This ain’t your daddy’s frisbee… Air hockey… Thing.
Windjammers is yet another one of those games that I’ve heard all these elusive and amazing tales of, but never really bothered to check out or even watch videos on. My interest was at its’ peak when I found out that there is a fairly large community of people who play it as a competitive fighting game… And if you know me you know I love me some fighting games, so I thought to myself, “fuck it”, let’s get hype and try this bad boy out.
So, before we get into gameplay, I would like to point out what this wonderful port brings new to the table – Not much, admittedly, but that’s not a bad thing. Windjammers is a game that is so dependent on its gameplay that it really doesn’t need some more bells and whistles here and there, although they would be appreciated. You have two mini-games, an online mode, some screen filters and two different types of music to choose from, and that’s about it really. Again, it doesn’t really need much more, but after the Street Fighter Anniversary Collection, I got a little spoiled on all that amazing bonus artwork.
Now the gameplay is where this wolf in sheep’s clothing shines. If you’re like me and hadn’t heard of Windjammers until quite recently, the best way I can describe it is really hype virtual air hockey… And Lethal League if you’ve ever played that masterpiece.
You get a load of characters to choose from with different stats and three different supers for each character – You get served your disc, or frisbee or whatever and start Windjamming; you throw them at your opponent’s goal in hopes of getting it in there… But then you put in tosses, and bunts in there to change the speed of the game, charge up your supers and land some really dirty goals to make your opponent feel all kinds of salty; also, I cannot stress this enough: This game is not easy. It will take you a good bit of time to actually get competent at it – Luckily there’s a short but sweet little tutorial menu to get you through the basics so you understand your entire moveset before you get going; the rest however is up to you, choosing which character and what stage to do battle on.
Seriously, this game is played extremely competitively, and it’s fuckin’ wild.
The game also looks amazing for being a port of a classic retro title, and if you told me this was one of those cool retro indie games I would have believed you because the pixel art in this game is phenomenal; it has a 90’s summer aesthetic with cool shapes, bright colours, and some smokin’ hot dudes and babes just chillaxing at the beach yo.
As for it being on the Switch, well… It’s on the Switch. There’s not much to say other than it’s a good port; it runs well, looks great, multiplayer is really good even on the teeny tiny Joy-Cons. Handheld mode is truly a blessing for when you just want to play something really quick to waste some time, or even get some practice in, because after you get your friends hooked onto this game it’s going to be a bloodbath next time you guys meet up because IT. GETS. HEATED.
So in conclusion, Windjammers is a fantastic game, a fantastic port, amazing on the Switch and if there was one complaint, it would be that there should be more mini-games or a trial mode where it gives you specific challenges or something. Some sort of content to really get you familiar with the more complicated tech in the game. Oh, and maybe an art gallery; you can never go wrong with an art gallery.
I’m gonna give Windjammers on the Switch an: