I had my fun with Windjammers back in the NEO GEO day. I think I played the hell out of that in the arcades. Scratch that, I know I played the hell out of it in the arcades. If you’re not familiar with the game, it’s essentially frisbee mixed with Jai Alai, where you bounce a frisbee off a wall to score a basket behind your opponent. That’s the basic structure of the game and a few added gameplay elements make for an exciting experience that has survived the 90s.
Windjammers 2 has been released for consoles and while the initial structure of it revisits the first game, there are a few gameplay elements and modes that separate it from the original. Essentially, the core gameplay is still intact, which is what you want to keep a familiar game alive and well.
Let’s dig right into it.
Same old game, which is fine
Windjammers 2 has the same structure as the first game, though elements of it have been changed up a bit to give some variety. How the game works is that your player is wanting to bounce a frisbee slow/fast off the wall to get to a basket behind your opponent. Each basket has its own point value, which is generally three points or five points. You can score two points by knocking a frisbee in the air towards your opponent and them dropping it. The first to 15 points wins the game and it takes two games to win the match. The original game worked like this, and nothing has changed in that respect.
What also hasn’t changed is how the points are scored. Your character can bounce off the walls fast or slow, depending on the strategy you want to implement. You can also flip a frisbee high in the air, power up your character through button-mashing, catch said frisbee, and execute a special move that is powerful and mesmerizing at the same time. Again, this is what you would find in the first game. These are the basic mechanics and core structure of what made Windjammers so good. The wheel certainly didn’t need to be reinvented.
Cha-cha-changes
The separation between the games begins with the special moves that can be achieved by constantly returning the opponent’s frisbees. The first game featured power-ups, where you can power up your character for an awe-inducing move, like what you would see in games such as Street Fighter, the additional characters in the game bring additional power-ups. For example, I played J. Raposa whose power-up had a multi-directional frisbee find its way to the net. It’s a neat power-up where the frisbee pins itself to the wall, then it takes a curve around the opponent in an attempt to hit the basket behind them. It’s a jarring move and it looks lovely in motion.
Related to that move, one of the bigger differences I have noticed in this game versus the original is that blocking or circumventing those power-up moves from an opponent is a lot easier than before. Honestly, defending against the move feels a bit cheap as it feels unearned. The power-up moves are built through good gameplay by the aggressor, where they catch the opponent’s frisbee or stop them from scoring. The more you defend, the easier it is to build the power-ups. With all that defensive effort built, when you execute the move it is supposed to be that magical moment where you strategically unleash this God-stomping power move that has almost no chance of being stopped. Sadly, the game just almost effortlessly stops the power-up more than you score from it. That begs the question, what is the point of earning said power-up if they have little chance of hitting against a computer character? It seems like it should be more impactful (pun intended). As it stands, I think this might be the weakest point of the game, which is disappointing because it affects how much fun you have with the game. Using power-ups in the original Windjammers was the reason to play. They were brutal and nearly unstoppable. That’s how it should feel in an arcade experience.
A positive difference between the original and the new is that the computer is a helluva lot smarter in the sequel. The original game went by the NBA JAM rules of gameplay, where if you’re ahead by a lot, the computer will try and do some tricky shit to make you sweat a bit, or it will outright win. Since Windjammers was born in the fire of arcades, much like NBA JAM, the purpose was to get you to spend more quarters. Arcade owners have to make a profit, right? Most of the time, this increased difficulty meant you walked away and tried a different game until you forgot how frustrated you were, then you would make your way back to Windjammers. Arcades were like a tenuous relationship, where you loved the other person, but had frequent arguments.
Now, the computer player in Windjammers 2 is simply just smart and adapts to repetitive throws and strategy brought on by the player. In a sense, it evens out the difficulty and makes it gradual rather than ‘turning it to 11’ all at once. That’s a healthy and wonderful addition to the gameplay design that not only kept me playing in the eyes of defeat but gave me hope that I could figure out my opponent without feeling like they were going to pull something completely unfair. Knowing they’re learning helped me to pay attention to their own budding strategy. It was as if this was a real sport and a real-life opponent. It was breathtaking to see. That’s how a competitive PvE experience should be and credit should be given to the developers at DotEmu for making the effort to change the backend enough and make the opponent smarter while less cheaty.
As for the rest of the game, the additional online component and the number of overall opponents made this game far bigger than expected. Add in mini-games in between, including a disc smashing stage, where you catch discs from a machine and smash them quickly to catch the next, the entire experience was wonderful.
All the above said the initial core gameplay of what the original brought was still intact. This is an arcade experience at its heart, and Windjammers 2 doesn’t deviate too far from that blueprint. I like that because you know what to expect from the Windjammers experience and the sequel delivers just fine.
One big plus for this sequel is that the visuals have been updated to look like smooth, anime-esque style characters. The pixelated forms from the original, which had throwback charm to them on a modern-day console, are gone. Cleanly animated characters, rambunctious and rowdy crowds, and unique arenas with their own obstacles and personality populate the sequel quite nicely. The visuals are a nice addition to a newly released Windjammers.
Conclusion
If you enjoyed the original game, then you’re going to like what DotEmu delivers in the Windjammers 2. While I’m not a fan of taming the power-ups, I am a fan of competitive disc games that remind me how cool TRON was back in the 80s. Windjammers 2 is an easy-to-pick-up arcade experience that has far more positives than negatives.
