Striker

From Phil Sorger: "Striker was a total bastard of a project. We took two cabinets and stood them side by side. We had the same game graphics running on both monitors, except one was upside down. The gameplay was similar to PowerPlay, but with 4 player control, much, much better ball handling, more interesting wall collisions and funner characters.... We re-colored the sprites on the fly (which we thought was really slick back then) and allowed the players to punch and kick each other without consequence. This naughty ultra-violence was later copied in Quarterback, and continued all the way through NFL Blitz. We used simple geometry and simultaneous equation solving to extrapolate pass directions and speeds. This gave teams a lot of control over the action. The goalies were the only NPCs and were fun to mess with. They would start off poor and learn over time, so the first few goals were scored quickly, but after the score became 5-5 or so, it took a well-designed play to beat the keeper. It was also fun but difficult to push the goalie back into his own goal, or countering by smashing the other team if they hassled your goalie. Later, we converted it into a cocktail table game, that players would sit on both sides of. As fun as it was, this game never shipped."