Headless Ninja Volley

About the game

Headless Ninja Volley is volleyball reduced to its bones. Two ninjas, one on each side of a tall green net, try to knock a bouncing demon head into the other half of the court. There are no rotations, no serves and no teams: run under the ball, jump into it and send it over. If it touches the ground twice on your side, your opponent scores a point. The first to reach 15 points wins.

The ninjas can jump off the walls at the edges of the court, which is the trick that makes the game: a wall jump gets you high and fast enough to reach balls that would otherwise drop behind you, and to smash them back with a steep angle.

On the menu you choose between a match against another player or against the computer, and a colour palette for the court. The game is by Haroldo O. Pinheiro, a Brazilian developer who has made many homebrew games for the Master System; he wrote this one in C in 2008.

Playing it here

This is a homebrew game for the Sega Master System, running in the Gearsystem emulator. Click Play. On the menu, press Down to pick 1P vs CPU and Z to start. The two-player mode expects a second Master System controller, which this page does not map, so play against the computer here. F2 saves the emulator state and F4 loads it.

Controls

Key	Master System	Action
Left / Right arrows	D-pad	move the ninja
Z or X	button 1 or 2	jump; against a wall, wall jump
Arrows, then Z	—	choose the mode and the colours on the menu, start
F2 / F4	—	save / load the emulator state

Tips

Get under the ball early. The head falls in a predictable arc. Stand where it will land and jump just before it arrives.

Use the back wall. A ball that flies over your head is not lost: run to the wall and jump off it to meet the ball on the way down.

Aim for the corners. The computer covers the middle of its side well; balls that land close to its wall or right behind the net are harder for it to reach.

Credits and licence

Headless Ninja Volley is by Haroldo O. Pinheiro, who released it into the public domain under the Unlicense, as stated on the game's page on SMS Power!. We serve the ROM from his package, unchanged; we only fill the file up to 16 KiB, as the emulator needs, without touching the game. The original package, with his source code, is linked from this page.