Gaelco_sports_collection_squash
Image: QUByte Interactive

QUByte Interactive has announced the Galeco Sports Collection, a compendium of five arcade titles from the former arcade developer's coin-op catalogue. As the name suggests, all five games feature a different variation of sportsball, including vehicular sportsball.

The first two titles are perhaps Gaelco's best-remembered arcades: World Rally Championship (1993) and its sequel, World Rally 2 (1995). These ruthless isometric racers pit players' reactions against blistering, high-speed racing action and brutally unforgiving time limits. In the arcade scene, the World Rally games gobbled up many a credit, with map recognition a key element of success. Despite the difficulty, players kept coming back, thanks to the attractive visual design, iconic nighttime effects, and super-smooth steering.

For those who prefer their death-defying sans wheels, Snow Board Championship (1997) retains the isometric style of the rally titles, but moves the action to an array of treacherous downhill ski slopes. Players race to complete the course with the fastest time, while performing various jumps and tricks and barreling through Green Hill Zone-esque loop-de-loops. Just remember when you pizza and when you french fries or you're gonna have a bad time.

Conversely, Touch 'n' Go (1995) moves the action from the slopes to sands, with a fairly basic beach volleyball sim that is "enhanced" by the use of digitised sprites - from the players themselves to a frighteningly faceless audience and a bevvy of swimsuit-clad cheerleaders. Basically, if you ever wanted to see a Pit-Fighter beach volleyball game, this is about as close as you're going to (want to) get.

Saving the "best" for last, the collection rounds out with the excitingly titled Squash (1992). The oldest game in the compendium, Squash offers standard one-on-one, enclosed court action, as players guide one of a selection of (fake) international stars to squash supremacy. The game might have dropped off the planet entirely if not for its own notoriety.

Y'see, for some reason, Squash is incredibly horny, and takes multiple opportunities to display a cabal of buxom, pixelated women in between plays. If you didn't know that squash had cheerleaders, you do now. Most notably, one woman is entirely topless - waving her shirt over her head like she's at a 1988 Guns N' Roses gig, and not watching the most Middle-Class-Office-Executive sport in history.

Whether the edition of Squash featured in Gaelco Sports Collection will be uncensored remains to be seen (or unseen?). Screenshots show the offending mammeries hidden behind a Spanish flag, so I wouldn't be surprised if QUByte is looking to duck that 'Mature' rating.

Gaelco Sports Collection is coming soon to PC and consoles.