At first glance, Super Dodgeball Brawlers has a few things going for it. It's based off of dodgeball, which is the best game that I played during gym class, the Kunio character games have been consistently fan favourites, and it came out at $30.

Here's the problem. The game comes off bland and uninspired. They've brought back the old art style, which is nice since the GBA release had a lame art style. The problem is it doesn't really look much better than it did on NES. Yeah, more colours and so on, but after a decade, they can really do a little better than this. The arenas are pretty damn plain and don't affect gameplay whatsoever. How does that make sense, since the NES game had levels with ice and sand that altered how you could play the match?

The NES game also had amazing cover artwork.

They've added a few new things to try to spice stuff up. A level system, where you gain experience for each victory, as well as a store. The game is so easy, even on hard mode, that levelling up is pointless. Your items can break, not that they do very much anyways. You can customize your team and there's a fair few super throws, but the customization is shallow at best.

There's a fighting system, which is kind of fun. You can run slightly over the dodgeball line and kick people in the stomach, forcing them to drop the ball. If they had fleshed that out, that could have been a really solid improvement for the series. Shame they didn't. You can set the game to drop items from time to time into the ring, but they do so little damage and just seem to clutter the arena up. Even the brawl mode is kind of boring. They couldn't have updated it with multiple arenas, maybe different dodgeballs with certain properties, I dunno, ANYTHING? The touchscreen support during gameplay consists of picking a special bonus, whether it be super offense, defense, or improving your jumping abilities. When your meter charges, you click the touch screen and you're powered up for a few seconds. Completely pointless.

Overall, it feels like a step back. I beat the entire game in normal mode in around an hour and never felt the additions to the game added to my fun. Skip it till it drops to $15 or lower.

2/5

Super Dodgeball Brawlers available at Amazon.com -