Ballblazer
A split screen, a futuristic floating hovercraft, and a single goal - to get the glowing ball into your opponent's goal before he gets it into yours. Ballblazer is a game that feels like sci-fi soccer played in a space arena, and it belongs among the boldest titles of the early 1980s.
Ballblazer originated in the workshop of Lucasfilm Games, the gaming division of George Lucas's empire, and one of the key authors was David Levine. The game first came out for the Atari 8-bit computers in the mid-1980s and later appeared on the Atari 7800 as well. The very fact that Lucasfilm Games stood behind it - the studio from which the legendary LucasArts later grew - gave it a special shine.
In gameplay terms it's a one-on-one duel on a flat gridded arena seen from a cockpit view, with the screen split for two players. You control a hovercraft called a rotofoil, try to seize the plasma ball, and send it through the opponent's goal. You can play against another person as well as against a computer opponent with several difficulty levels. The smooth, fast scrolling of the arena was technically impressive for its time.
An inseparable part of Ballblazer is its music. Composer Peter Langston created a generative soundtrack called "Song of the Grid", which transformed itself on the fly and lent the game a jazzily flowing, unmistakable atmosphere. It's precisely this combination of a fresh concept and innovative sound that made Ballblazer a cult title.
The game became one of the first proofs that Lucasfilm Games could bring original ideas instead of mere licensed detours, and it foreshadowed the creative ethos that later made LucasArts famous. Among veterans of the early 8-bits, Ballblazer holds a reputation as a bold experiment that was ahead of its time.
Why play: A futuristic one-on-one sci-fi sport from the workshop of the future creators of LucasArts, with a smooth arena and brilliantly shifting jazz music that had no equal at the time.
Game 8 of 37 for Atari 7800
The same title elsewhere (2)
Ballblazer was designed by Lucasfilm Games specifically for Atari's 8-bit home computers, whose graphics hardware handled the smoothly scaled pseudo-3D track and the distinctive synthesized two-instrument duet that changed with the action on the field. The Atari 7800 arrived on the market years later as a console focused chiefly on fast, faithful conversions of popular titles, so its Ballblazer release aims mainly to preserve the core gameplay — the duel for the glowing ball on a split screen — without needing a computer keyboard or disk drive. Anyone wanting to try the game as the developers first designed it should reach for the 8-bit Atari version; the 7800 release is a convenient option for console owners without a computer.
