0 to Z of Playstation 1 Games - Break Volley

         

Break Volley is a sports game based around volleyball that was released on the Playstation in Japan. The game was developed by Art Co and published by Aqua Rouge for the games initial release on the 11^th of February 1999.

The game also received a re release as a part of the Simple 1500 range of budget titles in Japan, this re release was published by D3 Publisher and was released on the 25^th of January 2001, this re release was also exclusive to Japan as well.

Break Volley is a sports game based around indoor volleyball and features both make and female teams as well as featuring 12 national teams as well, the game also features a multi tap function for up to 4 players to play at the same time.

The games features four modes in total the first is the exhibition mode, this is the only mode that allows for two player cooperative play (two players on the same team. The game features an edit mode, this mode allows players to create their own players and teams, a training mode is available for you to practice for heading into the final mode and the main mode of the game the Tournament mode.

Movement of your players when on the court is done with the D-Pad, the game also supports the duel shock controller with the left analogue stick being used for movement instead, the game also has vibration function as well.

 

The Triangle button has multiple functions in the game, the first being to perform a short serve , additional functions for this button also include Blocking, Passing and performing a short smash. In addition to performing a short serve with the player can also perform a normal serve, this is done with any of the other face buttons. Players can perform smash shots by pressing the Square or circle button, and can receive by pressing the X or Circle button.

 

When playing the game each team has five players on the court, while player the game is viewed from a side on viewpoint, with the camera moving left or right depending on which way the ball has been volleyed from. The only UI that is present in the game is the score in the top left of the screen

  

This being a Japanese only release on the Playstation critic reviews for the game are none existent, as a result we will be heading over to GameFAQs for their user ratings. We find the game currently sitting at an average user rating of 3.86/5 from a total of 7 user ratings.

Overall Break Volley rates as the 23^rd highest rated Playstation 1 sports game of all time on GameFAQs, and is the 422^nd highest rated Playstation 1 game of all time on the site. The game rated well with users with not a single user rating falling below a 3/5.

Taking a closer look at the user ratings we find one user rated the game at it’s lowest of a 3/5, with find the majority of users with three in total rated the game at a solid 3.5/5. Another single user each rated the game at either a 4/5, 4.5/5 and a 5/5.

Moving on to the game difficulty we find a total of eight users rating this category, we find a majority of users five in total rated the game as having just the right difficulty level. The remaining three users rated the game as being tough, averaging out the game comes in at having a just right/tough difficulty level.

Lastly we have the games lifespan, here we find seven users rating this category, where we find a majority of users spent under an hour with the game, with a total of 3 users spending this long with the game. another couple of users spent around just an hour with the game. The final two users spent much longer with the game, with one user each spending 12 or 20 hours with the game. Averaging out this comes to an average lifespan of around 5 hours.

This is the part of 0 to Z where is visit four online retailers and see what the availability of the title is, and what price you would be looking at if you wanted to pick this title up, the sites that I will be using for this are Amazon.com, eStarland.com, retrogames.co.uk and Gamedude.com I know the last one is very location specific, but from a podcast I listen to, I’ve heard they have a huge stock of older games, Ebay has now been dropped unless the game is unavailable at other retailers.

 

So lets get down to business with Gamedude, where unsurprisingly we don’t find this Japanese only release game listed on the site. The same goes for Retrogames.co.uk and eStarland.com, so we will quickly head over to Amazon.com in the hopes of finding at least one copy of the game available.

We do find the game available on Amazon.com with a modest supply of the game available, while the supply is only modest it is in a good or better quality condition for the most part. With a very good condition copy available for $9.96, this also comes with free shipping as well.

A large majority of the copies on offer are priced form this point up to around the $12 mark, all of the copies in this price range are in good or very good condition. Beyond this price range the game price jumps up to around the $20 mark with one further copy priced at $23.98. Beyond this is the usual overpriced copy, this time it is the only acceptable condition copy which is priced up at $60.

Written by

P J Gibbon