Kings of the Beach

Kings of The Beach is a great beach volleyball game from Electronic Arts that remains to this day one of the only game of its kind. (There are actually more recent freeware releases, but they are all arcade-style games with little regard to rules of the sport). Kasey Chang's review at MobyGames says it all:

"The Good: Simple interface (just 3 action buttons besides the direction keys!), easy to learn, plenty of practice (serve, set, spike), decent graphics (for its time).

The Bad: A bit TOO simple at times, as blocking and spiking is mainly guessing (it's nearly impossible to fake the AI at the highest levels), requires just a BIT too much timing (it's HARD to just "lob" a ball instead of spiking it, and to jump for a block at EXACTLY the right time), gets repetitive after a while.

The Bottom Line: KotB is probably the only beach volleyball game ever (certainly don't remember any other). It uses a third-person perspective where you can see the whole court from the "side". You control one player while the AI controls the other. You can pass/set for each other, spike, block, and do other moves. You can even serve three different ways, including jump serve! The "campaign" is to win the world BVB championship by playing in tournaments in various locales (from Rio to Miami to Long Beach and so on) against various AI opponents.

The characters are small but nicely animated. After getting a point your characters will high-five each other. A hard spike can cause the opponent to miss a dig and do a roll, then stand up and brush off the sand... If you win your two players will do a victory dance. Some of the characters will even argue with the referee, and maybe even issued a yellow or red card!

The controls are very simple: just three action buttons low, middle, and high. When serving you get three different serves. When playing low is dig, middle is set, and high is jump/block/spike.

The game is quite simple but quite entertaining, as you will swear after losing points and cheer after winning points. The graphics are simple and the music simple, but it is effective in drawing you into the game world.

All in all, it's due for a serious remake, now that Beach Volleyball is an acknowledged Olympic sport. If you can find it, it's worth trying for nostalgia's sake." Highly recommended, especially for fans of Epyx's classic California Games series.

Review By HOTUD