This game is actually the canonical representation of the Jurassic Park scientists creating fresh dino DNA. These are failed attempts that weren't compatible
but the dinos were actually good at doing dino things. This would be like the equivalent of Hammond cranking out raptors that were so stupid they forget how to breathe!
@@999apeman If Hammond was able to create dinosaurs first try without any Alien Resurrection level of abominations coming out of their experiments I'll polish his cane for a year. This game is a obviously a simulation of different genomes trying to fuse with each other but are unable to. These are clearly the dead on arrival combinations who would indeed not breathe. Would they have been succesful experiments the game itself would probably have been good too. JP Warpath was a good game.
For me, the biggest surprise of this whole video was learning the folk behind Ballz made Petz/Dogz. I would never have put that together on my own, seriously.
I once spent a two day weekend at the house of some kid that I didn't really know that well. I was probably 10 or younger. He had basically no toys, no imagination, and no video games besides BALLZ 3D BABY!!!! We tried to play it for a little while, and then his mom made us stop playing because she was shocked and scandalized by the "feminine noises" in the soundtrack. I believe we spent the rest of our time together with ME drawing pictures, and him WATCHING me draw pictures... That was the first time in my life that I realized a sleepover could suck.
I just figured that out lol. I kept hearing the name PF Magic and then I was like "OH YEAH!" I used to spend a lot of time on those "games" when I was a kid.
@@kgpspyguy Wow...I feel genuinely sorry for that little kid, just imagine how bad and restricted his childhood must've been. I mean, I'm not judging how people choose to raise their kid, and I do believe it's parents responsibility to ensure that the content they let their kids have is appropriate for them....but there's a HUGE difference between not letting a 7 y/o play GTA and not letting him play a G-rated game because it had "feminine noises" in the soundtrack. Like what did she think it was ultimately going to do to him? Reminds me of an ex-neighbor of mine when I was a kid, he was around the same age as me and we would play together. His mother who wouldn't let him watch nearly any kid shows or cartoons, barely let the kid have any toys for some weird reason, and any other kid he- played with she would eventually find a reason why he wasn't allowed to play with them anymore (sometimes for some really awful and just ridiculous reasons), eventually including myself because I was a "bad influence". I later found out from my mother that along with her strong religious beliefs (despite not following any specific religion) she had some pretty serious and untreated mental health issues, and an on-and-off again drug addiction, and then things made a LOT more sense. Thankfully, I also learned that his grandmother eventually got custody of him, and that she took really good care of him.
Actually a little ashamed I didn't recognize the whole 'creatures made of a bunch of balls' art style immediately. Petz was more advanced than Ballz but you can still tell they're doing about the same thing.
The first boss, the ostrich (who's a female ostrich named Guggler, by the way), is the easiest first boss in video game history. Let me tell you why. In this game, taunting acts as a damage multiplier. In order to win easily, go away from her and wait for her to plunge her head in the ground. She won't do anything at all to you unless you do something to cause her damage. Then you taunt, which can be triggered by pressing all three action buttons simultaneously, as much as you can. I recommend doing it at least ten times. You then go up and do any attack you want. Instant death. You win.
I love dumb stuff like this, it’s quite technically impressive given that it actually controls in a 3D apace and the way the characters are drawn using spheres is really cool. It’s just really fascinating seeing a 3D fighter recreated in 2D. The Ball aesthetic wasn’t to simplify the sprites to make it capable of running on the weak hardware, it was because it made it much easier to draw the characters with a convincing 3D effect, it was a common tactic back then for 3D effects.
I've played the 3DO version of this quite a bunch, we used to rotate this and Battle Monsters as a gag game at a weekly fighting game event I used to run.
Oh man how was Way of the Warrior not part of that? That game is the best cheese ever, my best friend and I in high school played way more of that game than we should admit, and the funny thing was it actually got better once you played it more.
used to own this back in the day. after beating the game once, you unlock the t-rex character. unfortunately, it doesn't save progress in any capacity, so you'd have to play the game nonstop for hours to get everyone. i mained Yoko (the chimpanzee) just cuz he had that overpowered attack on landing on someone's head and banging it like bongos. i also found some code to transform into another character, which i wanted to do for everyone else, but didn't feel like experimenting Edit: and now that i see that logo for DBZUB22, i'm reminded of the retail rerelease of DBGT for PS1. i bought that thing thinking "oh shit they brought out that super rare and expensive game!" only to be horrified by the voice acting that makes it feel more like a really bad bootleg
Who you beat the game with actually changed what boss you got to play as. I think Turbo gave you Lamprey, for example, but don't quote me on that, we're talking nearly 30 year-old memories here :)
I seem to remember jumping to defeat the T-Rex. Divine was very good for that, and I think Boomer was too. Taunting first speeds the process up. Jump kicks could work as well, but you then had to dodge the ferocious counter attack. So yeah, jump like Sonic.
I've been waiting for this one. I rented this as a child and quickly learned the move that let you steal a bodypart/ball from your opponent until they were hobbling around helplessly. Edit: HOLY CRAP DID THEY MAKE "DOGZ" TOO?! I had that as well!
I've heard back then the PF stands for "Pure F*cking". So, it would be "Pure F*cking Magic". Also, you should try MsDOS "Xenophage: Alien Bloodsport". It's really REALLY awful.
As soon as I saw this I was like "didn't that company make Dogz and Catz?" The original Petz games STILL have a cult following where people mod it and add their own species of animals, items and locations. And because of how the mechanics work, you can breed them together and make complete abominations. Still a really fun little game.
I remember playing this in the hospital after getting in a plane crash. As for which was more painful.. It was the plane crash obviously, but the game was pretty bad.
Fun fact: the, uh, ball-based graphics system for this game is what the PF Magic Petz games are based on! They just added rectangles (or "linez") connecting the balls to make the shape of the characters more coherent. In retrospect, 90's Home PCs were probably the best platform to focus on "3d rendering for low graphical computing power", and the devs were also quite proud of the AI they build for those games. (We don't... talk about the Ubisoft-developed Petz games from 2006. Imagine Party Babyz isn't real and can't hurt me.)
11:24 I remember seeing someone playing this game when I was a kid. They figured out this part and, using Divine they figured out she's apparently a ballerina because, she'd go into a "rhythmic gymnastics" performance using (you guessed it) a ball. The "ball" in question being one of the leftover pieces of your opponent.
I, uh, have this game. My aunt just came up to me one day, said, "here, have this," and that was that. It's a tech demo with aspirations of gamehood, but it never quite gets there. It's not outright unpleasant to play, but it probably didn't need to exist either. Anyway. My pick for worst fighting game? Samurai Shodown Sen. Good grief.
I get that this game isn't great, but seriously nobody ever appreciates that this is a full 3D fighting game on 16-bit hardware. You can just walk around anywhere in 3D space, dodge hits in 3D, etc... it was considered a big deal when Battle Arena Toshinden made better use of 3D space than other 3D fighting games, and yet here was stupid little Ballz doing it first on 16-bit hardware. Credit where credit is due, people! Also the music on the 3DO version is truly strange and totally likeable.
I actually really like the game, in all its incarnations. I’ve never understood why it gets so much hate - once you get past the ‘90s tude, it’s a bizarre, unique experience you can have a lot of fun with.
7:58 Thankfully, Jester still loses the round before his resurrection kicks in. You basically just have to start the next round with whatever health you had left from the previous one. The game doesn't bother to let you know this until you beat him again and suddenly the match is over (or you lose and the round counter says 1-1).
Now I'm just thinking about how no one really talk about that weird experimental period of virtual pets that the original Petz (especially Oddballz) were a part of that lead to things like Creatures on the one side and Fin Fin on Teo on the other.
This is the first time I've seen someone mention the Creatures series out in the wild. I can't believe how obscure those games are for how advanced and beautiful they still are to this day. Neural networks from the turn of the millennium! But it just never caught on, and interest moved away from ALife a long time ago...
Of all the games that get remade these days, I'd love to see this one get done with today's technology. It seems like all it needs is some halfway decent company to pick it up as a passion project and just smooth out its sticking points, polish and buff it into a nice sheen, and it could really get to rolling exactly how PF Magic envisioned it. I'm not a fighting game guy, but I'd be willing to give it a try with some friends to see how it would turn out.
I'll forever thank this game for spawning the tech behind the original Petz games that I spent SO much time with as a kid. Suggestion: Evil Zone. "Best" two button anime fighter ever. Even has a stage just for GAMERS.
I actually recognized this one! I played it as a kid, on the Sega Channel. I was…whatever the big buff guy’s name was…and couldn’t figure out how to do anything. That monkey thing beat the crap out of me with special moves, so I tried to use him, then MacBuffballs (I’ll never like whatever the real name is as much as this) beat the crap out of him, and I didn’t come back afterward.
As a kid, i had a cd with hundreds of sega genesis games, so all the files had the name of the game written without spaces obviously, so when i saw "ballz" i read it as "Ball Z" and tough it was a dragon ball game. Never been so dissapointed, lol.
Matthew Hubbard was credited as the game's "Instant Replay Programmer". His past credits included programming "Dolphin" and "Zenji" for Activision. He was also listed as a programmer on "Road Rash II".
Bit late to this party, but I actually quite remember Ballz 3D - and actually loved it. And beat it! I think you placed it just about right, since while it's not a GREAT fighting game, you nailed it right on the head in terms of depth. There's even throws, but you seem to not have figured that out. (Not the grapples that lead to a follow-up throw, ACTUAL throws. From what I remember, you gotta get in a defensive crouch, hold down/back, and repeatedly tap jump; if you time it with an opponent's attack, you'll toss them.) Oh yeah, the PF in PF Magic is apparently supposed to be "Pure Fucking Magic."
I remember borrowing this game way back when. I've never been good fighting games, so I'd just play any character I could cheese. I liked the monkey cause I could just keep jumping on their heads. Cracked me up every time. Those bosses were fucking impossible...
There is a restraunt in Indiana called Pizza Train where they have random video games at the booths. They had this at one point and had it listed as Dragonball Z.
one of the tidbits of info I remember from being a Petz fan and going on fansites as a little kid is that the PF in PF Magic supposedly stands for Pure Fuckin'. Pure Fuckin' Magic. I don't know how true it actually is but I want to believe.
Played this at a friends house on night in the early 2000's. We were like 8 and just remember cracking up at it being oblivious to the adult sounds and messaging. And my friends getting mad at the clown putting him into a ball. lol
Still waiting for Matt to stop and realize the worst fighting game is absolutely 100% Dragon Ball Z Taiketsu for GBA Also, I'm happy to see this video had some good Shadow The Hedgehog content
I’ll be back later with the name, but there was a boxing game on the 486 ibm that had a kangaroo as a playable character in the 80’s. So arguably the first one in a video game
I was a contestant on Video and Arcade Top 10 (a show on YTV in Canada) and played this game. Played 1P mode against 3 other people. Didn't drop a round. Won the competition. The prize was supposed to be the game we played but for some reason they didn't have a copy to give away so I ended up with Brett Hull hockey instead. So thankful I got that hockey game.
I once went over to my buddy's house to buy his collection of SNES games. He also had Ballz 3D. I asked him how much for it, he basically replied "get that thing out of my house".
a friend of mine worked for Funcoland back in the day (precursor to Game Stop), and when people called the store they had to say something like "Funcoland, we have Mortal Combat" or whatever game was just released. For some reason the owner didnt want the employees saying "Fincoland, we've got Ballz" when this came out.
My older brother took a trip to the UK with my dad to see a football match and bought this game while they were there. They ended up leaving it in the hotel and returning home without it. Knowing nothing about Ballz we waited an extra four weeks in eager anticipation, a lifetime as a child, to have the game shipped over to us from lost and found. I conjured up all sorts of visions and expectations of what this game could be. The day it arrived was the day I learned what disappointment truly was.
Man, I am SO happy to see this one. I had this way back when alongside Clayfighter, MK 1 &2, SF2, etc. I played the HELL out of it and got really competent. One thing that seems to have been glossed over was the stank of the overt weirdness of the whole thing which is extreme mid-90s. Weird for the sake of weird was peaking back then and I really miss it. It's true that the game is not very good by any real standard, but it was just so damn weird that I had to immerse.
Probably one of my favorite series you've done on this channel. It's interesting to go down the history of fighting game fumbles. Think you'll tackle DBZ Taiketsu one day?
Seeing DBZ Ultimate Battle 22 cited in this vid makes me think : is GBA excluded from the potential lineups ? Because if it isn't... DBZ Taiketsu. OH BOY, DBZ Taiketsu.
I have a copy of this game on Genesis, and the manual makes reference to the AT&T Edge 16. There's an additional leaf of paper added after the fact that just amounts to "The AT&T Edge 16 peripheral has been cancelled, never mind"
Perfect opportunity for Yoshi's "Balls" from the super Mario Super Show. Ionno though, the game's character designs for the theme is actually pretty good. You can tell what each character is. They clearly cared to put a lot of mechanics into it, but sadly botched the execution. Seems like there's no hitstun or hit animation along with the lack of hit sparks, just a vague flash to let you know they hit. Seems like throws are the only thing that directly effect the other player.
When I was a kid my friend had this game and i remember it being actually good. Yes, we played Clayfighter also. We were also huge Mortal Kombat fans also.
I have a bizarrely vivid memory of playing an arcade version of this game that used (terrible) late-90s/early-2000s VR or (terrible) late-90s/early-2000s holographs. It was almost unplayable, the problems with the gamefeel magnified by the fuzziness the technology lent the graphics, but kind of cool as a technical showcase. The internet doesn't seem to have any mention of such a thing, though, or of any arcade version at all.
I just binge watched all of these. I’m obsessed. Keep ‘em coming. Btw that background music after the info is from The Guy Game… not that i would know or anything. Nice touch 👌🏻
I remember I rented this game from blockbuster video when I was a kid. Some of the music sounds like porn so when playing it my Dad comes up to my room thinking I might have been doing something else.
It's funny, when I first saw the game, I thought the graphics were actually very fun and charming but something about it was tickling the back of my brain. Then hearing that the devs made the Petz series - Petz 5 being a game that I was obsessed with as a kid - it all clicked into place. It seems really obvious now! Despite that it's obviously coming from a place of familiarity bias at least somewhat, I do genuinely think it looks cool and has a lot of really fun elements. It's a shame it just didn't really come together in the end. As a side note, I also think the way they created the animals in Petz also just using spheres is pretty awesome. It's not nearly as obvious as it is here and it gives it such a unique style!
I remember playing this way back thanks to another advanced piece of technology known as Sega channel. My mom never had to take me to blockbuster again.
Dude, this game was low-key awesome and a hilarious guilty pleasure of mine in my SNES days haha. That is great you bring this game up because it is a nostalgia piece.
I was wondering when you'd do this one. This is another game that probably could be in a "bad fighting games" crossover fighter. I always had a softspot for PF Magic's other game, OddBallz. Most of it was fanmade content though... EDIT: Oh yeah, forgot to mention, Trash Head. Excellent taste in music.
man this is a repressed memory...I remember renting the game all the time as a kid next to Dynamite Heady. For some reason the golf swing move was extremely funny to me and my friends so we would spam it
Can someone explain the seemingly random God Hand comparison that pops up at 15:48? I get that it has lower scores than Party Babyz, but why God Hand specifically?
I can only assume that it's because it's made by Capcom, the king of the genre of games that PF Games was trying to amateurishly break into with Ballz.
Some of the Petz games are localized Japanese games. One Christmas I got Dogz on DS from an aunt, and while the graphics are cute is it really repetive and limited. They could've done more with it, but instead it's the same day in and day out except for Sundays where you can't do much at all...
The localized Japanese games from the 2000's are fine for what they are, but they're not real Petz games - Ubisoft just cannibalized the trademark for that purpose after buying the company. the real PF Magic petz games are the 1995-1999 PC games that use the same rendering technology as Ballz 3D, but improved.
This is the most pedantic of nitpicks... That said, at ~3:05, there's a mention that the ball spites would let you get a 3D effect with "rotation and scaling." The nit pick is that the whole trick of ball-sprite 3D hacks was that you *didn't* ever need to rotate the ball sprites. (And you can get away with a surprising amount without scaling just by having a few pre-scaled ball sprites of different sizes that you flip between.) Any given ball is only moving in X-Y translations around your screen. That's why it was fast enough even on slow hardware. The idea is that if you did rotate a perfectly smooth sphere in 3D, it would look exactly the same anyway. So you just translate groups of sprites in X-Y in patterns that mimic the movement of points along a 3D shape, and your brain just 100% imagines that there is rotation of spheres happening rather than just translations of circles.
This was my fighting game as a child. No Street Fighter, no Mortal Kombat, I had Ballz. I remember playing Turbo, because the AI had little to no answer for his jumping dive kick special. Doing the fatalities in this game was stupid easy, too. Just hit up 3 times when the enemy's health was low.
This game is actually the canonical representation of the Jurassic Park scientists creating fresh dino DNA. These are failed attempts that weren't compatible
but the dinos were actually good at doing dino things. This would be like the equivalent of Hammond cranking out raptors that were so stupid they forget how to breathe!
@@999apeman If Hammond was able to create dinosaurs first try without any Alien Resurrection level of abominations coming out of their experiments I'll polish his cane for a year.
This game is a obviously a simulation of different genomes trying to fuse with each other but are unable to. These are clearly the dead on arrival combinations who would indeed not breathe. Would they have been succesful experiments the game itself would probably have been good too. JP Warpath was a good game.
So, they were so concerned with whether they could, they didn't stop to consider if they should?
I'll see myself out.
@@allegedlyfalse6779 Hey man if you gotta go you gotta go
@@TrashbashMan (Looks at game) "That's a big pile of shit."
For me, the biggest surprise of this whole video was learning the folk behind Ballz made Petz/Dogz. I would never have put that together on my own, seriously.
And yet it makes perfect sense once you look at it- all the Dogz and Catz are built on the same technology!
I once spent a two day weekend at the house of some kid that I didn't really know that well. I was probably 10 or younger.
He had basically no toys, no imagination, and no video games besides BALLZ 3D BABY!!!! We tried to play it for a little while, and then his mom made us stop playing because she was shocked and scandalized by the "feminine noises" in the soundtrack. I believe we spent the rest of our time together with ME drawing pictures, and him WATCHING me draw pictures...
That was the first time in my life that I realized a sleepover could suck.
I just figured that out lol. I kept hearing the name PF Magic and then I was like "OH YEAH!" I used to spend a lot of time on those "games" when I was a kid.
@@kgpspyguy Wow...I feel genuinely sorry for that little kid, just imagine how bad and restricted his childhood must've been. I mean, I'm not judging how people choose to raise their kid, and I do believe it's parents responsibility to ensure that the content they let their kids have is appropriate for them....but there's a HUGE difference between not letting a 7 y/o play GTA and not letting him play a G-rated game because it had "feminine noises" in the soundtrack. Like what did she think it was ultimately going to do to him?
Reminds me of an ex-neighbor of mine when I was a kid, he was around the same age as me and we would play together. His mother who wouldn't let him watch nearly any kid shows or cartoons, barely let the kid have any toys for some weird reason, and any other kid he- played with she would eventually find a reason why he wasn't allowed to play with them anymore (sometimes for some really awful and just ridiculous reasons), eventually including myself because I was a "bad influence".
I later found out from my mother that along with her strong religious beliefs (despite not following any specific religion) she had some pretty serious and untreated mental health issues, and an on-and-off again drug addiction, and then things made a LOT more sense. Thankfully, I also learned that his grandmother eventually got custody of him, and that she took really good care of him.
Actually a little ashamed I didn't recognize the whole 'creatures made of a bunch of balls' art style immediately. Petz was more advanced than Ballz but you can still tell they're doing about the same thing.
those billboards in the background with random text are like proto-shitposts and i love it
The game was definitely ahead of its time!
In the words of the AVGN or at least a hypothetical quote of his. "I'd rather play with my own balls than play Ballz 3D!"
Or a buffalo's balls
He'd rather have.
@@The_Boctor - A buffalo.
@@marlonmontelhiggins8570 take a diarrhea dump in his ear...
@@kenjihirata9961 He'd rather Eat
The first boss, the ostrich (who's a female ostrich named Guggler, by the way), is the easiest first boss in video game history. Let me tell you why. In this game, taunting acts as a damage multiplier. In order to win easily, go away from her and wait for her to plunge her head in the ground. She won't do anything at all to you unless you do something to cause her damage. Then you taunt, which can be triggered by pressing all three action buttons simultaneously, as much as you can. I recommend doing it at least ten times. You then go up and do any attack you want.
Instant death. You win.
Yeah, I had that issue of GamePro too 😂😂
@@RichardCraig it’s like buffing yourself up before you go into a boss battle
@@marhawkman303 Casting buff spells while against a boss that wastes time for 10 turns for no understandable reason
I love dumb stuff like this, it’s quite technically impressive given that it actually controls in a 3D apace and the way the characters are drawn using spheres is really cool. It’s just really fascinating seeing a 3D fighter recreated in 2D. The Ball aesthetic wasn’t to simplify the sprites to make it capable of running on the weak hardware, it was because it made it much easier to draw the characters with a convincing 3D effect, it was a common tactic back then for 3D effects.
Whoa 69 likes
@@justanotheryoutubechannel let's get it to 420
@@SudrianTales Not there yet, but then 616 & 666 (1337 would be cool but YT don't work like that...)
wasn't Vectorman made like that? I love Vectorman.
I've played the 3DO version of this quite a bunch, we used to rotate this and Battle Monsters as a gag game at a weekly fighting game event I used to run.
Oh man, Battle Monsters. I hope you brought a fondue pot to that party because you sure had the cheese.
Sounds like a fun time you had.
Oh man how was Way of the Warrior not part of that? That game is the best cheese ever, my best friend and I in high school played way more of that game than we should admit, and the funny thing was it actually got better once you played it more.
@@RichardCraig Sadly no Way of the Warrior, but Shadow: War of Succession made an appearance once or twice...
Damn. Wish I knew you back then lol.
used to own this back in the day. after beating the game once, you unlock the t-rex character. unfortunately, it doesn't save progress in any capacity, so you'd have to play the game nonstop for hours to get everyone. i mained Yoko (the chimpanzee) just cuz he had that overpowered attack on landing on someone's head and banging it like bongos. i also found some code to transform into another character, which i wanted to do for everyone else, but didn't feel like experimenting
Edit: and now that i see that logo for DBZUB22, i'm reminded of the retail rerelease of DBGT for PS1. i bought that thing thinking "oh shit they brought out that super rare and expensive game!" only to be horrified by the voice acting that makes it feel more like a really bad bootleg
wait how did anyone beat this game i couldnt get past the t-rex
I used the caveman character. He had a club. I don’t know what was with the overhead swing, but it made me laugh each time. I played it on 3DO.
Who you beat the game with actually changed what boss you got to play as. I think Turbo gave you Lamprey, for example, but don't quote me on that, we're talking nearly 30 year-old memories here :)
I seem to remember jumping to defeat the T-Rex. Divine was very good for that, and I think Boomer was too. Taunting first speeds the process up. Jump kicks could work as well, but you then had to dodge the ferocious counter attack. So yeah, jump like Sonic.
This is where the magic of emulators really comes in handy, lol
I've been waiting for this one. I rented this as a child and quickly learned the move that let you steal a bodypart/ball from your opponent until they were hobbling around helplessly.
Edit: HOLY CRAP DID THEY MAKE "DOGZ" TOO?! I had that as well!
I've heard back then the PF stands for "Pure F*cking". So, it would be "Pure F*cking Magic".
Also, you should try MsDOS "Xenophage: Alien Bloodsport". It's really REALLY awful.
As soon as I saw this I was like "didn't that company make Dogz and Catz?" The original Petz games STILL have a cult following where people mod it and add their own species of animals, items and locations. And because of how the mechanics work, you can breed them together and make complete abominations. Still a really fun little game.
I remember playing this in the hospital after getting in a plane crash. As for which was more painful..
It was the plane crash obviously, but the game was pretty bad.
Damn, bro. You survived a plane crash?! Wtf. How are you today?
I...was not expecting that
The most interesting thing to me is that the Japanese version's manual has brand new illustrations to better convey what the spheroid characters are.
It just hit me that SEGA goofed and miss having a cross promotion for Vectorman in this game.
Fun fact: the, uh, ball-based graphics system for this game is what the PF Magic Petz games are based on! They just added rectangles (or "linez") connecting the balls to make the shape of the characters more coherent. In retrospect, 90's Home PCs were probably the best platform to focus on "3d rendering for low graphical computing power", and the devs were also quite proud of the AI they build for those games. (We don't... talk about the Ubisoft-developed Petz games from 2006. Imagine Party Babyz isn't real and can't hurt me.)
11:24 I remember seeing someone playing this game when I was a kid. They figured out this part and, using Divine they figured out she's apparently a ballerina because, she'd go into a "rhythmic gymnastics" performance using (you guessed it) a ball. The "ball" in question being one of the leftover pieces of your opponent.
04:55 That's totally the track that plays in Sonic 3's Angel Island Zone 2 (Burning stage)
I played a shocking amount of this when I was kid. I mained the Cave Man
You and me both, man, I still play this game and always pick Kronk!
I, uh, have this game. My aunt just came up to me one day, said, "here, have this," and that was that. It's a tech demo with aspirations of gamehood, but it never quite gets there. It's not outright unpleasant to play, but it probably didn't need to exist either.
Anyway. My pick for worst fighting game? Samurai Shodown Sen. Good grief.
I get that this game isn't great, but seriously nobody ever appreciates that this is a full 3D fighting game on 16-bit hardware. You can just walk around anywhere in 3D space, dodge hits in 3D, etc... it was considered a big deal when Battle Arena Toshinden made better use of 3D space than other 3D fighting games, and yet here was stupid little Ballz doing it first on 16-bit hardware. Credit where credit is due, people! Also the music on the 3DO version is truly strange and totally likeable.
Dude I had this game as a kid, god no wonder I grew up to be such a damn weirdo. xD
@@fluffituffz4754 Hi fellow feline! 😸
Exactly! The game at least deserves a “it’s technically really impressive for the time, even if it plays like garbage”
@@Some_Cat_ hello ^^
I actually really like the game, in all its incarnations. I’ve never understood why it gets so much hate - once you get past the ‘90s tude, it’s a bizarre, unique experience you can have a lot of fun with.
7:58 Thankfully, Jester still loses the round before his resurrection kicks in. You basically just have to start the next round with whatever health you had left from the previous one. The game doesn't bother to let you know this until you beat him again and suddenly the match is over (or you lose and the round counter says 1-1).
Now I'm just thinking about how no one really talk about that weird experimental period of virtual pets that the original Petz (especially Oddballz) were a part of that lead to things like Creatures on the one side and Fin Fin on Teo on the other.
This is the first time I've seen someone mention the Creatures series out in the wild. I can't believe how obscure those games are for how advanced and beautiful they still are to this day. Neural networks from the turn of the millennium! But it just never caught on, and interest moved away from ALife a long time ago...
Creatures, my childhood...
Ballz: *Makes sexual noises*
"now I bet you all remember!"
No... No I do not...
I seem to have blotted that out as a kid.
Of all the games that get remade these days, I'd love to see this one get done with today's technology. It seems like all it needs is some halfway decent company to pick it up as a passion project and just smooth out its sticking points, polish and buff it into a nice sheen, and it could really get to rolling exactly how PF Magic envisioned it. I'm not a fighting game guy, but I'd be willing to give it a try with some friends to see how it would turn out.
I'll forever thank this game for spawning the tech behind the original Petz games that I spent SO much time with as a kid.
Suggestion: Evil Zone. "Best" two button anime fighter ever. Even has a stage just for GAMERS.
That character select theme sounds like just someone playing around with random samples on a keyboard for fun.
I actually recognized this one! I played it as a kid, on the Sega Channel. I was…whatever the big buff guy’s name was…and couldn’t figure out how to do anything. That monkey thing beat the crap out of me with special moves, so I tried to use him, then MacBuffballs (I’ll never like whatever the real name is as much as this) beat the crap out of him, and I didn’t come back afterward.
As a kid, i had a cd with hundreds of sega genesis games, so all the files had the name of the game written without spaces obviously, so when i saw "ballz" i read it as "Ball Z" and tough it was a dragon ball game. Never been so dissapointed, lol.
I gasped hearing the ok boomer song. That voice is so ingrained in my head.
Matthew Hubbard was credited as the game's "Instant Replay Programmer". His past credits included programming "Dolphin" and "Zenji" for Activision. He was also listed as a programmer on "Road Rash II".
This game was fun as hell, I even remember buying the guide for it at a CompUSA
I want to inform you that my like was solely for reminding me that CompUSA once existed. That is all.
Bit late to this party, but I actually quite remember Ballz 3D - and actually loved it. And beat it! I think you placed it just about right, since while it's not a GREAT fighting game, you nailed it right on the head in terms of depth. There's even throws, but you seem to not have figured that out. (Not the grapples that lead to a follow-up throw, ACTUAL throws. From what I remember, you gotta get in a defensive crouch, hold down/back, and repeatedly tap jump; if you time it with an opponent's attack, you'll toss them.)
Oh yeah, the PF in PF Magic is apparently supposed to be "Pure Fucking Magic."
I remember borrowing this game way back when. I've never been good fighting games, so I'd just play any character I could cheese. I liked the monkey cause I could just keep jumping on their heads. Cracked me up every time. Those bosses were fucking impossible...
Getting his money out of that “scared for his life giant sekele bro” image and I am here for it
There is a restraunt in Indiana called Pizza Train where they have random video games at the booths. They had this at one point and had it listed as Dragonball Z.
I remember being so amazed by the visuals of this game as a kid.
I got as far as the ostrich boss in arcade mode...never looked back.
one of the tidbits of info I remember from being a Petz fan and going on fansites as a little kid is that the PF in PF Magic supposedly stands for Pure Fuckin'. Pure Fuckin' Magic. I don't know how true it actually is but I want to believe.
Played this at a friends house on night in the early 2000's. We were like 8 and just remember cracking up at it being oblivious to the adult sounds and messaging. And my friends getting mad at the clown putting him into a ball. lol
Still waiting for Matt to stop and realize the worst fighting game is absolutely 100% Dragon Ball Z Taiketsu for GBA
Also, I'm happy to see this video had some good Shadow The Hedgehog content
I’ll be back later with the name, but there was a boxing game on the 486 ibm that had a kangaroo as a playable character in the 80’s. So arguably the first one in a video game
I was a contestant on Video and Arcade Top 10 (a show on YTV in Canada) and played this game. Played 1P mode against 3 other people. Didn't drop a round. Won the competition. The prize was supposed to be the game we played but for some reason they didn't have a copy to give away so I ended up with Brett Hull hockey instead. So thankful I got that hockey game.
This video is fantastic but I am absolutely blown away by one thing...
They gave God Hand a 3?!?!?!?!
"P.F Magic" stands for Pure fucking Magic.
I once went over to my buddy's house to buy his collection of SNES games. He also had Ballz 3D. I asked him how much for it, he basically replied "get that thing out of my house".
9:52
"Welcome to the Jack Attack! Remember the secret clue!"
a friend of mine worked for Funcoland back in the day (precursor to Game Stop), and when people called the store they had to say something like "Funcoland, we have Mortal Combat" or whatever game was just released. For some reason the owner didnt want the employees saying "Fincoland, we've got Ballz" when this came out.
My older brother took a trip to the UK with my dad to see a football match and bought this game while they were there. They ended up leaving it in the hotel and returning home without it. Knowing nothing about Ballz we waited an extra four weeks in eager anticipation, a lifetime as a child, to have the game shipped over to us from lost and found. I conjured up all sorts of visions and expectations of what this game could be.
The day it arrived was the day I learned what disappointment truly was.
Finally, Matt provides the Ballz content I've been seeking for so long.
Man, I am SO happy to see this one. I had this way back when alongside Clayfighter, MK 1 &2, SF2, etc. I played the HELL out of it and got really competent. One thing that seems to have been glossed over was the stank of the overt weirdness of the whole thing which is extreme mid-90s. Weird for the sake of weird was peaking back then and I really miss it. It's true that the game is not very good by any real standard, but it was just so damn weird that I had to immerse.
Officially using "administer smackies" in my next BDSM event
Ah so this is the same studio who would go on to make Oddballz, then the more successful Catz and Dogz? Neat. I loved those games.
YESSS! I love this series Matt! I also loved the Takeover!
Probably one of my favorite series you've done on this channel. It's interesting to go down the history of fighting game fumbles. Think you'll tackle DBZ Taiketsu one day?
You know, if you asked me to guess a game with a direct line of succession to Ballz 3D, I would never have gone with Imagine Party Babyz.
5:03 Oh so that's when people invented the breakcore snare!!! Venetian Snares would be proud!!!
Seeing DBZ Ultimate Battle 22 cited in this vid makes me think : is GBA excluded from the potential lineups ? Because if it isn't... DBZ Taiketsu. OH BOY, DBZ Taiketsu.
I have a copy of this game on Genesis, and the manual makes reference to the AT&T Edge 16. There's an additional leaf of paper added after the fact that just amounts to "The AT&T Edge 16 peripheral has been cancelled, never mind"
Perfect opportunity for Yoshi's "Balls" from the super Mario Super Show.
Ionno though, the game's character designs for the theme is actually pretty good. You can tell what each character is. They clearly cared to put a lot of mechanics into it, but sadly botched the execution. Seems like there's no hitstun or hit animation along with the lack of hit sparks, just a vague flash to let you know they hit. Seems like throws are the only thing that directly effect the other player.
I remember a kid unwrapping this on his birthday and witnessing his complete lack of enthusiasm.
When I was a kid my friend had this game and i remember it being actually good. Yes, we played Clayfighter also. We were also huge Mortal Kombat fans also.
As someone who grew up on and deeply loved/still loves the Petz family of games...I'm so sorry for your torment.
Its theme song lives rent free in my head ever since I played it on a demo station.
I have a bizarrely vivid memory of playing an arcade version of this game that used (terrible) late-90s/early-2000s VR or (terrible) late-90s/early-2000s holographs. It was almost unplayable, the problems with the gamefeel magnified by the fuzziness the technology lent the graphics, but kind of cool as a technical showcase.
The internet doesn't seem to have any mention of such a thing, though, or of any arcade version at all.
Legitimately didn't know that Ballz was a video game until finding this channel.
PF Magic stands for "Pure Fucking Magic" which is what founder Rob Fulop used to describe his code.
I just binge watched all of these. I’m obsessed. Keep ‘em coming. Btw that background music after the info is from The Guy Game… not that i would know or anything. Nice touch 👌🏻
I remember I rented this game from blockbuster video when I was a kid. Some of the music sounds like porn so when playing it my Dad comes up to my room thinking I might have been doing something else.
It's funny, when I first saw the game, I thought the graphics were actually very fun and charming but something about it was tickling the back of my brain. Then hearing that the devs made the Petz series - Petz 5 being a game that I was obsessed with as a kid - it all clicked into place. It seems really obvious now! Despite that it's obviously coming from a place of familiarity bias at least somewhat, I do genuinely think it looks cool and has a lot of really fun elements. It's a shame it just didn't really come together in the end.
As a side note, I also think the way they created the animals in Petz also just using spheres is pretty awesome. It's not nearly as obvious as it is here and it gives it such a unique style!
Somehow I can only remeber tge weird intro of ball man falling into the void.
I miss Giant Bomb's Ranking of Fighters and this fills the gap pretty well.
After watching this video, I've come to the conclusion that the best way to play Ballz 3D is by muting your tv and blasting the KOF '96 ost
6:43 actually resembles a ballerina, while 6:48 probably resembles some sort of superhero, as far as I can tell.
P. F. Magic stands for Pure Fuckin' Magic, no joke.
Can't blame the developers; if someone pulled out at the last minute and left me holding my magic bag, I'd go hard on my ballz, too.
How about Pit Fighter? The Snes port was really... Interesting
I remember playing this way back thanks to another advanced piece of technology known as Sega channel. My mom never had to take me to blockbuster again.
Dude, this game was low-key awesome and a hilarious guilty pleasure of mine in my SNES days haha. That is great you bring this game up because it is a nostalgia piece.
I swear to god hearing the menu music was the strangest hit of nostalgia I've ever had
On the other hand given how the characters are designed in this game, I do wonder if Sega ever took up on this design to make Vectorman? 🤔
I was wondering when you'd do this one. This is another game that probably could be in a "bad fighting games" crossover fighter.
I always had a softspot for PF Magic's other game, OddBallz. Most of it was fanmade content though...
EDIT: Oh yeah, forgot to mention, Trash Head. Excellent taste in music.
Pf magic back then: gaming over the internet will never catch on after Edge
Pf magic now: is this hell?
Would my brother seem cooler if his name was Ztephen? Yeah, probably.
Hear me out, it’s technically the best if it’s your first fighting game.
the fact that this video wasn't sponsored by Manscaped will remain one of the greatest failures in history.
This was one of those games that had just enough novelty to make for a satisfying rental experience in the '90s. And nothing more than that.
[Celebrity Deathmatch on PS2, Xbox, & PS1:I am inevitable Matthew. I WILL FIND HIM.]
P.F.? = Putrid Farts(?)
Oh, maybe it's the sound you make as you're swiftly losing your temper when you play this game! 😡{pfffffffffffffffff...)
man this is a repressed memory...I remember renting the game all the time as a kid next to Dynamite Heady. For some reason the golf swing move was extremely funny to me and my friends so we would spam it
Can someone explain the seemingly random God Hand comparison that pops up at 15:48? I get that it has lower scores than Party Babyz, but why God Hand specifically?
I can only assume that it's because it's made by Capcom, the king of the genre of games that PF Games was trying to amateurishly break into with Ballz.
But somehow they managed to make a superior 3D beat-em-up in Party Babyz. I'm choosing to believe it's in the same genre.
@@didiercollard
I've never played any of these baby games, so I see no reason not to accept your version of reality.
"Ballz 3D on 3DO". Now there's a sentence with "Game of the Year" stamped all over it!
Whatever BGM you're using sounds simultaneously like my hard drive is dying and the water pipes in my house are vibrating and about to explode.
1:51
"... the Edge."
"... pulled out at the last minute."
Some of the Petz games are localized Japanese games. One Christmas I got Dogz on DS from an aunt, and while the graphics are cute is it really repetive and limited. They could've done more with it, but instead it's the same day in and day out except for Sundays where you can't do much at all...
The localized Japanese games from the 2000's are fine for what they are, but they're not real Petz games - Ubisoft just cannibalized the trademark for that purpose after buying the company. the real PF Magic petz games are the 1995-1999 PC games that use the same rendering technology as Ballz 3D, but improved.
@@mirandaseverance7119 I know, I understood as soon as I saw it. Something felt off even though I wasn't familiar with either franchise at the time.
Art Of Fighting KOF96 theme is de best of the video! xDDD
Thanks Matt for having suffered for us so that we know this masterpiece of horror.
Why does the clown guy look like a knock-off of Ronald McDonald?
Godhand got a three while some baby game got a 7? They must’ve gotten papers mixed up
This is the most pedantic of nitpicks... That said, at ~3:05, there's a mention that the ball spites would let you get a 3D effect with "rotation and scaling." The nit pick is that the whole trick of ball-sprite 3D hacks was that you *didn't* ever need to rotate the ball sprites. (And you can get away with a surprising amount without scaling just by having a few pre-scaled ball sprites of different sizes that you flip between.)
Any given ball is only moving in X-Y translations around your screen. That's why it was fast enough even on slow hardware. The idea is that if you did rotate a perfectly smooth sphere in 3D, it would look exactly the same anyway. So you just translate groups of sprites in X-Y in patterns that mimic the movement of points along a 3D shape, and your brain just 100% imagines that there is rotation of spheres happening rather than just translations of circles.
Almost two minutes into the video and the Max clip already had me dying 😂😂
This was my fighting game as a child. No Street Fighter, no Mortal Kombat, I had Ballz. I remember playing Turbo, because the AI had little to no answer for his jumping dive kick special. Doing the fatalities in this game was stupid easy, too. Just hit up 3 times when the enemy's health was low.
Ah, this is where Cruelty Squad got the inspiration for its soundtrack