Shacknews Best Sports Games of 2022 - Windjammers 2

The sun is shining, the court is clean, and across from you sits a mean competitor looking to use you as a stepping stone on their climb to the Windjammers Championship. Of course, you have every intention of doing the same to them. It’s a matter of guts, glory, and whose skills on the disc comes out on top. That riveting thrill was commonplace in Windjammers 2 and it easily put the game over the top as our Shacknews Best Sports Game of 2022.

Windjammers 2 was a long time coming from Dotemu, which announced the game in 2018. Capitalizing on the re-release of the first game (a Neo Geo arcade classic), Windjammers 2 grabbed attention with an incredible update to its art style, roster, and courts while keeping the core gameplay mechanics and flow of the game intact. When it finally landed in 2022, we were floored by just how good the action felt as you tried to outmaneuver your opponents online and off and get the disc into their goals.

As much as Windjammers 2 is a love letter to the fun of the classic game, it’s also just an impeccable game all its own. Characters like Sophie De Lys, Max Hurricane, and Jao Raposa joined returning competitors like Steve Miller, Klaus Wessel, Gary Scott, and Loris Biaggi to provide a wide array of strength and power vs speed and technique.

The courts themselves were also vibrant and alive with different sizes, score zones, and all sorts of other things that made it possible to actually specialize and excel at a particular field. Add this to easy-to-use systems for both online and offline play and an incredible rollback netcode that kept the online matches clean almost regardless of connection quality and Windjammers 2 was a certified competitive smash.

It was a long wait to finally get Windjammers 2, but when Dotemu finally delivered, they stuck the landing big time. The game also stood head and feet over most of the competition in 2022 to become the Shacknews Best Sports Game of 2022.

Check out our Year of the Games: 2022 article to see all of the other Shacknews Awards that have been announced so far.

TJ Denzer

Senior News Editor

TJ Denzer is a player and writer with a passion for games that has dominated a lifetime. He found his way to the Shacknews roster in late 2019 and has worked his way to Senior News Editor since. Between news coverage, he also aides notably in livestream projects like the indie game-focused Indie-licious, the Shacknews Stimulus Games, and the Shacknews Dump. You can reach him at tj.denzer@shacknews.com and also find him on Twitter @JohnnyChugs.