Beach Spikers


Beach Spikers: Virtua Beach Volleyball, released for arcade as Beach Spikers, is a beach volleyball video game released in Japanese arcades in 2001 followed by home ports in all regions for the Nintendo GameCube in 2002. The game was published by Sega and developed in-house by Sega AM2.

Gameplay

Based on the sport of beach volleyball, the game revolves around two-on-two matches where a volleyball is hit back and forth over a net until one side allows the ball to touch the ground. Similar to Sega's Virtua sports games, most of the gameplay in Beach Spikers is based around the concept of "charging" the strength of moves, judged by how long the button is held prior to release at the point of which the move is executed. There is a button for setting and a button for rallying which, combined with how long the button is held to determine strength, is the basis for the way the entire game is played.
There are two modes to choose from: Arcade Mode and World Tour mode. Arcade mode is a basic progression through a series of AI opponents, and in the multiplayer portion of Arcade Mode, it is head-to-head matches for up to four human players. In World Tour mode, the player take a user-created team through a tournament, earning points as you go that allow you to increase the stats of your players and also unlock special teams and players, including one based on the character Ulala from Sega's Space Channel 5 series. You have the option to customize your own players or choose a team from a specific country, such as the United States, Jamaica, Italy, and France, to name a few.

Reception

In Japan, Game Machine listed Beach Spikers on their September 1, 2001 issue as being the fifth most-successful arcade game of the year.
The game was met with some positive reception, as GameRankings gave the GameCube version a score of 77.20%, while Metacritic gave it 76 out of 100.