Arcade Volleyball

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Arcade Volleyball
Screenshot of Arcade Volleyball
Developer(s)	COMPUTE! Publications, Inc.
Publisher(s)	COMPUTE! Publications, Inc.
Platform(s)	MS-DOS
Release date	1988
Genre(s)	Sports
Mode(s)	Single player Multiplayer

Arcade Volleyball is a 1988 volleyball game for computers running MS-DOS. With a total file size of only around 40K and CGA graphics, this volleyball simulator was primitive even for its time. Players can play head-to-head or one player can play against the computer. The volleyball "teams" consist of only one player each: creatures composed of large round heads with feet and exaggerated facial features. This simple game has become somewhat of a cult classic. Several remakes have been made or are in development, and the game itself is posted for download on many web sites dedicated to older games.

Arcade Volleyball originally appeared as a type-in program for the Commodore 64 computer in the June 1988 edition of the magazine COMPUTE!'s Gazette. The designers were Rhett Anderson and David Hensley, Jr. , who had also made a similar game called Basketball Sam & Ed the year before. "Arcade Volleyball" was a deliberate effort to capitalize on the success of that game.

The original game for the Commodore 64 was inspired by Pong (actually, the two-paddle "Hockey" variant of Pong, note the two heads on each side of the court in the Commodore 64 version) and programmed by Rhett Anderson. He and Randy Thompson then wrote an Amiga version from scratch for an early issue of Amiga Resource magazine. It was this version that was ported to the PC by a COMPUTE! Publications programmer (this would be Kevin Mykytyn, Tim Midkiff, or Tim Victor--to be researched).

"Basketball Sam & Ed" was adapted into the Sega CD game "Bouncers" by former COMPUTE! staffers Rhett Anderson, Tim Midkiff, and Randy Thompson while they were at the Sierra company Dynamix. The art director for Bouncers was John Garvin. Garvin and Midkiff are now at Sony Bend working on the Syphon Filter series for PS2 and PSP. Thompson runs Buzz Monkey software.

Arcade Volleyball was not seen as strong enough to make into a console game by the group.