Games - Ball Revamped

Home > Listing Index > Games > Ball Revamped

	Games - Ball Revamped

Ball Revamped is a series of popular Macromedia Flash games developed by John Cooney (alias jmtb02). It is currently sponsored by the Flash game portal Armor Games (formerly Games of Gondor).

Gameplay

The hero of the game is an unnamed ball. Its appearance resembles that of a beach ball with the colors purple, green, red, and blue. The player is to maneuver the ball using the arrow keys toward each level's goal. The ball immediately "dies" upon touching a wall, object, enemy, or enemy projectile. Although the player has an infinite number of lives, each death forces the player to restart at the beginning of a level, wasting valuable time. The goal of the game is to complete all levels in the fastest time possible. Beginning with Ball Revamped II: Metaphysik, the number of deaths is also computed in the final score.

History

In early April, 2004, John Cooney, author of all the Ball Revamped games, decided to create a physics engine which allowed for falling objects. The engine soon turned into a small game, in which a ball floats down to the bottom of the screen, while avoiding walls and obstacles. The author called it "Ball", and it was developed into a game. When 50 levels were created, the author decided to publish the game globally.

The game "Ball" was released May 11, 2004, with a debut on Newgrounds. The game was a small demo file with a very limited amount of levels. When the author received good feedback about the game from reviews and the score of the game, he decided to release better version of the same game. A future version was released on Newgrounds, on June 1st, 2004. This version, Ball Revamped, had 11 different power ups, 100 levels, and was the beginning of the creation of many future Ball Revamped Games. It was the first award the game has won, with a Fifth-place Daily Portal Award from Newgrounds.

On January 7, 2005, Ball Revamped II: Metaphysik was released. Considered to be the best Ball Revamped game (by judgement of score, popularity, and traffic), Ball Revamped II has colorful backgrounds and smoother gameplay. Each level set is grouped with different power ups and obstacles, and the game featured the first boss of the series. In addition to the release of the game, a new physics engine was created for the release, allowing for better control, better gravity, and faster rendering. The game became increasingly popular with this release.

With the surge of popularity in the series, the author released shortly afterwards the twin release of Ball Revamped III: Andromeda, and Ball Revamped III: Gemini. Releasing on April 4th, 2005, each game featured its own unique levels, power ups, and new enemies. What made these releases different is the addition of Physics Engine v.3, which allowed for movement of the level and background, with a stationary ball in the center. This allowed the levels to become expansive, creating a maze-like style of gameplay in addition to the puzzle-like aspect of the game. Each game had its own 50 levels, with a final boss at the end of each, respectively.

At the end of Ball Revamped III dual-release, the author was expecting to be finished with the series. However, in Early October, 2005, the author annouced that there would be a fourth-release of the game, titled Ball Revamped IV: Amplitude. This game, according to the author's website, was going to feature 100 more levels, 2 bosses, 20 power ups, 2 gameplay modes, a high score list, and a new level editor, but when it was released (January 16, 2006), there was only 1 mode of gameplay, and the level editor hasn't been released yet :( . Since release, the game has been played over 1 million times, and is among the top games on many Flash game websites.

The author has announced on his site, there will be a Ball Revamped V.

Accolades

The Ball Revamped Series is one of the most decorated flash series on the Web. Combining six Portal Awards from Newgrounds, top-50 games list three times on FlashPlayer, and being featured on prominent sites such as EBaums World and AddictingGames, the series has made a mark upon the internet community. Briefly, Ball Revamped 4 was on Newgrounds Top-50 All Time list, considered by many to be the ultimate top list of Flash games and animations. The game has also been featured on BBC World Television, with a small clip featured on the television show, World Click.

Time trial

The Ball series has a fairly active speedrunning community online. The game's features support this: a number of levels have multiple routes that vary in difficulty. Both the time taken and number of deaths accumulated on all levels are factored into the final score. Thus, speedrunners must find a compromise between ease and distance to produce runs with optimal scores.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Ball Revamped ]

Searches on eBay

ball revamped