Faceball 2000 Review (Super Nintendo, 1992)

Honestly, what is one really expecting when they decide to take a chance on a Super Nintendo game called Faceball 2000? Chances are it’s not a first person shooter, because the genre was in its infancy back then. Not to mention the fact that the Super Nintendo was a 16-bit console that struggled with 3D gaming. Yet, here we are. Faceball 2000 is one of the most complicated first person shooters of its era. I remember renting it and being amazed that I was able to move so freely in 3D space. Oh, and the gameplay was fun too. Decades later this one is hardly the technical marvel that it once was. Today we’re going to take a look at it and figure out how it holds up. Spoiler alert; it’s one of the big SNES hidden gems. Let’s dig in.

Faceball 2000 is actually based on a PC game released in 1987 called Midi Maze. This game had you playing as geometric shapes with faces as you travel around 3D arenas shooting down enemies. It was a first person shooter, and one of the earliest examples of the genre. My understanding is that this is an updated version of the game. At least Faceball 2000 has the same premise. You and a group of CPU controlled face characters are dropped into an enclosed square shaped arena that’s set up kind of like a rat maze. It has walls, halls, and open areas. Generally there are few actual dead ends. These are rather simple in design, and pretty much impossible to get lost in. They do vary in size but even the biggest ones are generally symmetrical.

You have a single attack; each face can fire a same colored ball at the enemies. Your goal is simply to defeat a specific number of enemies (called Smiloids here) in any given stage. Upon doing so an exit unlocks (in the form of a glowing circle on the ground. You float across it to complete the level. Easy enough, right? Things can get a bit chaotic with how many enemies are in any given stage. Faceball 2000 does a good job of easing players into the action. The first few enemy types generally don’t give chase. Some of them don’t move at all; they just rotate in place firing shots at random. Then the game introduces new enemies which are differentiated by their shape and color. Gremlins in particular are a real pain. These guys don’t necessarily fire shots at you. Instead they give chase and ram players.

There are several other enemy types introduced as the game goes on, and some of them are downright diabolical. To offset the difficulty is the re-generating life bar. Your character’s health is measured by their mood which is indicated by face icons at the top of the screen. You start off happy, then plain faced, sad, and finally dead. As I already mentioned this re-generates as long as you don’t take damage so it’s possible to stay away from enemies to recover. This is easier said than done though. Enemies all take multiple hits to dispatch, and some of them go beyond the four you’re allowed. It’s definitely a little unfair, but enemies sometimes target each other (or maybe it’s just by accident. I can’t tell) so you’re at least given some reprieve.

To help offset the difficulty you’ll occasionally find power-ups. These are dropped by special versions of the normal enemies. These are differentiated from the normal pack because they’re flashing. They also can take more hits, and generally fight back a little harder. These are super useful and worthwhile to seek out. One power-up gives you extra armor thus allowing your smileoid to take an additional hit, another makes you move faster temporarily, and one of these increases your firing rate. You’ll also find special enhanced items that give you additional lives, make you invisible, freezes all enemies, etc. These are all extremely useful and well worth the risk of defeating the more difficult smiloids.

It’s not fair to expect a first person shooter on the SNES to run smooth like butter. Faceball 2000 has a low framerate, but it’s at least consistent. I found the game surprisingly playable, and even impressive with how well it runs. Don’t get me wrong. There are some trade-offs. For one thing the gameplay area is a small window in the middle of the screen. Additionally there’s a lot of pop-in. As you move forward things in the environment like walls and enemies just appear in front of you. It’s not as bad as it sounds though. You still have plenty of time to react given the limitation. I actually found the biggest problem in the game is that when you first fire a shot the ball is so big at the front of the screen it can be tough to see past it. Even this isn’t terrible.

Controls can take a little getting used to. You’re stuck using a d-pad, after all. You move and turn with the directional buttons, and fire with A. The shoulder buttons are put to use too, but unfortunately it isn’t for strafing. Holding down either L or R causes your character to rotate in place either left or right. When the action is heavy the game suffers from a bit of input lag. I found button presses sometimes took a few extra milliseconds to register. Additionally playing this game kind of hurt my fingers after a while because of how often you’ll be holding up on the d-pad. There isn’t anything specifically wrong with the controls, rather, it’s the SNES pad that’s the problem.

As impressive as Faceball 2000 is when playing solo it’s a whole other ball game in multiplayer. Yes, the game supports split screen co-op and versus modes. It’s absolutely insane that the developers were able to pull this off on the ancient Super Nintendo. This mode is even crazier considering it’s still playable here too. You can tackle just about every game mode with a friend. There’s even the option to set specific parameters around a one-on-one match. Playing a multiplayer first person shooter on home console felt like the future back when this game released. My brother and I put endless hours into it. I would go so far as to say that this is easily one of the best SNES multiplayer games of all time. It truly is that good.

Faceball 2000 is packed full of content. You have the single player ‘story’ mode in Cyberscape. This is around seventy levels long. Each of the stages is different enough despite recycling graphics and music that things are at least relatively interesting throughout. The two player campaign is called Cyberzone. This is around half the size of Cyberscape, but forty co-op levels is nothing to scoff at. Especially for a Super Nintendo game. Finally you have Arena. This is the obligatory versus mode wherein you and a second player fight it out against just each other. While it could have used more settings to fine tune I’m perfectly happy with what we’re given. Faceball 2000 will last players a long time.

Graphically the game is okay. There’s almost no textures here. I also can’t figure out if it’s rendered in polygons because everything is so plain looking. Basically all objects are a single color. Except for the backgrounds, but those are just still images. Enemies at least have a face painted on them, but in some cases it’s just eyes. It’s also a bit of a bummer that the display is a mere on-screen window. Regarldess it’s a competent looking game, and it runs pretty well for a 3D title on the Super Nintendo. This is true even in multiplayer mode. The soundtrack is a bit weird. It’s best described as slow tempo industrial rock, but it all sounds distinct to the Super Nintendo. It took me a bit but I grew to enjoy the music. Nothing else out there sounds quite like Faceball 2000.

Against all odds Faceball 2000 is surprisingly good. A first person shooter on the Super Nintendo has no business running and playing this well. It’s not perfect, not by a long shot, but I find the game is playable and fun even today. If you’re looking for an amazing multiplayer title for the platform then you can’t go wrong with this one. It’s even good in solo mode for those of us that don’t have friends that play games.