Ballistix

Title           Ballistix
Publisher       Psygnosis (1989)
Game Type       Sport
Players         1-2
HD Installable  No
Compatibility   All Amigas
Submission      Dennis Smith Profiled Reviewer

Review
Do you remember Crossfire? This was a board-game thing, not unlike
blow-football, where you and an opponent had a stock of ball-bearings which
could be fired at a larger puck in the middle of the board, with an aim to
sending it into the opponent's goal. Part of the skill in the game was in
how you dealt with your projectiles - if you fired them all off straight
away, they were collected in your opponent's trough from which he or she
could then fire them back leaving you powerless to intervene. Ballistix
is exactly this game brought to the computer screen in the guise of a
futuristic sport. Clearly influenced by the Bitmap Brothers' brilliant
Speedball, computerisation allowed the introduction of all kinds of
bounce-bars, bumpers, obstacles, speed-up arrows, warp zones, pipes and
tubes; a few more control options and power-ups finish off the decoration
but the game is essentially the same. The one-player game has you
attempting to score against a sloped pitch, with no more dangerous an
opponent than gravity, and becomes boring after a while.

The sound effects and especially the graphics look very dated, not a patch
on the Psygnosis games a couple of years later and quite laughable compared
to their current software, but the two player game is still addictive fun,
with more than enough options to allow you to tweak the gameplay to your
heart's content.

Alphabetical list.