The idea for this occurred to me when I was playing with the movement in Breakanoid RC.

A two-player game, with the not unusual goal of putting a ball into your opponent's net.

It reminds me of the soccer mode in Excitebike 64: Controls that, at first, seem cumbersome that with practice allow for satisfying, and fine, control. There are a lot of neat ball control tricks.

(Oh, that gives me an idea, actually: perhaps the ball should be still at the start, and players come out to strike it. The strategy round that moment in ExciteBike 64 was one of my favourite things about that game.)

Edit:

I've made a new version with 2 modes: one where the ball moves on level start, the other where it waits until player contact. It's playable via Newgrounds.

Edit:

This game now has a sick website (well, it's had it for a while): https://blueberrysoft.ryliejamesthomas.net/games/Pololo%20Shodown/

Edit:

Now also on The Internet Archive!

This is the next evolution of Dark Pong and Pong/Antipong, with a good dose of inspiration from Prizeleaper. Get the ball to the top of the tower by bouncing it off the paddles. A line indicates the highest distance that the ball has reached - in that respect, it owes something to Keep Me Occupied.

Windows version in the Zip. A HTML5 version will appear sometime later.

You can't get it past the other guy, who'll knock it back to you at a slightly different angle, but instead touching the ball to get more points. It gets progressively faster, too!
Up and Down arrows to control. Note that you can't change the angle of the ball, but your opponent often will.

I've tried to get it so that the ball doesn't go within a certain range of vertical, too, so hopefully that'll work.

Music is a take on Din Da Da that I came up with earlier today on a whim.

This started out as an attempt to make a better version of Nitrome's Mega Mash, and it gradually grew ever closer back toward ROM CHECK FAIL and WarioWare Inc., the initiators of the 'mashup' genre.

It's primarily an intimation about the tendency of old arcade games to have a strong vertical dynamic to their design. In many such games, the player occupies the bottom half of the screen, and the CPU opponent controls the top half. Every five seconds, ABOVE v. BELOW randomly swaps its bottom-screen player-character and top-screen antagonist with those from several such vertical arcade games, demonstrating that the vertical dynamic inherent in these games allows such match-ups to be both playable and interesting.

Play the game using only the mouse!

This mashes up the following games (don't read if you don't want spoilers):
* Pong
* Breakout
* Space Invaders
* Pinball
* Missile Command
* Pang (a.k.a Buster Bros)
* Crystal Quest (admittedly not a vertical game, but included for variety).

There's no sound because I didn't feel like it.

It's pong, except the ball contains a second game of pong. Scoring a goal in either game awards you a point and resets that ball only. First to ten wins. The outer layer has a few special rules (can influence the ball's path by hitting it with a moving paddle, and the ball's velocity increases with every paddle hit up to a maximum speed) that the inner layer does not. Note that the two games aren't one-to-one representations of each other and very quickly get de-synced.

Not entirely sure if I played a game like this before. Was fun to make regardless.

Controls:
Player 1: W/S
Player 2: Up/Down

Edit:
- Fixed a silly bounds error that prevented the inner paddles and ball from moving in the entire outer ball.
- Fixed an asymmetry in the paddle positions.
- Added a short delay before either ball starts moving at the beginning of the game.

"At last, a game that exercises your right brain, AND your left brain!"

"An examination of duality in the most powerful artistic medium available to us: the microcomputer programme. As the player moves the bottom paddle toward the ball, she is moving the top paddle away from it. With each volley caught, she has sowed the seeds of downfall on the next. Her success is turned upside down into a failure, her victory into a defeat. And thus, much like Neo, she finally sees the binary of all things."

This is yet another single player Pong-type game. In this one, your single mouse controls both paddles, but the bottom paddle travels in the opposite direction as the top paddle. How long can you keep the ball in the court?

"The colours... I can't remember what colours look like... so much gray... help..."

"It's like Pong, only in two dimensions! Goodbye left and right, hello 360! Great for kids and adults - three mice out of five!"

This is a sort-of sequel to my own Magnetball. In this game you must also keep the ball within a circular perimeter, but your only tool is a spinning Kururin-like paddle. Hit the ball when the paddle is at the right angle to keep it in play.

"I was thirty seconds in, and I remember remarking in an IM window off to the side that this game was only 'dark' insofar as it was darkening my opinion of it. And then the power went out. Bam, instant three stars."

This is a BIT.TRIP BEAT inspired variant of Pong and/or Breakout. You have no opponent, but the ball obeys gravity and will arc down to you after you knock it upward. There's a second, subtler twist, though, so keep playing to see what it is.

Mouse to move.
Click to place the first ball.
Get the ball to a height of 100 to unlock Hard Mode.

A brief history of video games! Use the arrow keys to do stuff.

Graphics mostly stolen from MYLONELYDAYS.COM. (Defunct!)
Sounds entirely stolen from James.

DISCLAIMER: This took four hours to make, which is inexcusable. The only consolation in this is that it's a much higher quality game than I normally turn in.

My original idea was to make some kind of EXTREME TENNIS game where the ball was a grenade and the players were carrying machine guns, but because I couldn't be bothered to put in a net or introduce bounce physics and stuff I ended up making GRENADE PONG instead.

Each player is equipped with a gun and a forcefield. Like Pong, the aim of the game is to bat the grenade off the opposite side of the screen. Unlike pong, you can only deflect the ball when your forcefield is activated, and your forcefield only stays active for about 1/3rd of a second each time you use it (and takes just over 1 second to recharge). If you touch the bomb while your forcefield is inactive, you lose instantly.

But wait - there's more! You can't move and fire. Your characters will automatically aim towards each other, but while you hold down the Fire key you will be able to adjust your aim by pressing your move up/move down keys. Bullets will not kill you, but will hinder your movement around the court - your forcefield will not protect you from this! Bullets do not affect the bomb in any way.

CONTROLS:

Player 1: WASD to move, G to shoot, Y to use forcefield

Player 2: Arrow keys to move, Page Down to shoot, Page Up to use forcefield

You only play one round at a time and the game will automatically return to the title screen after each round.

Windows only; made in Game Maker 7; .zip includes GM7 file.