Atari Jaguar #2: White Men Can't Jump

(As far as I know, only this and NBA Jam TE used the multi-tap)

Because I really love you guys I played through White Men Can't Jump. This game gives off infamy like plutonium gives off radiation, and they are about equally welcome in American living rooms. This is a game that managed to take a fun activity like basketball and ruin it. Even the worst basketball game usually has the essence of fun in it. How can you ruin basketball? This is one of the many questions  that game players back in 1995 had about this oddity. They also had to ask themselves why the game had nothing to do with the movie. It has none of the characters or story other than the basic premise of street ball. Why even pay for a license if you're not going to use it? Of course it shouldn't be that surprising for Atari in 1995. By this point they had gone completely off the rails They had a handful of good games sandwiched between some of the most bizarre and ill-advised games in history. Unsurprisingly it would be their last full year making console games. So what about the game itself? 

(I will admit The Street Sharks do seem kind of cool)

 You can tell right away that it is a game made by a bunch of people who didn't quite understand how a game is supposed to work. They put very little thought into how the mechanics of basketball work or how it is supposed to translate to video game form. The game was developed by High Voltage Software who are amazingly still around today. According to Wikipedia this was their very first game, and they would actually be one of Jaguar's go-to developers in its waning days. They would end their relationship with Atari by developing Fight For Life which is an equally infamous, and actually much worse, game than WMCJ. I will write about that one if I can ever stomach playing through it. Trust me, that game is brutal. With WMCJ I get the feeling that it could've been at least a decent game if they had focused on the right parts.

(The first thing you see when the game starts)

Right away you can tell something is wrong by the way the games start. The game promises fast basketball action, but the fastest moving part is the menu screen. I found it tough to pick the team I wanted because they scrolled through too quickly. This is only the beginning of the trouble. A typical basketball game gives you a closeup with two players jumping for the ball. In this game we get a faraway view with a bunch of text on the screen obscuring your view. The game is already in progress as the camera slowly starts to scroll in. You have probably already been punched and stripped of the ball about three times before you even realize what's going on. All the zany 90s lingo appearing on the screen is what the game is most remembered for. Thankfully there is an option to turn it off, so I am not going to linger on it too much. It seems like most of the onscreen messages refer to the two computer players who are constantly punching each other while they don't have the ball. Once again it's an example of the developers focusing on the wrong thing. Shouldn't they have instead focused on making you able to see what is going on when the game begins instead of trivial messages that don't even refer to what's going on? That's what I would've done anyway.

(I would love to know more about these two. I'm assuming they worked on the game)

Because I like to spend my days off playing through twenty year old train wrecks I went through tournament mode on a snow day a while back. The way it works is that you borrow money from a couple of shifty loan sharks and save up enough to play in the championship. The loan sharks appear as a couple of real actors although it is only for two frames repeated over and over again. The voices and real people would've been impressive if this game hadn't come out around the same time Playstation did. Jaguar never could get the timing right. Anyway, you get to pick different games depending on difficulty and play until you have $5,000. When you have enough you get to play in the tournament which is actually only one game. It's kind of a letdown to only have one game in a tournament, but by this time I was ready to stop playing and was a little relieved. This doesn't usually bode well for a game review.

Probably the saddest part about this game is that once you strip away all the goofy window dressing than it's just a bland basketball game. After playing a couple of games I quit even noticing the text on the screen. The in game voices aren't much help so that aspect doesn't stick on my brain either. The teams are silly enough, but once you're playing they become just regular players albeit with different skills. I like to go with the good three point shooters personally. I think I played it for an hour or two and ended up beating it in one day. The controls are decent enough and I don't remember anything egregious about the shot detection although other reviewers say otherwise so maybe I am wrong. It just sort've becomes boring basketball after a little while. 

(I love how all you can see are the words "White Men." That's a good hint as to how bland this game really is)

It all serves as another reminder of just why the Jaguar was such a failure. Twenty years later and people are still talking about the onscreen commentary and lack of connection to the movie instead of the actual gameplay. This is because the bad parts about this game are the only memorable parts. If it just had some generic name like Jaguar Street Ball it would have just faded into the Jaguar library like any other sports game. Instead it is an in-your-face assault of mid-90s ridiculousness. The developers knew they had a boring game and decided to hide it under as much stupid as they could. That's why this game is so infamous today. It stands for a time that Atari had quit making games and starting making jokes. It's probably barely in the bottom 10 worst games for the system, but it lives on as a reminder of just how far a great company can fall before it becomes an embarrassment to an entire industry. Little did they know that after the E.T. debacle of 1983 Atari was just getting started. Nintendo had the family fun, Sega had the attitude, and Atari had the disaster.

 

Playstation #2: Mega Man X4

 

If you are reading this blog than you have probably been playing Mega Man games for most of your life. The series has been part of the fabric of gamer's childhoods since the first game debuted in 1986. I still remember seeing a picture of that lantern fish from MM2 in the old Sears Catalogue and dying to play the game. It's one of the ten games that had the most impact on me as a kid. Mega Man is still fairly popular these days, and it seems that they've always been able to keep updating it enough so that kids still connect with the character. It's one of those game series that seems proud of the fact that kids play the games as well as adults. That's why I find Mega Man X4 so interesting. This is one of the darkest platform games I have ever played, but somehow it still feels like a regular Mega Man game. They didn't go 90s extreme or give the characters gritty makeovers. Instead they found the darkness hiding just under the surface.

(How could it be so serious? It's got this goofy looking guy)

On the surface everything seems normal. It's the first X game to come out on Playstation, so of course it is better looking than the earlier games. Actually, it's one of the best looking PS1 games out there. The developers wisely stuck with the 2D perspective. so instead of a bunch of ugly polygons we get stylish anime cutscenes. They are still a pleasure to look at even after all these years. The voice acting is bad in the typical late 90s fashion. All the bad guys sound bored and tired while the good guys are way too energetic at all times. It would be a while before voice acting found its goldilocks zone.

On the surface everything seems normal. It's the first X game to come out on Playstation, so of course it is better looking than the earlier games. Actually, it's one of the best looking PS1 games out there. The developers wisely stuck with the 2D perspective. so instead of a bunch of ugly polygons we get stylish anime cutscenes. They are still a pleasure to look at even after all these years. The voice acting is bad in the typical late 90s fashion. All the bad guys sound bored and tired while the good guys are way too energetic at all times. It would be a while before voice acting found its goldilocks zone. 

(No platform game is complete without a snow level)

I also greatly enjoyed that level design in this one. I have played through the original Mega Man X and always thought that the levels were uninspired. I feel bad because everyone loves that game so much. In this game every level is something different. There is a timed evil computer level and a high-speed shooter to go along with more classic environments like jungles and snow. The set-up is normal for the series. You fight eight robot bosses, have a couple of interludes, and the move on to the endgame. It is very fun, but very typical. It could be a cozy sweater of a game if not for the dark storyline.

(I love the stairs even though it had been done before)

In this one everyone is sad and confused. Sigma, the series' main antagonist, is able to get different robot factions fighting against each other while X and Zero try their best to figure out what's going on. The conclusion is that everything is a mess and they will probably have to turn evil at some point. This time around many of the bosses are old friends of the heroes and are either misguided or believing that they are doing the right thing. This makes killing them carry more gravity than it usually does. In most of the games the robot bosses are simply evil and don't have any other motivations. This game uses the fog of war to make everyone more sympathetic. Friends will betray friends with only the big boss Sigma seeming to actually be evil. It all leads up to a couple of downer endings for X and Zero. Expect more fear and disillusionment than celebrating. It really took me by surprise.

I am not overly familiar with the X series in general, but I know that this one gave me an experience that I wasn't really prepared for. It was cartoonish game safe for kids which also brought up big philosophical questions. It's an anti-war game that also features robots on motorcycles. It is a formulaic game that also poses a great amount of challenge. The levels have to be learned, and some of the bosses are brutal. X and Zero are both playable characters, and neither one of them make it very easy. I probably fought the final boss 30 or 40 times total. The victory left me feeling satisfied, but the questions posed afterword made me wonder if all this fighting meant anything. I don't often feel so confused at the end of a game, and this is why it's one of the great ones on Playstation. It's also still affordable. Some of the earlier X games go for hundreds of dollars. This one can usually be tracked down for less than 30. It is a winner no matter how you look at it.