First look: Speedball II: Brutal Deluxe

Crawfish Interactive informed GameSpot today that it has signed an agreement with The Bitmap Brothers to bring several classic Bitmap Brothers' games to the Nintendo Game Boy Advance. Games Xenon 2, Speedball II: Brutal Deluxe, Gods, The Chaos Engine, Magic Pockets, and Cadaver will be revived on the GBA. The first GBA port will be Speedball II: Brutal Deluxe, which will be based on the classic and award-winning Sega Genesis and Commodore Amiga versions.

The game offers fast-paced gameplay with very few rules, as players take control of a team desperate to win the fictional Speedball championship. In the game, players need to build a team by increasing the various abilities of the metal-clad athletes. The ultimate objective is to place the ball in the opposing goal, at all costs. Players are free to throw elbow in Speedball, punching defenders or picking up a power-up from the floor. Although the game is based on the original, Crawfish plans a wide range of enhancements for the Game Boy Advance incarnation. New features include multiple teams, players ,and personalities, as well as additional gamemodes and a four-player link up mode.

"With its vastly-improved graphical abilities, the Game Boy Advance is the perfect system to rediscover Speedball II," said Mike Merren, director of development at Crawfish Interactive. "As one of the most inventive titles the video games industry has ever seen, there's a certain timeless aspect to Speedball's gameplay. It's one of those memorable games that gets the basics just right--easy to play, difficult to master. The Game Boy Advance version will remain faithful to the classic original, ensuring that the original play mechanic is not only maintained, but enhanced for a new generation of gamers."

"We are delighted to be joining forces with Crawfish to bring this title to the GBA and hope a whole new generation of gamers will discover Speedball," said Mike Montgomery of The Bitmap Brothers, who has been thinking about the possibilities of Speedball on new platforms for quite some time.