Brutal Sports Football

aka: Beastball, Brutal Football, Brutal Sports Series: Football, Crazy Football, Crazy Sports Football
Moby ID: 6340
DOS Specs
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Description official description

Similar to Speedball 2, Brutal Sports Football is an ultra-violent sports game. Matches last 7 minutes, and the aim is to get the ball into the goal, kept by a net-minder. The oval ball can be thrown or kicked, this resulting in frequent up-and-under type kicks.

Violence is the pivotal element of gameplay: rather than rare occurrency, punching, stomping, use of weapons, and even decapitations are what the game action is rife with, and key to victory. Bonus and non-bonus items appear on the pitch, such as bombs to throw at opponents, rabbits to speed up the current player, or tortoises which slow him down.

Teams are a total of eleven and consist of seven humans and aliens, some of whom have unique skills. There's a lot of blood and flailing limbs, giving things a gruesomely humorous edge. Victory is achieved not only by scoring more goals than the opponent team but also decapitating all the players of it but one. The player is offered choice among a single match, knockout cup, and leagues to advance trough (for a total of four of them).

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Credits (DOS version)

17 People

Programming
Game Concept
Music and Sound Effects
Artwork
Additional Artwork
  • FAD
Technical Director
Producer for Teque
Producers for Millennium
Documentation
Playtested by

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 69% (based on 27 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.2 out of 5 (based on 19 ratings with 3 reviews)

Hilarious and fun futuristic sports game.

The Good
The ability to decapitate the oppenents adds a very comical touch to the game. Once you have decapited an oppenent you can even kick their head around the field. The sound as you crush an oppenent with a tackle is also very funny with suitable bone grinding crunches. There are weapons such as swords and bombs you can pick up and power ups and downs which add a bit of variety to the carnage.

The Bad
Bit easy to score against cpu, passing doesn't really come into it as you just need to run from one end of the field to the other.

The Bottom Line
A weird mix of all kinds of football - American, Aussie rules, rugby, soccer all blended into one. Comical in the extreme. Reminds me of the Speedball games but gameplay is not as frantic as in those games and much gorier.

DOS · by Neepie Lantern (524) · 2003

A fun variation on computer sports, and worth checking out

The Good
The sheer level of gore is good for a laugh, including the stains left on the pitch form blood and mud. There are some neat subtleties to the gameplay. Passing, kicking and running can all come in handy, making this quite balanced.

The extras on the pitch are neat - I especially liked the bunnies and tortoises you can run over to gain their respective speeds. The 'injury time' bit is neat as well.

The Bad
The knockout mode is embarrassingly easy - I won it at my second attempt, although both finals (I lost the first) were quite close. The player-improvement screen is complicated to understand at first, and the difficulty curve through the leagues is a little unbalanced. You could argue that the blood and guts are something of a gimmick, and once you remove two key opponents (the goalkeeper and the central player who goes for the restarts) it becomes much easier. At 7 minutes the matches are a bit too long.

Speedball 2 is essentially a better game though - more focused, more original ideas (such as the score-multiplier and stars on the wall) and a more futuristic look.

The Bottom Line
A combination of ideas from numerous different sports, particularly Australian Rules Football, with a smattering of violence and gore. The action takes place on a field with 10-metre markings similar to American football, and is viewed side-on, and at times the best approach is to work on attacking the opposition early on in the match, and making use of the vacant space to score more later on.

Amiga · by Martin Smith (81669) · 2004

21st-century mayhem on a football field.

The Good
Brutal Sports Football is not so much soccer or American football but rather a rugby-style game. The setting is the mid-21st century, and genetically-engineered warrior-freaks play this half-rugby, half-battle game in a football-style arena. Each game is just seven minutes in length, but a lot can happen in that time. Like most games you want to score more goals than the opponent, but you can also win whatever the score if you can decapitate six players from the other team! If the game ends in a tie, you play "sudden death", and it is exactly that; the first team to literally kill off the other wins. Vicious! To gain possession you tackle, kick or punch the opponent, often maiming him in the process. To add some spice to the game, icons for power-ups such as extra speed, bombs, or even swords (!) are scattered on the field. Yes, you can stomp on an opponent, blow him up with a bomb, or even lop off his head - and the game is not shy about showing plenty of spurting blood. By halfway through a game, the field is littered with bomb craters, corpses, and severed heads!

The Bad
The players are large colourful sprites. They look okay, but the animation is very choppy: for example, when they run, it looks as though they're using perhaps two or three frames of animation, giving the game a very clunky look. The playfield and the stadium are nicely detailed, but they still look rather flat. The controls, although simple, are a tad sloppy too. I find that when the football is free, it's a bit difficult to judge the exact position of your feet as you try to run over the ball and scoop it up. Perhaps the most annoying aspect is that the 'pause' feature seems very slow to react; you need to press and hold the button for a half-second or so before the game finally reacts and stops.

The Bottom Line
The game is a good deal of fun to play for one player against the CPU, but it becomes outstanding when you go 2-player against a friend. Overall I recommend Brutal Sports Football. It's a good game with some flaws.

Jaguar · by Bruce Clarke (60) · 2006

Trivia

Cancelled versions

Both a Genesis and SNES version were in development but were ultimately cancelled. However, the Genesis version was actually reviewed in the December 1993 edition of GamePro; it was given a 2.5 out of 5.

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Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 6340
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by ^^Snoop^^.

Windows added by Kam1Kaz3NL77. Amiga added by Neepie Lantern. Browser added by Sciere. Amiga CD32 added by Martin Smith. Antstream added by lights out party. Jaguar added by quizzley7.

Additional contributors: Sonikachu, Martin Smith, formercontrib, Big John WV, Patrick Bregger, Tom White.

Game added May 12, 2002. Last modified January 17, 2024.