Thou Addictiv my past fondness failed me upon playing this again. Terrible control, cheap AI & lousy time limit.
After playing it again, I realized how addictive it was yet failed to understand why I was such a fan of it since it's cheap & has crappy control.
Major cons that were bad when I first played it just now come up to surface, usually made worse by the crappy controller setup I have which is a Nyko Air Flo.
1. You seem to NEVER shoot the ball where you want, even more frustrating is when an easy kill is 2 inches away from your thrower, he still misses. Take in part I'm a large man standing 6,6 with large hands with long fingers that basically make working a PS2 style controller annoying. I can't count how many times I had the big guys knocked down right at the edge of the line where you can pummel them to death easily and somehow my guy fires one WAY off thus resulting in a missed EASY KO!! This is the part of the game that gets me cussing & swearing. I almost shattered my controller in a million bity pieces, I seriously got to get a more traditional joystick thou even in my youth using the arcades joystick I experienced moments of the same thing. Also I can never get the big guys rapid throw move to work, it's the only way you can KO a bunch of the oppostions team, standard throws are too slow/weak and if you wait too long eventually Reason #3 will get you.
2. Retarded AI, the enemie team always has smart guys that catch the ball and are always positioned facing me and staggared away from one another usually. My guys on the other hand and bunched together and facing the wrong way resulting in me never being able to dodge or catch the ball, usually you should dodge the ball all the time but that usually just winds up in a KO because it'll get fired back at you super fast from the courtside players. Remember the Computer team has moves that they can do that you can't and they're killer at short range. Usually at short range it's always an undodgeable or uncatchable move. Being bundled together sucks because you can always dodge the ball but some fellow team mate is either right in front or behind you and gets taken out. It would have been made more fair if the computer allowed your characters to dodge on they're own to equal things, cause I'm guarenteed to be a single player alone against the entire opposition team usually.
3. What makes the AI problem even worse is the computer switching control of your teamates all over the place and usually just at the right time with a ball flying in thus resulting in KO after KO of your team in rapid session. I get switched to another character just as a ball comes in flying at my current character thus disallowing me to do anything and he gets KO'd. This just doesn't happen once, it happens in a chain reaction and you can lose pretty much all your team in less than 10 seconds. Choke it up to a computer glitch, this has happened in the past from my recallection, it was usually the only reason I died before the end tournament. It's infuriated, having a ball come at you then the split second you can dodge or catch it, all of a sudden your switched to another player and then that guy gets WHAMO'D.
This is more frustrating when your trying to guard your fallen BIG guy who's the only real powerhouse on the team, losing him usually means losing the match since winning without him takes too long. When he's down I"ll cover him with a small guy but the computer keeps flipping the controls around so I either do not cover him or I do but I get switched and thus the guy covering him gets KO'd and sure enough the ball richochets back to the oppostion's side where they send it flying again taking out my big guy thus resulting in 2 - 4 loses. Again, YOU LOSE YOUR ENTIRE TEAM in less than 10 seconds and it's just control chaos.
4. Unfair advantage of the opposing teams move selection. There are two moves the computer team can do that you can't, such as the up in the air follow you around come down instant kill throw and the Expanding uncatchable (usually) throw which can only be dodged (but you usually never can because the computer keeps switching your characters around).
5. Time limit sucks!!: I can have all my team and the Computer can only have one guy but if time runs out I LOSE, totally unfair an BS, typical money munching arcade crap!
All in all 75% of your loses will be from Time running out (because you lost your big guy) an 15% from a combination of reasons #2&3. You rarely lose from anything fair.
Pros are obviously the gameplay style, music, and just the emotions of it all that made this one a cult classic and all time favorite however the sequel is a massive improvement on the messy player switching system.
I recommend skipping this lemon and playing Super Dodge ball on a home console since it's been upgraded with better control, more moves and more strategy components or Dodge ball's sequel