This game is actually the canonical representation of the Jurassic Park scientists creating fresh dino DNA. These are failed attempts that weren't compatible

For me, the biggest surprise of this whole video was learning the folk behind Ballz made Petz/Dogz. I would never have put that together on my own, seriously.

The first boss, the ostrich (who's a female ostrich named Guggler, by the way), is the easiest first boss in video game history. Let me tell you why. In this game, taunting acts as a damage multiplier. In order to win easily, go away from her and wait for her to plunge her head in the ground. She won't do anything at all to you unless you do something to cause her damage. Then you taunt, which can be triggered by pressing all three action buttons simultaneously, as much as you can. I recommend doing it at least ten times. You then go up and do any attack you want.

Instant death. You win.

It just hit me that SEGA goofed and miss having a cross promotion for Vectorman in this game.

I've been waiting for this one. I rented this as a child and quickly learned the move that let you steal a bodypart/ball from your opponent until they were hobbling around helplessly.

Edit: HOLY CRAP DID THEY MAKE "DOGZ" TOO?! I had that as well!

In the words of the AVGN or at least a hypothetical quote of his. "I'd rather play with my own balls than play Ballz 3D!"

those billboards in the background with random text are like proto-shitposts and i love it

As soon as I saw this I was like "didn't that company make Dogz and Catz?" The original Petz games STILL have a cult following where people mod it and add their own species of animals, items and locations. And because of how the mechanics work, you can breed them together and make complete abominations. Still a really fun little game.

I love dumb stuff like this, it’s quite technically impressive given that it actually controls in a 3D apace and the way the characters are drawn using spheres is really cool. It’s just really fascinating seeing a 3D fighter recreated in 2D. The Ball aesthetic wasn’t to simplify the sprites to make it capable of running on the weak hardware, it was because it made it much easier to draw the characters with a convincing 3D effect, it was a common tactic back then for 3D effects.

The most interesting thing to me is that the Japanese version's manual has brand new illustrations to better convey what the spheroid characters are.

I remember playing this in the hospital after getting in a plane crash. As for which was more painful..
It was the plane crash obviously, but the game was pretty bad.

I've heard back then the PF stands for "Pure F*cking". So, it would be "Pure F*cking Magic".

Also, you should try MsDOS "Xenophage: Alien Bloodsport". It's really REALLY awful.

used to own this back in the day. after beating the game once, you unlock the t-rex character. unfortunately, it doesn't save progress in any capacity, so you'd have to play the game nonstop for hours to get everyone. i mained Yoko (the chimpanzee) just cuz he had that overpowered attack on landing on someone's head and banging it like bongos. i also found some code to transform into another character, which i wanted to do for everyone else, but didn't feel like experimenting

Edit: and now that i see that logo for DBZUB22, i'm reminded of the retail rerelease of DBGT for PS1. i bought that thing thinking "oh shit they brought out that super rare and expensive game!" only to be horrified by the voice acting that makes it feel more like a really bad bootleg

As a kid, i had a cd with hundreds of sega genesis games, so all the files had the name of the game written without spaces obviously, so when i saw "ballz" i read it as "Ball Z" and tough it was a dragon ball game. Never been so dissapointed, lol.

the fact that this video wasn't sponsored by Manscaped will remain one of the greatest failures in history.

I've played the 3DO version of this quite a bunch, we used to rotate this and Battle Monsters as a gag game at a weekly fighting game event I used to run.

I get that this game isn't great, but seriously nobody ever appreciates that this is a full 3D fighting game on 16-bit hardware. You can just walk around anywhere in 3D space, dodge hits in 3D, etc... it was considered a big deal when Battle Arena Toshinden made better use of 3D space than other 3D fighting games, and yet here was stupid little Ballz doing it first on 16-bit hardware. Credit where credit is due, people! Also the music on the 3DO version is truly strange and totally likeable.

I played a shocking amount of this when I was kid. I mained the Cave Man

Would my brother seem cooler if his name was Ztephen? Yeah, probably.

Still waiting for Matt to stop and realize the worst fighting game is absolutely 100% Dragon Ball Z Taiketsu for GBA
Also, I'm happy to see this video had some good Shadow The Hedgehog content