Windjammers 2 has a character selection screen cheat code. It’s a simple thing: spin the analogue stick in circles a few times and you’ll unlock a dorky superhero named DiscMan. He plays much the same as the rest of the roster, so really it’s a minor visual difference. But this arcade throwback is Windjammers 2 in a nutshell: this game is an ode to the old school so joyfully realised and tightly executed that you can almost hear the percussive jingle of pocket change underneath the hyperactive guitars and bit-crunched commentary.
The series had lain dormant since 1994, but French developer DotEmu has revived it with flair. Boiled down to the basics, this stylised sports game is effectively Pong, or Air Hockey. Two opponents punt a plastic Frisbee-style disc back and forth, aiming to throw the other off and score a hit behind the goal line. The longer the disc stays in play, the more momentum it gathers and the tenser things get. Blocking the disc’s path is enough to intercept and throw a shot back, but before long you’ll need to get more creative.
Thankfully, getting creative is where Windjammers 2 makes strides over its 1994 predecessor. It’s also where it becomes apparent that it shares as much, if not more, of its lineage with games such as Street Fighter than with sports games. Special meters, combos, the compressed cheers of an adoring, three-frame animated crowd – it’s all here. Time it correctly and you can follow an intercept with a dazzling special move, sending the disc careening back in flames at breakneck speed. If your opponent has saved their special, they can counter and knock your fancy return straight up into the air, before leaping up and yeeting it back to the other side of the court.
Throw in jumps, knockbacks and dashes, and there’s enough strategy and room for mastery here to keep you on your toes constantly. If the phrase “puddle-deep ocean” describes huge games that lack depth, then Windjammers 2 is a bottomless cocktail. Like DotEmu’s Streets of Rage 4, it’s uncompromising about recreating the controller-threatening difficulty of the arcade era but it never feels arbitrary, and it provides a brilliantly fun skillset to eventually master. As long as you don’t mind a few hours of failure while you learn how to commit yourself to the way of the disc, Windjammers 2 is this winter’s sport of the summer.
Windjammers 2 is out now; £15.49
