Dreadball – homage to it’s (unintentional) roots?

The very first time that I saw the cover of Dreadball when Mantic Games launched the KS for the game, my immediate thought was “that looks like Speedball”.

If you have listened to Episode #93 of the podcast, you will know that I put this to Jake Thornton at the time – he replied that Speedball had completely passed him by, and he found the cries of “Ice Cream! Ice Cream!” during the very first playtest day to be somewhat bemusing,  until someone explained the origin of that particular chant.

If you are not in-the-know, Speedball 2 is a computer game from the 1980’s, designed by the Bitmap Brothers. It depicts a violent futuristic ball game, something like handball,  set in an metallic arena. The comparisons with Dreadball are obvious(I’d played it a huge amount on my Sega Mega-Drive)

Mantic Games have just announced that, as part of the current Dreadball Xtreme Kickstarter, they have teamed up with Bitmap Brothers to produce a new MVP: Hector Weiss, the star of the cover of the original Speedball game.

You had me at Speedball…