By ZZZ
Nitro Ball / Gunball - Arcade (1992)
The extraordinarily obscure Nitro Ball was released for the arcades in 1992 by Data East. It's a completely bat-shit insane/totally brilliant (take your pick) combination of overhead run 'n gun gameplay with elements of pinball. As little sense as it makes to combine these two genres, the mixture works amazingly well. So well, in fact, that it's also among the better examples of the genre.
Nitro Ball takes place in the future, and in this future, people like to watch weird game shows on television. A particularly popular game show is called Nitro Ball, where people blast their way through hordes of hostile thugs, robots, and monsters, across several levels of a huge arena, all for nothing more than cash and prizes. If you thought "Hey! That's the exact same plot as Smash T.V.!" then, well... that's obviously where Data East got the idea. It even quotes Smash T.V. often throughout ("BINGO!"), has a virtually identical game show host character that pops up on a display screen before each stage, and has a relatively comparable point tallying scene between levels. Yet, oddly, it plays absolutely NOTHING like that game.
Despite its fusion with pinball elements, at its core, Nitro Ball plays like your standard overhead run 'n gun video game. You travel along on foot, moving to either the left, right, or up, blast away at hordes of enemies who are potentially armed with weapons of their own, and fight a huge boss at the end of each stage - pretty much exactly what you'd expect. In fact, it bears a strong resemblance to Mercs, and the designs for its playable characters, the feel of its controls, the dimensions of the screen, and even how your default weapon works, all immediately bring Capcom's classic to mind. You can also play the game with a second player, which makes the action turn really chaotic.
Both its controls and its combat system are very simplistic. Rather than a health meter, like in Mercs, it favors the genre standard of one-hit kills, and you begin with three lives. You'll find weapon power-ups with fair regularity throughout the game, which can take any of four forms - an average powered missile launcher that fires a narrow stream of rockets, a high powered spread gun with a very wide bullet spray, a very high powered flame thrower, and a very rare and stupidly over-powered three-way rail gun. You've got a limited stock of bombs, too, but instead of causing an explosion, your character spins around and releases an outward moving spiral of color changing flashing blobs - it's pretty cool looking. There's also an item with a "H" on it that will destroy every enemy on screen. Levels are timed, but you can extend your timer by grabbing an item with a "T" on it. There aren't any vehicles, like in Metal Slug, or any other techniques, like evasions in Shock Troopers, but the feel of the game is intuitive, and it controls flawlessly.
However, what makes it different from any other game is its fusion with pinball, and how the pinball elements come into play is what really makes the game. The playing field throughout the entire game is made up of pinball table components. So while you're firing away at the horde on your way to the boss, you'll pass through areas that strongly resemble giant pinball tables. Instead of just looking weird, all of it factors into how you play the game. For example, if you shoot a pinball-style target, then point items or weapon power-ups will spill out. Firing at a pinball-style spinner will make it spit out items as long as it keeps spinning. You can also get points by blasting away at bumpers, but they won't dispense any items. There are even walls along the sides of the playing field, as if your character were actually inside of a giant pinball table. You can't just milk the pinball parts for points and power-ups forever, though, as they can only take so much punishment before they're destroyed.
There are several other pinball elements come into play that very closely resemble something from an actual pinball game. Most prominently, shooting most enemies in the game will cause them to somersault in the direction that you shot them, and they'll ricochet around the playing field like pinballs. This isn't just a cool graphical detail - they can hit targets while they bounce around, and they'll grant higher point totals and more power-ups than if you were to shoot them yourself. While they're in pinball form, enemies can be shot into holes or launched up giant ramps - doing so will make the word "BINGO" will appear on screen above the target that was just hit, and an item will pop out. Even cooler is that if you grab an item with a "B" on it, your character will change into a giant pinball and rocket around the screen in whichever direction that you push the joystick. You're invulnerable while in pinball form, and you can mow down enemies as you ricochet off of targets, bounce off of bumpers, and fly through ramps.
The levels themselves have the kinds of basic themes that you'd expect to find in classic pinball tables. There's an American football themed level, a haunted town, a space station, a war zone, and an Alien inspired stage. As if they were merely motifs on a pinball table, the enemies in each stage correspond with that level's theme. So when you're in the Ghost Town stage you'll fight zombies, grim reapers, and giant ghosts that look like Slimer from Ghostbusters. Whereas in the Combat Field stage you face off against soldiers and tanks. The Strange Football level has you going up against completely absurd foes like football players and giant spiked footballs. The boss fights are pretty badass, too. Especially the teleporting Dracula that releases bats from his cape, and the large multi-sectioned robot bosses. While the Japanese and American versions of the game play identically, the levels are inexplicably played in a different order.
There are plenty of other cool touches throughout the game. Two of the stages have multiple paths, though they quickly lead to the same place. Another cool pinball inspired idea is that there are "mini-games" played in one screen of each level where you're given a goal like shooting eight "goons" up ramps in ten seconds. You're rewarded with extra points after completing a mini-game, and then again after finishing that stage. In keeping with the pinball concept, the high score table keeps score separately for each stage, as if they were individual pinball tables, as well as keeping another high score table for overall scores. There are also different endings depending on how many points you finish the game with - these can be completely ridiculous, like having your character become a king. After completing any stage in the game, you're shown a "backglass" image that goes with the level's theme. Its audio is outstanding on every level, and there are multiple voice samples at various points in the game.
Nitro Ball isn't just really, really original, or really, really weird, it's also among the greatest overhead run 'n guns ever made. So it makes no sense, at all, that it's so obscure. It's safe to assume that it must have failed horribly in the arcades when it was released, but you'd figure that a game that's this good would have at least become more popular in the emulation era. It's a shame that it wasn't more successful, because then maybe Data East would have had the motivation to make other crazy games like this, or least ported it to a console.
Nitro Ball
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Nitro Ball
Video games have produced some pretty bizarre genre hybrids throughout their history. Just to name a few examples, there's the puzzle/shooter series Twinkle Star Sprites, the driving/beat-em-up game Bishin Densetsu Zoku, the dating sim/strategy RPG Sakura Taisen, and the fighter/music game combo Draglade. RPGs are a particularly popular genre to mix with others, and they've been combined with everything from beat-em-ups (several Nekketsu Kouha Kunio titles), to sports games (Captain Tsubasa), to fighters (Power Quest), to racers (Final Lap Twin), among countless other examples. At the opposite end of the spectrum from RPGs, pinball doesn't really go with anything, but it hasn't kept developers from trying on rare occasions. Odama combines pinball with real-time strategy. Pinball Quest actually combines pinball with RPGs. Gee Bee and its sequels combine pinball with Breakout-style gameplay. However, the most insane combination of pinball with another genre probably comes from a game called "Nitro Ball" ("Gun Ball" in Japan).
