MIDI Maze was one of the original first person shooter games ever released. It premiered on computers in the late eighties, but was never a huge hit. It introduced the concept of death matches to the genre via its network capabilities. Years later the game was ported to the Game Boy of all systems under the moniker Faceball 2000. This was a pretty ambitious project, but not the topic of this review. What I’m hear to talk about today is the Super Nintendo port. I recall renting this several times in my childhood, and took a chance on it because of the silly box art and name. This was also the first FPS game that I ever played, and I fell in love with it instantly. Nowadays the only time I ever hear it mentioned is on a negative note. Unfortunately modern gamers consider it a bad title, and perhaps my judgement is clouded by nostalgia but I still consider it a darn good game. At the very least Faceball 2000 was far ahead of its time.
The game has no real story. At least not one that I could find. You begin by selecting one of several modes of play, choose a hovering geometric shape with basic facial features and color, and are then unleashed into a 3D arena. These are designed as standard mazes and have impenetrable walls that block your path but also provide cover. You can move forward, backwards, left/right and diagonal. You can even pivot by holding either of the shoulder buttons. Your character can shoot circular shots at opponents by pressing the A button, and your aim is determined by a static reticule in the center of the screen. The basic mode of play is Cyberzone, and your goal here is to defeat a certain number of opponents in each arena at which point an exit is revealed leading to the next stage. This in itself may sound a little boring, but there is a large variety of different enemies that are slowly introduced as you progress. The standard foes go down with just one shot and seldom fire back. They can however damage you by crashing into your character. Others, such as the saucer shaped Gremlins, lack the ability to fire shots and instead use their high speed to smack into you. There are several others which are more difficult because they are more aggressive, but these are introduced in subsequent stages. At first the game is quite easy, but it becomes a real challenge later on.
There are a few family friendly touches here that give the game a unique charm. For starters, your life gauge is determined by four different faces at the bottom of the screen. Each time you take a hit the your face becomes less happy, and the fourth hit you take results in the ‘have a nice day’ screen which indicates that you’ve lost a life. It’s even fully voiced, and the various characters speak in different tones. Unfortunately Faceball 2000 is a little lacking when compared to other first person shooters of its era. For one thing there are no additional weapons outside of the standard shot. Thankfully the developer did throw in some power-ups to keep things refreshing though. These are dropped by flashing enemies which only appear once or twice within each stage, and they’re generally more aggressive and can take more hits than their standard counterparts. The power-ups dropped by them include armor so that you can take additional hits, extra lives, an increase to your movement speed, and one ups the rate of your standard shots. These items, along with the enemy types, are enough to keep the game fresh and entertaining throughout.
The real high point here however are the various modes of play. Aside from the standard Cyberzone that I already went over you can also participate in Arena matches. Here you can select the number of each type of opponent, and compete with them to get the most kills. This is a mildly entertaining diversion, but the real reason to play is the multi player. As far as I know this is the only two player simultaneous first person shooter game on the console. You have the same options here; Cyberzone and Arena. You can co-op through the entire main game with a friend and as far as I can tell the only aspect that’s scaled back is the screen size to accommodate both players. You can even name your characters and when you aim at them during gameplay the title is displayed which makes it easy to tell who is who. In addition you can still play the arena mode, and can even turn off the computer controlled opponents for some one-on-one deathmatch. This was a multiplayer mainstay in my house for years and it’s what makes Faceball so fun.
While the engine runs impressively smooth the developers had to shrink the field of play. You view the action through a window, and the rest of the screen is covered in the HUD. It’s understandable, and your viewing area is still pretty decent. It shrinks down even more when playing with a friend, but it’s still quite manageable. Faceball 2000 runs surprisingly well for an early Super Nintendo game. The scaling is nice, and the action is locked down at a steady frame rate. The only issue is the fact that the scenery is very limited in detail. The stages are all confined areas with walls, and are generally only one or two colors. The draw distance is also not particularly good as you’ll notice in some of the more open areas enemies generally tend to pop in to view. Overall it’s a pretty decent looking game, and to have it run this well on 16-bit hardware is truly an amazing feat. The soundtrack however is a little weird. It’s mostly futuristic sounding high pitched guitar wails, and robotic drum beats. It’s not my favorite, but there’s nothing else quite like it.
In an age of Call of Duty and Halo Faceball 2000 doesn’t really hold up. The arenas are confined, weaponry is limited, and the graphics aren’t as impressive as they used to be. Fortunately there’s still some fun to be had here, and I don’t think it’s just the nostalgia talking this time. It gets a lot of flack nowadays, but Faceball 2000 is in my opinion one of the classic Super Nintendo releases. It might feel a little archaic, but there’s nothing else quite like it and it’s still quite playable even today. I recommend checking it out.
