The original Slime Volleyball

The one before the one you remember

Before the familiar two-player Slime Volleyball with its wide court, multiple colourful slimes and tug-of-war scoring, there was this original version from the late 1990s.

Its creator is unknown. It was discovered online by UWA Computer Science student Clive Gout, who shared it with his peers over the university intranet, among them Quin Pendragon.

The physics are a little dodgy, but the gameplay is every bit as ridiculously addictive. Presented here is the original Java class file, converted to HTML5 and JavaScript as-is, bugs included.

How it compares to Quin's rewrite

• No menu. Click and play.
• One player. Red is you, blue is the computer.
• No difficulty settings.
• First to six wins.
• Everything is smaller: a squarer court and a shorter net.
• No smoothing. Every circle and letter keeps its glorious jagged 1999 pixels.

How it plays

• The ball floats. You don't. Serves hang in the air, while your jumps are short and quick.
• You're slow. The ball can move three times faster than you, so getting into position early beats chasing.
• No air control. Jumping locks in your direction until you land.
• Jumping weakens your hit. Where the ball touches your dome decides its direction; a hit from the ground gives it lift, a hit in mid-air sends it back flatter.
• Walls are trampolines. The ball keeps its speed off the sides and the top of the net.

The computer

Blue works out where the ball will land, moves into position, and jumps when it thinks the ball is slow and close. It can't steer in the air either, so it stops moving before it jumps.

Its serves come in four random styles, but one was never properly implemented, so a quarter of its serves are just ordinary play with jumping switched off.

What survived

Everything under the hood was redesigned by Quin Pendragon for his later two-player game: the court, the scoring, multiplayer, even the way jumping affects a hit. There is no code crossover between the two games.

What survived was the look and the idea: a one-eyed half-circle slime, a ball, a blue sky, and a strangely floaty ball being knocked about by very fast little blobs.

Ready for the rewrite? Play Slime Volleyball — two players, the wide court, and the physics everyone remembers.