120. Sanrio World Smash Ball! (Tomcat System, Super Famicom, 1993)

It's time for the final game in our tour of Sanrio games, were moving from the Famicom to the Super Famicom with Sanrio World Smash Ball! This was the only Sanrio game that I was really aware of prior to this exercise, so I assumed it would be the best of the lot. Like game #111 Sanrio Cup, Smash Ball is a fictional sport, this time kind of like a combination of billiards and soccer, with a little pinball thrown in for good measure.

The game takes place over a series of 30 arenas, each vertically oriented with a goal at the top and bottom that you are trying to get a disc (not sure why they called it "smash ball") into. You can move your character around and perform left or right swipes to influence the ball's direction. Your swipes have a pretty wide range, so there is a lot of quick back and forth action that makes the game really frantic and intense. If you've ever seen that gif of the 2 Wii Sports tennis players going at it, that's kind of what Sanrio World Smash Ball! feels like in its best moments.

If you hold either of the hit buttons, you can charge a super meter that lets you unleash a powerful straight shot once fully charged. The sound of the super hit has a great "THWACK" to it, like hitting a wiffle ball. You move onto the next arena by scoring 3 goals, and the levels themselves get more strange and interesting over time, eventually incorporating pinball-style bumpers and occasionally cramped geometry that keeps the game form getting stale. The other aspects of the game are not as generous: the music is fine but repetitive and the graphics are pretty lackluster, even though I'm coming off of a host of 8-bit Famicom games, those often had more character and energy to their designs. That said, the core of this game is just downright fun and exciting, and not even a boring presentation can make me forget that.

4/5, not the Windjammers-level e-sport I was hoping for, but it's a dang good time all the same