Original Release: Comad, 1997, Arcade
International squads compete in a beach volleyball tournament, with bikini pics after each match as a reward.
Beach Festival World Championship 1997 (Arcade, Comad, 1997)
Where to Buy: KLOV, QuarterArcade, ebay
How to Emulate: Arcade Emulation Guide
Review by: Master-B
Comad was probably best known for their porny Qix clones, but occasionally they would dabble with actual gameplay. That’s the case here, as they attempt to do a beach volleyball game. There’s a big serving of cheesecake, but no nudity in this one that I’m aware of. There is an old arcade flyer floating around that promises “bikinis will drop”, complete with a random bare boob shot, but it looks like Comad either dropped that idea before launch or was just completely BSing in their advertising.
For some reason, you’re stuck playing as Germany as you go around the world taking on various other national teams. You can play as either men or women, but I think all the cheesecake shots are women. The sprites are surprisingly modest and athletic-looking, but the game never misses a chance to flash up a bikini pinup (including some totally random video of women frolicking on the beach on the title screen and Extreme Bumbum Closeup on the gender select screen). When you beat a team, you get a random bikini shot representing their fine country.
The first match is easy because the game doesn’t even attempt to return serves most of the time, but then it gets frustrating as hell from the second match. It’s not even that the computer plays particularly well, but just the weird ball physics and timing of hitting spikes. The ball floats really slowly for everything but a spike, and you get button press timing indicators for everything BUT spikes and the timing is just odd and easy to miss.
All of this is accompanied by insipid music, as well as the unlicensed cameo appearances Comad was known for. You get occasional digitized crowd shots, some of which are just Jim Carrey and Mrs. Doubtfire twitching around weirdly. And did Chanel actually pay to be in this mess or did Comad just decide to slap free advertisements for them in?
Whatever the case, terrible gameplay.
Links
Ad flyer
Videos
Gameplay Video