the Brutal Sports Football appreciation thread

[Shatterhand]

Let's show some love to Brutal Sports Football please.

I always loved that game since it first came out. It's very easy to get into but it does have a fair number of different tactics and strategies to play out, it's ridiculous fun to play, the violence is just hilarious, the controls are simple and great....

My only gripe with it is that there's no way to use the Joystick to activate powerups and you have to use the keyboard for it. The game supports 2 buttonts joystick but none of the control options lets you use the 2nd button to activate power ups , which is really a shame since the 1 button control setup is great and there's no need to use separe buttons for "pass" and "kick". (It could be tap button 2 for switch power-up and hold it for activate. It would work wonderfully)

Now I have to say, I gather some friends usually once a month at my home to play games.... we play modern stuff like Mario Kart 8 and Pro Evolution Soccer 2017, but since I have a lot of old consolers/computers, we usually spend a lot of time playing retro games. Some of the people who come by are kids between 18-21 years old. Being the amiga fanboy I am , I am always trying to shove Amiga games through their throats (hehe).

WIth time, people begun electing some of their favourite games to play during those gaming sessions.. and on Amiga there's no Lotus 2 or Speedball 2 or Sensible World of Soccer... what everyone really loves playing (including the younger kids) it's exactly this game, which I find really funny since back at the time I could never get anyone into it... now whenever I bring the Amiga to the living room during those gaming sessions there are always requests "Please load that Brutal Football game!"


this was yesterday at my home, with other people playing it

[s2325]

Try other Amiga games as they may get bored

[vulture]

I love BSF as well, I just wish it was better coded and the frame rate was smoother.

[daxb]

Its is fun to take all the heads and generally slash around. The different control options are confusing, at least for me with single button joystick. They aren`t explained in the manual, right? Some don`t work with kick/pass by push or hold the button. Powerups handle, select player and so on ... If there is an explanation, please let me know.

[Amiga1992]

I always thought it was too damn jerky to be playable. The slowdowns can ruin a play.
The idea was alright but I tried it recently again and it didn't age well and I found myself ending my session in frustration because of how jerky it was.
Maybe I should try the CD32 version, might be a bit better.

And yeah regardless, controls were absolute shit. 2 button helped, 1 button was just not good.

[s2325]

I think even on Jaguar game was too jerky.

[Shatterhand]

The AGA version is smoother. For some reason I never thought the framerate was a problem with this game (maybe it was because I grow up playing jerky versions of Gradius on MSX ).. and while most people notice and comment when they see an Amiga game that's jerky, no one complains when playing BSF too.

The controls are simple:

With the ball: Hold button to kick, tap to throw.
Without the ball: Control in neutral+button = punch. Direction+button = tackle.

Without the ball you can hold the button to kick downed opponents.

And that's it. This is using the Novice settings and auto-switch and I honestly don't know the difference with the other settings. 2 button just change that button 1 throws and button 2 kicks (withouth the ball the controls are the same, they could had button 1 for punching and 2 for taclking.).

This setting works perfectly. I really can't see how it sucks, since it's the kind of thing we always had when playing Amiga games. Maybe people don't like the fact that passes aren't automatic, unlike soccer games you don't pass automatically to the direction of a player, but to the general direction your joystick is pointing. The game isn't a lot about passing the ball anyway, and when you learn how/when to use the pass and kick properly the game becomes really satisfying.

Power ups are used using F1-F2 for player 1 and F6-F7 for player 2 if I remember correctly. When I play with friends, whoever is watching usually is responsible for activating power-ups when a player shouts


And I dunno about the manual, like I had ever seen one of those in my hands

[vulture]

Basic controls are fine for me as well, I just wish they would've assigned powerups to other fire buttons, cd32 pad had plenty! Jerkiness is my main complaint really! Still very playable and fun with 2p!

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by Shatterhand

This setting works perfectly. I really can't see how it sucks, since it's the kind of thing we always had when playing Amiga games.

And Amiga games are notorious in general for terrible control schemes when 2 or 3 buttons would have helped greatly

The main problem with BSF is that "hold + direction" thing. It is too easy to do teh wrong thing. If you are running for the goal and someone blocks your way and you want to pass, you have to make sure you stop before you pas and that's annoying. Usually I ended up kicking the ball to shit. If you can pass while running, it becomes ten times more playable.

I really have to test the CD32 version to see if the control scheme is any better. Time to burn a CD-R I do remember enjoying this game but nowadays I can't stand the jerkiness and controls.

[Shatterhand]

Originally Posted by Akira

And Amiga games are notorious in general for terrible control schemes when 2 or 3 buttons would have helped greatly

The main problem with BSF is that "hold + direction" thing. It is too easy to do teh wrong thing. If you are running for the goal and someone blocks your way and you want to pass, you have to make sure you stop before you pas and that's annoying. Usually I ended up kicking the ball to shit. If you can pass while running, it becomes ten times more playable.

You have to stop before punching, withouth the ball. With the ball you only kick if you HOLD the button, tap the button and you pass. It's like SWOS (or nearly every soccer game on Amiga) in this regard. You can pass while running.

Actually if you stop and hold the button you kick the ball upwards, without horizontal movement. Then you can punch the hell out of whoever is near you while you wait the ball to come back

And Amiga games are notorious in general for terrible control schemes when 2 or 3 buttons would have helped greatly

Touché. But you were the guy who said you preferred to play Mortal Kombat 2 on amiga because with 1 button control it was easier to play

"up to jump" is so natural to me thanks to Amiga (even with a dpad) that I really can't understand people complaining about it

[Amiga1992]

Yes, Probe were masters at conversions and MK2 works GREAT with 1 button on Amiga! This is a rare exception.

[Shatterhand]

"Masters at conversions" ahem

[ Show youtube player ]

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LOL
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This said, both MK games were great on amiga and this went completely off the main topic, and its my fault,

[gimbal]

Loved this game to play against a human, but against computer components... not so much.

Such a child friendly game too, just knifing or tackling someone down and them stomping on him with three blokes at the same time, or giving people shock treatment after a match Brilliant.

[daxb]

I just want to check the different control options but then couldn`t stop hack and slash around (AGA version). I couldn`t figure out the different controls but "Expert" is unplayable for me. So chose "Beginner". Thanks for the tip with F1/F2 for powerups activation! Still problematic for me is the current player auto switch. Sometimes the ball disturbs when attacking opponents. When you do max speed-up upgrade I noticed then you player is faster then screen scrolling what is pity. However, still fun to play.

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by Shatterhand

"Masters at conversions" ahem

Hey, Probetroll, those games are too old And TMNT was alrighT! Especially the C64 version.

[Shatterhand]

Originally Posted by Akira

Hey, Probetroll, those games are too old And TMNT was alrighT! Especially the C64 version.

The C64 version was alright. The Amiga one was a tragedy. Read somewhere it wasn't even complete, Imageworks just rushed to publish everything they had before they went bust.. it seems the floppy even has some music that's not used in the game because the game wasn't finished yet.

[idrougge]

Yeah, the Amiga version of TMHT was a joke. Compare it to the NES version, the NES actually has better graphics.