General Aspects

Genre

Windjammers genre is “sports arcade game”, which consists in playable simulations of real sports in an arcade machine. The game mechanics are the same as in the original sport, but sometimes there are some add-ons or power ups to engage the gameplay.

Football frenzy

In the concrete case of Windjammers, it isn’t based on a real sport, but it has rules and is treated as such. In this example, we can see this kind of add-ons and power ups, as the characters of the game have personal special abilities and skills.

The Ultimate 11: SNK Football Championship

Similar games

Pong

Pong is a two-dimensional sports game that simulates table tennis. The two players control an in-game paddle by moving it vertically across the left or right side of the screen, respectively. The goal is for each player to reach eleven points before the opponent by making the other player fail to return the ball.

Pong

Battle Flip Shot

Battle Flip Shot is a modern take on the classic Pong game, where each player controls a character which acts as a paddle and can move on its corresponding half of the screen arena. On each corner of the arena and behind the players are multiple targets. The main objective of the game is to bounce a ball back into the opponent's field in order to hit its targets.

There are five characters available, each of them having their own unique "Power Shot" ability. Aside of that, players can also use a slide to move quickly around the arena and a taunt to provoke the opponent. It's really similar to Windjammers in terms of mechanics, but this one is more related to Pong than Windjammers.

Battle Flip Shot

Street Hoop

Street Hoops is a streetball video game released in 2002. The game features real life players like 1/2 Man 1/2 Amazing, Hot Sauce, Cypress Hill and Headache. It is less dramatic and more realistic than the NBA Street game, as the characters cannot jump over the hoop entirely. Just like NBA Street, you can create your own players and play on real courts. The game has three different modes: "World Tournament", "Lord of the Field" and "Pick-up".

It is similar to Windjammers in relation to the sportsmanship of the game, given the fact that it is needed in order to win the matches and progress in the game.

Street Hoop

Market positioning

In North America (April 1994), Windjammers was the fourteenth most-popular arcade game at the time, and in July 1994, was listed as the nineteenth most-popular arcade game at the time.

In Japan (May 1994), Windjammers was listed as the twenty-second most-successful table arcade unit of the month, outperforming other arcade titles such as Samurai Showdown. According to Famitsu, the Neo Geo CD version sold over 4,307 copies in its first week on the market.

Related to awards, the video game website Giant Bomb gave the title their "Old Game of the Year" award in 2013. The game has also enjoyed a resurgence in popularity thanks to competitiveness. In 2018, it appeared at the Evolution Championship Series (EVO) annual fighting game championships in Las Vegas as a side tournament.

Technical profile

Neo Geo MVS

The game uses the Neo Geo MVS hardware, which it has the following features:

• Processor (CPU): The central processor used is the Motorola 68000 with 12 MHz of speed. There’s also a coprocessor, which is called Zilog Z80, with 4 MHz.

• Graphics processing unit (GPU): It has some customized chips and circuits in order to generate image, video and graphics properly. This is because the hardware needed to be versatile in order to adapt to certain models and system versions without affecting its functionality.

Neo Geo MVS Motherboard

• Memory (RAM): The memory RAM video usage is about 68 kb and the memory RAM working usage, 64 kb. The machine has a memory card of 8 kb that can save the game’s progress, and you can keep playing it on the Neo Geo console at home.

• Sound: The system uses the sound chip Yamaha YM2610, with 15 sound channels.

• Resolution: The original resolution of the monitor is 320 x 224 pixels.

• Frames per second (fps): The machine can run arcade games at 60 fps, although games show less than 60 frames per second.

History of the game

Data East logo

Windjammers was released by the Data East enterprise in 1994, for the arcade machine Neo Geo. They were the developers and the publishers of the game. However, the people who were behind the scenes, in other words, the original creators of the game, are:

• Producer(s): Takaaki Inoue.

• Designer(s): Tomo Adachi.

• Programmer(s): Takaaki Inoue, Wataru Iida.

• Artist(s): Makoto Nozu, Masateru Inagaki, Masayuki Inoshita, Galactus Mina, Yoshiyuki Urushibara, Hiroshi Tamawashi, Tomoyuki Arakawa.

• Composer(s): Seiichi Hamada, Tomoyoshi Sato.

In regard to the different versions of the game that have been released during the years, these are several ports made by Dotemu:

• PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita in August 2017.

• Nintendo Switch in October 2018.

• iiRcade in February 2021.

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