Beach volleyball video games are made to appeal to men who want to see women bounce around in bikinis. Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball even has that as its main plotline, with a sleazy guy inviting just the girls over for a tournament, only for it to be volleyball and not fighting. The advertising and tagline of Beach Spikers certainly seems like it’s going for that approach, but ends up coming across as simply a fun version of the sport once you get into the game, with more focus on gameplay and no focus on things like “jiggle physics”.
And, in doing so, Sega have made volleyball into an enjoyable videogame, with lots of different shots you can make based on where you aim, a power bar that requires precision for strong shots and just being a very strong sports game. The biggest issue is working with the CPU player, as sometimes they aren’t quite where you’d wish them to be.
On top of the standard arcade mode, there’s a fun training mode that lets you practice every part of the game alongside learning the controls, and a career mode where you get to design your team, with a surprising amount of options to customise them. It provided a decent amount to do as you learn the mechanics of the game – a great example of an arcade conversion. Sega could have easily made a game that was a slightly different version of Virtua Tennis (which, sadly, did not get a GameCube version), but decided on doing a proper job instead.