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Ballsy! World Cup 2020 is a wonderful throwback to Sensible Soccer

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Remember the classic Sensible World of Soccer or the original Sensible Soccer? Classics from the 90s and Ballsy! World Cup 2020 is a wonderful take on it. Note: key provided by the developer.

I have seriously fond memories of SWOS, playing endless hours on the Amiga a long time ago. Ballsy really does feel like it both mechanically and visually although naturally it's more modern and looks a lot cleaner. After originally releasing in October 2020, the developer decided to port it in December 2020 to Linux.

"Tired of these sluggish, scripted modern football games? Still like some physics momentum in your retro footy game? Search no longer! Ballsy! offers that fluent feel for flowing football fans. The European football, that is, so, not handegg. Though truth be told, the term 'soccer' was actually invented by the English, so it doesn't deserve all the hate it gets."

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A genuine surprise that it feels so great, if you've been after a simple pick up and play retro Football game, this is easily worth picking up. Play against AI, friends / family in local multiplayer and it also supports Steam Remote Play Together.

You can find Ballsy! World Cup 2020 on itch.io and Steam.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
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14 comments
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kokoko3k Jan 22, 2021
Well judging from what i see, SWOS feels so much better...
I just played today via FS-UAE and my brand new quickshot 2 turbo hooked via an adaptor to the usb port ^_^
Also there is this: https://www.sensiblesoccer.de/swos-2020
but it seems Windows and Amiga only.


Last edited by kokoko3k on 22 January 2021 at 2:23 pm UTC
qgnox Jan 22, 2021
Portugal goal was in offside position, the tackle to croatian player looks like from SpeedBall 2...

I remember a game called Striker that you had to keep pressing one of the directional keys to give an effect to the ball, my older brother had to replace the keyboard after some days playing ...
F.Ultra Jan 23, 2021
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Quoting: kokoko3kWell judging from what i see, SWOS feels so much better...
I just played today via FS-UAE and my brand new quickshot 2 turbo hooked via an adaptor to the usb port ^_^
Also there is this: https://www.sensiblesoccer.de/swos-2020
but it seems Windows and Amiga only.

Yeah it's a bit strange that a game from 2021 with all the advanced in cpu+gpu power still is more sluggish than a game from 1992 running on a 14Mhz machine with 2MB RAM...
kokoko3k Jan 23, 2021
Quoting: qgnoxPortugal goal was in offside position, the tackle to croatian player looks like from SpeedBall 2...

I remember a game called Striker that you had to keep pressing one of the directional keys to give an effect to the ball, my older brother had to replace the keyboard after some days playing ...
It was called the aftertouch, pretty much all of the soccer games of the 80/90 era, starting from dino dini's kick off (i think), had it.
Thanks for bringing striker to my memories, nice game, indeed.
kokoko3k Jan 23, 2021
Quoting: F.Ultra
Quoting: kokoko3kWell judging from what i see, SWOS feels so much better...
I just played today via FS-UAE and my brand new quickshot 2 turbo hooked via an adaptor to the usb port ^_^
Also there is this: https://www.sensiblesoccer.de/swos-2020
but it seems Windows and Amiga only.

Yeah it's a bit strange that a game from 2021 with all the advanced in cpu+gpu power still is more sluggish than a game from 1992 running on a 14Mhz machine with 2MB RAM...
I think Sensible soccer required just 7mhz and 512kb of ram when running from the floppy drive :)
Playing with word meanings, 'strange' is not right unfortunately, quite the opposite, indeed.
It is fairly typical in the whole computer and operating systems development history started when pc-ibm took over the amiga and the "let's optimize software that can run on actual hardware" paradigm switched to "You've to buy new hardware to run my software"...
So that today, to read a bunch of kilobytes of text out of the web before growing old, you need a bunch of gigaherts and a bunch of gigabytes of ram ^.^.
Sadly, not strange at all :/
flesk Jan 23, 2021
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Quoting: qgnoxPortugal goal was in offside position, the tackle to croatian player looks like from SpeedBall 2...

Heh, I thought the same thing, but then immediately afterwards the caption said "defend like there's no referee, cos there's no referee", so I guess it makes sense.

I've hardly played any football games since Nintendo World Cup on the NES, but this one looks like a lot of fun.
HerrLange Jan 23, 2021
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Instabuy! This will be pure fun playing in split screen!
kaiman Jan 23, 2021
Quoting: kokoko3kI think Sensible soccer required just 7mhz and 512kb of ram when running from the floppy drive :)
Yep, it ran fine on an ordinary Amiga 500, and at least from memory it did feel snappier than what's shown of Ballsy. But I guess if you played SWOS back then, Ballsy might be the right speed for you now ;-).

Quoting: kokoko3kSo that today, to read a bunch of kilobytes of text out of the web before growing old, you need a bunch of gigaherts and a bunch of gigabytes of ram ^.^.
Sadly, not strange at all :/
I don't want to image what we could do with the computing power at hand if only we'd have lean code optimized for the hardware it runs on. Instead we developers (and I'm guilty of that as well) keep heaping layers upon layers of high level languages, libraries, abstractions and indirections on top of each other until we end up with an onion the size of a melon for a task that could be performed by a pea.

I mean, just look at something like this!
kokoko3k Jan 23, 2021
Quoting: GuestOlder games for older hardware that didn't vary, aimed at 640x480 at best, many with a 25fps target (hooked up to a tv rather than a dedicated monitor), 16bit graphics, limited or absolutely no networking, far more simplified audio, no multitasking worries, and with a much higher barrier to development entry compared to today (both economically and for required technical knowledge).
Still, they were a lot of fun.

Quoting: GuestJust bear that in mind when comparing against modern games.

Let's take Ballsy! vs Sensible soccer.

GPU:
* Ballsy: Any modern GPU
* SS: Amiga OCS blitter was capable of almost 1000k pixel per second, no 3D, the copper and that was it.
* Ratio: Almost a number bigger as you want

HD space:
* Ballsy: 200MB of Storage
* SS: 880KB of Storage
* Ratio: 225X

RAM:
* Ballsy: 512 MB of RAM
* SS: 512KB of RAM
* Ratio: 1000X

CPU:
* SS: 68000@7mhz: something around 2.5 MIPS
* Ballsy: 64bit processor... Intel Core2 Duo is over 20k MIPS
* Ratio: around 8000x

And today if you read the system requirements for Ballsy, you can even easilly say "Wow, this game is very light!"

...it is a bit too much for me to even consider to justify.


Last edited by kokoko3k on 23 January 2021 at 5:22 pm UTC
kokoko3k Jan 23, 2021
It is that the numbers are so big that i think the big part of the resources (maybe not vram) are sacrified in the name of the developers lazyness (abstraction layers).
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