Entry posted by Cybergoth
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Hi there!
Move over Grand Monster Slam, here comes:
M.U.D.S. (1990):
Program: Holger Ahrens, Volker Marohn
Graphics: Hartwig Nieder-Gassel
Musician: Volker Marohn
Ratings:
Zzap! Rating: N/A
LemonAmiga Rating: 7.45
After filling some gaps with Garrison and Spherical, the Rainbow Arts series moves on chronologically now with M.U.D.S., which is short for "Mean Ugly Dirty Sports". It's another fantasy sports game, playing in the same universe (and created by the same people!) as Grand Monster Slam. When the later could be considered as Tennis with monsters, then M.U.D.S. could be considered as Rugby with monsters 
It's one of the most creative sport video games I've seen in my live, introducing tons of unique ideas and great humor where you would least expect it.
Before starting into the actual matches you're responsible for the team management. You can buy and sell new monsters from a slave market (out of over a dozen different races with different playing abilitites), you can heal your players, bet some cash on the next matches and even visit a pub and beat up the other team the night before the match 
The game itself is an action packed 5 vs. 5 affair. As you can see on the screenshot above, there's always some tackled players laying on the ground and some fighting going on. The ball is a little animal called "Flonk". It has to be thrown into a basket at the other end of the field. During each game 7 flonks are played.
Okay, so you're asking what's so fun about this game? Did you e.g. notice the small river on top of the field? Well, you can jump over it and dunk the flonk into the basket gaining you 2 points for the flonk instead of 1. But of course you end up in the river then... so did you also notice the big creature swimming there? Well... hehe... the players better swim back to land fast... 
Of course you can also bodycheck attacking players into the river on your side of the field (I never get tired of doing that 
). Since the players all have RPG like stats, for speed, health, strength, etc., with a strong team you can even kill players from the other team. In fact you can win a game just by beating the crap out of the other team - once they no longer have enough players to put on the field you've automatically won 
There's so many cool details in the game, I can mention only a fraction here. Like that a player that accidently fouls the referee gets immediately terminated or that you can bribe the ball to crawl towards your own players.
Fun in 2010:
I'm loving it now just like I did 20 years ago. I started playing it almost two weeks ago and couldn't stop playing it until I had beaten it once again. It's the ultimate proof that sports games actually can be fun, simply by making them "video games" instead of "sport simulations"!
Personally I have M.U.D.S. in my all-time Top 100, besides Katakis the only other absolute must have from the Rainbow Arts games featured in this series so far! 
BTW: I started playing the Miggy version, but it crashed three times in a row in emulation, so I switched to the DOS version, which runs flawless in DOSBox.
Greetings,
Manuel
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