Far too many times, games get announced, then nothing ever appears, like Mecho Wars or Virtual City PSP. But sometimes, they actually do finally come out! Speedball 2 Evolution is one of those games. It’s an update of an old game that first appeared on the Atari ST and a whole lot of other computers of the late ’80s, as well as ports and sequels on most platforms since. This particular entry in the series first appeared on iOS, as is often the case, and is brought to the PSP by Vivid Games and published by Tower Studios.

Regardless of its origin, it’s in a genre that is quite lacking among Minis: sports. Other than racing games, we’ve only had one sports title—football (soccer) management. This actually bears some resemblance to that, because you are at the helm of a Speedball team. Speedball is essentially a futuristic variation on football (a combination of all types, though closest to soccer, but where you can carry the ball with your hands), with a little bit of pinball thrown in.

Each team has several players on the field, with the object of scoring more points than your opponent. This is mostly accomplished by carrying a ball down the field and throwing it in the opponent’s goal (while your opponent tries to tackle you and get the ball in your goal), but you can also score points in a few other ways, such as knocking out the other team’s players or hitting special switches.

Even with a nice tutorial, it’s a bit confusing at first, at least all the complications like the bumpers and power-ups on the field, but at its core, it’s like soccer, so really not that hard to pick up—just get the ball in the opponent’s goal. Each match lasts two halves of 90 seconds each, so three minutes, plus time for replays and such, which can be skipped with the press of a button.

As in standard video game convention, you only control one player on the team at a time, the one closest to the ball. The goalie either works mostly automatically (you control him once he catches the ball) or completely automatically (you have to change this in the controls). The opponent AI seems to vary a lot from team to team. Sometimes it is relentless, and I am unable to score a goal in a match, while other times it is downright Cubs-like, completely inept.

It’s fairly fun, but it gets old after a few matches in a row. They try to liven things up by having different opponents and stadiums, but still, there isn’t that big a difference. It’s also got a lot of small touches, like how after the game, all the players line up, and an MVP is picked. Or even just the start of a match, where all the players come out and are introduced by name.

In the main mode of the game, career mode, you are both the player and the (general) manager. You still control the players on the screen, but in between matches, you can improve your team’s players with the money you earn from matches. You can either have them work out at a gym or simply replace them with all new players (which costs more upfront but is generally more cost effective in the long run).

While it’s the key aspect of management mode, the trouble I had is that you can spend all this money upgrading the player, but once on the field, you have no idea which one he is. All the players look alike; there aren’t even numbers on their backs. A general rule of sports is to give the best player on the team the ball, but here you don’t know which one he is to do so. This is a big drawback, one that could easily have been addressed by adding a number or even their name next to their health bar. It’s ironic, too, as each player in the game seems to have their own individual name and portrait.

The other problem is that as near as I can tell, the stats a player has are never explained. I was hoping there would be a software manual, but that isn’t the case. It’s not even obvious just what the stats stand for, as you are shown three-letter abbreviations. You can figure that part out by looking at the help for the power-ups—there’s basically one for each stat.

Still, it’s a very deep game because of the management mode. You can play through ten seasons (though I didn’t get nearly that far) plus playoffs, with something like 28 different opponent teams across 2 different divisions. And if that’s not enough, there are a host of achievements to earn. Other than perhaps History Egypt, Speedball 2 Evolution has more gameplay than any other Mini. The question is do you find the core mechanic fun or not?

Graphically, it looks good, with crisp visuals. Unfortunately, all the players basically look alike, as I’ve mentioned, and there aren’t any special effects. One neat thing, though, is a mode for colorblind people. In it, rather than having the two teams being different colors, one now has a black helmet and the other team a white one.

Sound effects are a bit quiet, but solid enough. You are treated with some speech on occasion, always a nice touch, though it’s not a chatty game.

The port from iOS is solid, the game runs very smoothly and the controls are well chosen, but it is plagued by some excessive loading times, and occasionally, aiming the ball can prove trickier than you expect.

Speedball 2 Evolution is one of the pricier Minis, but at the same time, it also offers a lot of gameplay for the money. This is one of the curious facets of modern gaming—games that would have been sold 20 or 30 years ago for $30-40 are now being sold for far, far less but still are often considered overpriced, because they can’t match the visuals or production values of blockbuster AAA games.

Still, the gameplay offered seems to be a hit-or-miss affair. Unless you really, really love it, you’ll probably get bored by the repetitiveness quite quickly. But if you do love it, you have a whole lot to love. And it does make a good pick-up-and-play game.

8/10