RealSports Volleyball (Atari 2600)
RealSports Volleyball finds a nice little position between being a no-frills beach volleyball experience and one that isn’t so simplistic that it is practically Pong. As the only officially released volleyball game on the Atari 2600 after the original Volleyball game made by Bob Polaro never saw release, RealSports Volleyball had the benefit of coming out later in the console’s life so you aren’t just moving rough shapes around trying to imitate a real sport. Instead, we have recognizable human characters with a decent range of animated movement, RealSports Volleyball impressing with fast and responsive athletes that suit what can be a sometimes surprisingly speedy sport.
RealSports Volleyball can be played with another player as each controls two athletes on their side of the net or as one player going up against game-controlled characters, the game featuring four variations to switch between of which two add multiplayer. The rules in RealSports Volleyball are familiar enough, it’s a race to 15 points, a point scored if you land the ball in the other team’s half of the court and a point given to the other team should you hit the ball out of bounds. In the first and second variations, lining up your character with an incoming ball will cause them to automatically knock it back into the air, the player then needing to maneuver their other player to hit it back to the first who then will send it over the net. However, by pressing the action button, you can immediately spike it over the net, or at least what the manual calls a spike. In actually, this is just a way to send the ball over the net without the set up, and over in variations three and four, you will automatically hit the ball back to the opponent’s side so long as you’re in the right place before it hits sand. While this may make variations three and four sound more dynamic and quick, it actually ends up removing an interesting element found in the modes where you can set up the ball for your partner. Returning the ball immediately minimizes control over where it heads, and what’s more, in the mode with the set up options, you have to guess when your opponent might spike it or do a set up. It can be a bit of a mindgame or shift in the momentum of the game, making for a more interesting back and forth than merely sprinting to make sure you intercept a ball’s path before it lands.
Of important note is the fact that RealSports Volleyball uses the scoring system for volleyball more common in the past where a team can only score points during a volley if they were the one to initially serve the ball into play. When the team who didn’t serve lands the ball on the other side of the net, they instead gain control and serve next round. This style of play has been the death of slower paced volleyball games even well after the release of this one, but RealSports Volleyball actually manages to dodge this issue because of the quick pace of the action, provided you play with the difficulty switch in the right position. Set the player movements to slow and the game will putter along, it technically harder to reach a ball in time when you are more sluggish but it’s both more frustrating and leads to the ball crossing the net less often, especially in the mode where you can set up the ball. However, fast player movement speed is the superior difficulty because the speed of everything else increases as a result. Balls can cross the net repeatedly at a blistering pace as you spike back and forth, it far more exciting to try and keep up such energetic volleys and as a result even if you don’t earn a point for your efforts, it still feels lively to have denied the opponent a point. Even with 15 points being the end goal (or more if players tie, it then coming down to who gets a 2 point lead first), when the difficulty switch is set for speediness, the game doesn’t have the time to drag as you’re too involved moving your two players around the court to keep the ball in play.
So far, most elements of RealSports Volleyball are promising, and there is definitely some fun to be found when both sides are constantly zipping around their side of the net smacking the ball back or trying to employ some trickery with their set-ups. However, you are controlling two players on your side of the net at once, every motion made moving them around the court in equal measure. Since you have two characters to control though, they both have limits on how much of the ground they can cover, an unseen demarcation existing in the middle where neither can cross into the other player’s space. This sounds reasonable, and trying to identify which character to be focusing on with your choice of movement does make it a bit more involved than sending one player all about, but there is an issue with this approach. Since the middle area isn’t totally clear, it can be hard to immediately identify whose zone it will be in when it’s fairly close to the middle. Many balls will be lost by betting on one athlete only to see them running up against the invisible wall separating them from their partner, it never nice to see yourself lose a point because of that fuzziness.
The ball in RealSports Volleyball does have a fairly clear shadow though, this helping you identify the spot where it will hit the sand so you can try to be in the right place quickly. It does follow under the ball so it’s not a dead giveaway on where it’s landing, but it also stands out a bit more than the brown ball and it’s easier to line up your players with it as a result. You may still need a bit to understand the limits of your athletes’ reach when you first play, but the manually helpfully points out keeping your player’s head under the ball is a reliable way of ensuring you return it.
The beach setting of RealSports Volleyball actually plays a small part in the course of the game, a sunset in the background gradually progressing as the game goes on. The manual warns that should the sun completely disappear, the shadow of the ball will disappear, this at least conceptually a way to end games that are dragging too long, but it doesn’t seem to come up too often unless players are purposely dragging their feet or not really trying to do much beyond keeping the ball in play. The waves in the background are a nice little visual touch and there’s even a shark fin that will appear should you wait for the sunset to occur, but for the most part, RealSports Volleyball is a clean and effective execution of the sport that tries to avoid cluttering the screen with distractions.
THE VERDICT: RealSports Volleyball can produce some exciting matches thanks to its high game speed and the ability to throw off your opponent by swapping between set-ups and spikes, although you do need to pick the right modes or risk missing out on some of the intensity that can come from it. RealSports Volleyball is on the borderline of being a good experience to keep coming back to, but the fact you control two players but have an unclear middle area between where they can walk means electric volleys can end with weak finales. A little more clarity would help this game be a blast in multiplayer, but instead, it’s just a bit of speedy fun that can’t quite grab you thanks to the fuzzy middle region.
And so I give RealSports Volleyball for Atari 2600…
An OKAY rating. It’s not often you find a video game that could be greatly improved with a few pixels. A clear line marking where the two players can reach would lead to far fewer volleys ending because the ball went a touch higher or lower than the athlete you moved into position near that middle zone. The shadow would work well in tandem with a dividing line, or it could just be implemented in some more subtle way like lightly discolored sand or only having that marking near the far edge of the court. While RealSports Volleyball wants to look a bit better than older sports games with its sprightly athletes who are recognizably human, ceding a little ground to practicality over what little “realism” it could achieve would help the game’s exciting and speedy volleys end more to clever plays or not reacting in time rather than misjudging who even needs to be where. Naturally I’ll always advocate for volleyball to include the scoring system where it doesn’t matter who the server is, and while that system was only adopted more officially starting around the 2000s, it’s not like it hadn’t been invented in the 80s. As a variation it would be better than slowing down the players to make things lose some of their intensity, but RealSports Volleyball is also one of the cases where a volleyball experience isn’t going to drag just because the servers are the only ones who can score. By allowing for fast paced volleys where set-ups aren’t always required, you get an enjoyably quick game but also one that allows for some of the benefits of the server-scoring style to actually show up like the servers able to take bold risks or encouraging more defense from the other team. It’s never going to get too complicated or strategic here since you’re smacking a ball back and forth without an incredible degree of control, but you still have a solid volleyball experience and one that nearly hits an Atari sports sweetspot of being easily understood, accessible, and uncomplicated so that even people who care little for the featured sport can enjoy the kinetic nature of the play.
RealSports Volleyball works well within the framework of its time. It’s certainly not a realistic sports game by modern standards, but it does at least look the part of its sport and reproduces it well enough. You won’t get the deeper elements, but that’s hardly what people were looking for on the old Atari 2600. It is recognizably volleyball, and some smart choices in game speed help it thrill people who could have been turned off by the scoring rules or simplicity otherwise. That unfortunate middle area is a sad reality that keeps this from being a nice choice for frequent multiplayer or even solo play, but you’ll still get a good deal of enjoyable volleys out of it for every one that ends with that unfortunate guessing game at the court’s center.