Windjammers 2 Review

ign.com:

Windjammers 2 answers the question: what do you get when you combine air hockey with a 2D fighting game? The result, as it turns out, is an absolute blast to play. Changing very little from the original Windjammers that came out on the NeoGeo 27 years ago, the sequel is simple, sweat-inducing, and extremely addictive. Even though it lacks a few key features you’d expect from something designed to be so highly competitive in this day and age and fumbles its attempt at telling any kind of story, Windjammers 2 is a more-than-worthy successor to the retro classic that came before it.

At a glance, Windjammers 2 looks to be little more than a game of Pong – and in a lot of ways that’s not far off. You frantically move your character around your side of the screen, doing your best at deflecting the frisbee back towards your opponent and scoring points if you manage to snake it past their defenses. But this simple starting point is made a lot more complex by introducing an arsenal of diverse tactics and awesome mind games that draw heavily on the fighting game genre.

Of course if you’ve played 1994’s Windjammers (which is available to this day on PlayStation and the Switch) then this concept should sound very familiar to you, because Windjammers 2 remains incredibly loyal to that design, with only a handful of gameplay tweaks, new characters, and improved graphics to distinguish it from the original. Given how few changes there are, it’s impressive how well the old formula holds up a quarter century later, and the small additions that have been added are all solid improvements. The ability to jump in the air and spike the disc down into your opponent’s court, for example, is particularly useful.

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