Back in high school, when I was a self-inflicted outcast, my dad told me to pick a sport. How about football? I saw a bunch of meatheads groping each other over a scrap of dead skin. Basketball? Not unless I had a second puberty on the way. Track? Sounded like working for fun. Dodgeball was the one thing I was good at, but the powers that be deemed it too “unmanly” to be an actual sport. They obviously never saw the boys of Nekketsu at play.

Although we haven’t seen much of it stateside since the NES days, many gamers have a nostalgic spot reserved for the Nekketsu series. Loosely based around a crew of squat, rough-and-tumbled high schoolers, Nekketsu gave rise to a slew of beat-‘em-ups and numerous games encompassing every sport from hockey to basketball. Two games stood above the rest, and they are the stellar inspirations behind Super Dodgeball Brawlers – River City Ransom and the original Super Dodgeball.

On the surface, SDB is an innocent game of dodgeball. There is one ball, a court, four offensive players on one side, and three defensive players circling their opponents on the other side. As usual, catching the ball and pelting your opponent’s face with the harsh sting of rubber is the goal, with one major difference. Unlike the candy-apple version you played back in elementary school, there are no one-hit outs. In the world of Nekketsu, you’re in the game until your body can’t handle the abuse, and that guy across the way is holding a brick with your name on it.

Like any sport worth playing, taking a few steps across the line for a brass knuckled punch or a swift kick to the goodies is fair game. The ref won’t mind. In fact, he might be the one tossing all those sticks, chains, and bottles on the court in the first place. If you’re worried about the integrity of sportsmanship, just wait until the chips are down and it’s one against three. That pipe bomb at your feet is going to be the best teammate you ever had.

For the gentleman who believes in a clean (i.e. boring) game, the barbaric fisticuffs can be turned off, but even a slab of rubber can be a weapon in the right hands. Each character has two Supershots. They’re quite easy to pull off with a little practice, but the 100+ varieties will knock your head around the whole game through. Some, like the Plasma Shot and Photon Shot, are typical blasts of cranial-smashing destruction. Others, like the Cobra Shot, vanish in mid-air and reappear for a quick snap from behind. There are some questionably useless Supershots in the mix, but they’re few and far between.

You can’t always rely on the player with the best Supershot though. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses spread over ten stats. Someone with a howitzer for an arm is good for offense, but if he’s low on catching ability and stamina, he shouldn’t be hanging around the center line. In keeping with the legacy of River City Ransom, you can even spend your winnings on equipment to boost stats and multiply damage. Given their individuality, switching between characters is strangely difficult, which often leaves teammates open for a beating. Even with that oversight, the different attributes and Supershots give SDB a surprising element of strategy.

When the opponent charges the line for a Supershot, you could take your chances and go for the catch, duck and let a teammate absorb the blow, or even bolt into danger and kick him in the gut before he gets the shot off. Knowing that I was outclassed by team U.S.A., I left my star thrower, Kunio, in the back while his teammates whittled away at the opposition. It was one against four, but Kunio’s Pierce Shot had the precious ability to fly through its target and into the hands of my defense. With that bit of planning, I was able to outlast the Americans, barely, and take my spot on the podium.

In addition to the U.S.A. and the scrappy lads of Nekketsu High School, SDB features 20 teams from around the globe with stereotypical stats – the Chinese are small and acrobatic, the Russians are brick-headed powerhouses, etc. The best part is making your own team from scratch. You pick the names, stats, colors, and even the look of each character from an astounding 155 faces and 155 hairstyles. In an unexpectedly fun twist, your Supershots are mysteriously determined by the character’s birth dates. Just make sure you like your team, because you can’t trade players down the line.