Sponge Blob Tennis 0.1 - by Michel Rouzic (2007)

This game is a sort of cross-over between Pong and a tennis game. In this game, the two players are represented by yellow rectangular blobs. Each player is either played by a human player, or by an Artificial Intelligence, which implies that we can have a person playing against another person, against the A.I. or even have two A.I.'s fight each other. By default the left player is controlled by an A.I. and the right player by you.

This game is three dimensional, and is seen from an isometric point of vue, which can be confusing. In order to make things more obvious, the shadow of the ball is always right under the ball itself. Keep it in mind when trying to catch the ball.

One of the particularities of this game is its exploitation of the third dimension, by enabling players to jump in the air and to throw the ball much higher than usual for the opponent to try catching while jumping. Here is how it works. If one player is jumping while hitting the ball, the ball will go much higher than usual. For the opponent to catch it, he will have to jump right on time and at the correction position. If he catches it, he will smash the ball at a speed of over 200 kilometers per hour (130 miles per hour), making it difficult for his adversary to catch such a fast ball as he has just recovered from his landing.

In this game, the scoring complies fairly well with the official tennis scoring, with a few exceptions. There are no tie breaks, thus sets must be won by having won two more games than the other player. Also, it has no end, meaning there can be as many sets played as possible.

The scores are displayed on the score board. The first line of this board matches to the left player's scores, and the second line to the right player's. The first column of this board displays the points of the on-going game, the second column the number of games won by each player in the current set, and the third column the number of sets won by each player.

Documentation about the function of the GP2X' buttons in this game can be found by pressing the Select button while in-game. Also, for reasons of convenience, when playing alone against an A.I., you can not only use your own jump button in order to jump, but also your opponent's button, thus allowing you to play more comfortably with two hands instead of one.

As of now, the game runs on the GP2X at 80 MHz, which makes the game consistently run at 50 FPS. My goal for the near future is to make it run as smoothly at 32 MHz.

Credits :

Original idea and artwork : An italian artist whose name I ignore (http://itop-edition.deviantart.com/)
Developement : Michel Rouzic b.k.a. A_SN