Windjammers 2 Review – Spin To Win

Windjammers 2 asks what happens when you mix air hockey and a 2D fighting game. As it turns out, the result is a lot of fun to play. The sequel doesn’t change much from the original Windjammers, which came out on the NeoGeo 27 years ago. It’s simple, makes you sweat, and is very addicting. 

At first glance, Windjammers 2 doesn’t look like much more than a game of Pong, and in many ways, that’s not too far from the truth. You move your character quickly around your side of the screen, trying to throw the frisbee back at your opponent and score points if you can get it past their defences. But this simple starting point gets a lot more complicated when you add a bunch of different strategies and cool mind games that take a lot of inspiration from fighting games.

If you’ve played Windjammers, which came out in 1994 and is still available on PlayStation and the Switch, this idea should sound very familiar. Windjammers 2 stays true to the original design, with only a few gameplay changes, new characters, and better graphics to set it apart from the original. Given how little has changed, it’s incredible how well the old formula still works after 25 years, and the small changes that have been made are all excellent. For example, it helps a lot to be able to jump in the air and spike the disc into your opponent’s court.

Windjammers 2 keeps many of its predecessor’s art styles, like hand-drawn characters and a top-down view that lets you see a lot of each person. This is almost as impressive as how well it does what it does.

When it comes to changes to how the game is played, the Super Meter is the star of the show. It fills up a little bit every time you throw the disc. When fully charged, you can throw a strong disc that moves quickly and is hard to predict. You can also use your full Super Meter to block any attack thrown at you and stop points from being scored against you.

The last mode is the Online Mode, which lets you play anime frisbee with people from all over the world wide web. It comes with two matchmaking playlists: Quick Match and Ranked Match. Quick Match puts you up against any available player, while Ranked Match puts you up against players with similar skills and lets you move up or down the ranking ladder based on your wins and losses.

Windjammers 2 is an excellent follow-up to a classic game from the past. It adds new characters, levels, and abilities, making this fighting game version of Pong more fun and addicting. It doesn’t have some key features, like a spectator mode or a tutorial to help new players learn how to fight, and it makes a weak attempt to tell a story about its characters, but it’s so fun to play that it’s easy to overlook these flaws.