethal attacking practices.

Just imagine what would have happened if things had just progressed even further into the realms of violence. Players would be in dangerous or severe wounding, and maybe even death, resulting in much lower crowd attendances - a prospect which could be damaging to the game.

Desire for violence
Now we take a leap of just over 100 years in the future. The nation's top sport of Speedball has progressively become more and more violent. With few rules to govern player safety and even fewer to cover etiquette on the pitch. Some of the more powerful teams began playing with unfair advantages - drugs, cybernetic prosthetics and other rather dubious gear - resulting in excessively violent, scrappy, unentertaining games watched by only a few hardcore fans.

When the crowds began to decline, the sport was forced underground, until five years later, when the powers that be saw a way of restoring public support of the game and earning a pretty penny to boot. Thus, in the year 2100, Speedball 2 was born.

Key members of the underground movement were tempted to help set up a major league, with new rules, new teams split into two divisions, improved player-armour for safety and last (but by no means least) an entirely redesigned playing arena to bring maximum entertainment to the punters.

Player manager
The game can be played in a number of ways. You can play as the team, trying to climb up the divisions and win the league; as the team manager, giving training and coaching decisions then sitting back to watch the team in action; or just play in a straight knockout competition to win the Speedball Players Association Cup.

Whichever section you decide to choose,you need to get to grips with the training section. This involves spending money on various pieces of equipment for your team members to train with. You can train-up a single player, a group formation or the whole team. If you want to add some spice to your team, then check out the transfer market to get yourself a star player.

Every machine has its classics. The Spectrum had Knight Lore and Atic Atac, the C64 had Impossible Mission and Pitstop II. As for the Amiga, what games can truly rank as the best the machine can produce? Obviously, there's Kick Off II, but apart from that? Well, Speedball II can definitely add itself to that much-revered list.

Set two years after the events of the original game, Speedball II marks the comeback of the future's most popular sport.
Due to falling viewing figures, the authorities took Speedball temporarily off the air, until a more violent alternative could be found. The result is a revamped version of the old favourite, with a larger playing area, faster action, and rougher players.

Taking the basic ideas behind Speedball, the near-legendary Bitmap Brothers have taken the best parts of the first game, and incorporated them with a whole host of new features for this long-awaited sequel.

With the programming talents of Rob Trevellyan and graphics supplied by ex-Palace artist, Dan Malone, the result is far better than I ever expected. As well as introducing the ability to add specific talents and improvements to each of your team's players, you are also allowed to groom your team into champions by taking on a management mantle and buying and selling players or purchasing extra kit to raise their stamina or aggression levels.

As can be expected for a novice, you begin the game in charge of the weakest team in the Speedball II league - Brutal Deluxe. This band of miscreants need a massive shake-up before they can be transformed into championship material, and you are placed as the man to do the job.

Once the game has loaded, an option screen offers the choice of entering a league or a cup tournament, or to go straight into a one-off game. Once selected, the action then switches to the all-important arena where the match will begin.

It is here you realise the extent to which this sequel has been improved. Whereas the first pitch was only three screens high and was scrolled vertically, the Speedball II arena spans roughly 6x2 screens, and boasts a number of new, improved features.

Whilst the positioning of the goals hasn't changed and they are still located at each end of the pitch, each side is now cluttered with useful or bonus-giving gates and features. Kept over from the first game, the warp holes are back with a vengeance, with nearly three times as many as the first game. But the most impressive addition is a spiral channel which doubles the value of each of your goals every time the ball is thrown int it.

Similarly, pinball-style coloured stars punctuate the walls and can be lit for even more bonus points. It would seem that, with all these additions lining the pitch, that the game would get unnecessarily complex. Somehow, though, they don't get in the way of the main action, but simply add a little extra spice to the actual game and prove essential for building up points in league games.

As well as the many pitch-based additions, the basic game is more violent, too. Each player has his own list of statistics and can withstand a number of knocks. However, as the match progresses and the players take more and more hits, their resistance is suitably depleted until they finally collapse and have to be stretchered off by two robotic physios.

Likewise, all of the players now play more of a part in the matches, with the goalie being the most notable, and the control system has been refined to make passing and shooting even easier.

The joystick's directional controls send the player nearest the ball running in the relevant direction, whilst the firebutton prompts a throw or a shot, the strength of which is determined by how the firebutton is held down for. This system is one of the best I have ever encountered, in terms of both accuracy and efficiency, and is the icing on an already playable cake.

Summing up Speedball II is an almost impossible task. It retains the basic gameplay of the original, but expands on practically every part of it. The managerial side is easy to get into and the various stats of each player do actually make a difference to the gameplay. The new, enlarged pitch makes for a faster game which involves more passing and dodging skills, and the new pitch-side features add even more variety - as does the improved violence!

In fact, there is absolutely nothing to fault in Speedball II, the people involved have produced a sequel which far exceeds any of my high expectations and, in the process, have created a game which is without a doubt a classic.

One of the advantages of computerizing a fictionalized game is that you can completely change it for the sequel, doubling the size of the pitch and throwing in loads of new features. Try doing that with footie!

Speedball 2 is played over two halves of 90 seconds each, with teams swapping ends at half time. You control your team member closest the ball with a letter flashing up to indicate whether the player is a centre forward, midfielder, defender, winger or goalkeeper. Each team member can throw the ball in eight directions and, by holding down fire, at varying heights. You can even put on a bit of aftertouch to bend the ball.

If you don't have the ball, pressing fire results in the player leaping into the air or gliding to grab the ball, or alternatively making a tackle.

Succesful tackling depends on the attack/ defence attributes of the two players involved. You can tackle a player whether he has the ball or not and each tackle reduces his (or her) attributes.

If energy falls to zero the player is stretchered off and a sub sent on, this earns the team responsible bonus points!

Unlike the original game it's not simply a case of scoring goals -winning is by earning points which can scored in a variety of ways. Besides sending a player off (10 points), hitting a bounce dome (2 points), stars on the walls (there are fives for each team with two points per star turned on -hit all five for a 10- point bonus, or hit enemy stars to turn them off and substract two points from his score). There's also a Score Multiplier, activated by throwing the ball up its spiral ramp -hit it twice and it doubles any points you then score until deactivated by the enemy. Other special features include four Electrobounces (electrifying the ball causing it to tackle the next player it hits) and four Warp Gates which zap the ball between them.

There are also various tokens which appear on screen, which can be collected for a wide variety of effects including freezing opposing players, reversing opponent's joystick, automatically gain possesion of ball, etc.

There's also plenty of temporary hardware to pick up including speed boots, powergloves, and Bitmap shades for extra aggression!

Collected cash can also be used to buy these in the gym (between matches) to upgrade eight attributes.

There are several ways of playing Speedball beside two player matches (best of one, three or five matches with each match consisting of two legs).
in Knockout you keep playing until you lose, whereas with Practice there's no opposing team. For a real challenge you can enter the League or Cup, playing for Brutal Deluxe -despite the name, a rather weak team. The League has two divisions of eight teams and a 14-week season, while the Cup is a Four-round knockout. Both allow you to save the game between matches. In addition, goals scored in any match can be saved to disk.

Should the on-pitch brutality become too much you can just manage the team, training and trading players which the computer will control during matches.

First things first. Speedball 2 is one of the Amiga's most highly regarded games. Not once, in all my born days has anyone admonished it. Not once, has anyone dared deny that it truly is a Sport Of Kings, nay, of Gods.

If Empire Soccer was played in metal outfits, indoors, it would be Speedball 2. If James Caan and all his chums played Rollerball on computers, it would be Speedball 2, only with no roller skates. The fuss. What is it all about? And how come when I'm games ed (and therefore, supposed to be good), has Nick Veitch just pasted me 177-30? Read on.

Hard and fast
Speedball 2 first reared its metallic head way back in the Spring of 1991 - yes, this game is four years old - and it recorded a whopping 94 per cent from AF's fawning correspondent. Spot on, good fellow, for this remains one of the finest two-player games on the park, or parek, as Kenny Dalglish might call it.

At its simplest, Speedball 2 is a ball running, throwing and passing exercise. You aim to score goals as you would in, say, Sensible Soccer, but here, there are extra ways to put one over on your opponent. There are five stars on each side wall which, if smacked with ball, proffer points (an added bonus if you light all within the period), ramps on either side of the half-way line multiply your score if successfully ridden and an electrobounce feature charges the ball, rendering opponents imminently 'tackleable' if they attempt to pick up the ball.

Violence plays an integral role, as it should in a futuristic, pugnacious sports game. Bashing your opponents aside is an essential skill, but because the game is so beautifully written, Speedball 2 is subtle in equal parts. One can turn on a sixpence, throw the opposition a dummy, pass square, jink between the central defenders and calmly palm goalward. Equally, one can smack a fellow to the floor, gain possession of the metallic sphere, chuck it half the length of the field to a team mate and batter through 'keeps'.

At this juncture, I can proudly announce that I'm almost as good as editor Veitch. By the final paragraph I fully expect superiority to be within the breadth of a thinning hair.

Winning matches allows you to strengthen the team - you can pay for stronger shoulders and faster legs and stuff, and there are cups and leagues to play in. You can even choose to manage a team and take a backseat as the fun unfolds. But you'd be foolish to do so. The real satisfaction is to be found in the thick of it.

My only gripe is that your defenders are rather too close to the goalkeeper and when control flashes between the defence and the goalie, you're often thrown completely leaving the goal totally exposed. But Speedball 2 is a metallic ball and an essential CD32 purchase as Guardian.