Cyberball

Copyright : Atari Games | Reviewed by : Malc Jennings

According to the visions of Atari games and Tengen back in 1990 we should all be playing football in armoured vehicles by todays standards and football teams such as Liverpool or Manchester United should no longer exist. Cross a strategy game with a very early version of Speedball and this is what you come up with.

Graphics

Graphics wise this game can hardly be faulted, early football games of any kind featured the top-down perspective and this game is not any different in that respect.

For some strange reason however we are playing with coloured robotic tanks and a very strong ball which turns out to be a bomb, sadly the tanks move at an extremely slow-pace and the calculation time made by your CPC is very frustrating. From time to time pop-up tactic selection screen will appear and totaly kill your concentration, in all this was a very good idea but very poorly implemented.

Sound

Sound is fairly nice too with a great introduction theme, very funky start/options music and even the odd sound or two during the game itself. Sure its not something overly memorable but we should at least be thankful that Atari bothered putting any kind of sound in this one.

Gameplay

As we stated earlier the football era has changed and you now ride around the pitch in an armoured robotic tank throwing a hugley active bomb around the place and trying to score points before it explodes. This all boils down to a very good idea by Atari and Tengen, sadly they seem to have gone about it in the wrong way.

We also mentioned that strategy is involved in this title and sure enough during play the game will stop, your concentration will break and you will be asked to make a tactical descision on what to do next. The most hardened football fan will not appreciate this kind of interuption and even those that don?t appreciate the sport will appreciate it even less after playing this title.

Amstrad magazines appeared to love this title on release, we honestly cannot find a good reason why.