"My Kind of Reward"

White Men Can't Jump for Atari Jaguar

In early 2007 I reached a very important milestone in my somewhat short history of video game collecting. I was sitting on 499 games ready to pass 500. At the time I really felt like it was a major accomplishment. As I drove to my local video game store I knew that I needed to get something really special for number 500. I was looking for the kind of game I would never forget as long as I lived. I guess I could've got something of high quality that would stand out in terms of actual gameplay. I, however, went in the complete opposite direction. I was looking for a game so bad that I would have nightmares and maybe even lose faith in humanity itself. Thankfully I already knew the perfect game: White Men Can't Jump!

An important thing to remember about WMCJ is that it is based on the game of basketball. In principle basketball is a fun game to play that translates very well to electronic media. Even primitive forms on 2600 and sketchy versions on the SMS are fun or at least tolerable to play. How someone was able to take a good game like basketball and turn it into the absolute least fun game to play is almost a major achievement. I'm not actually going to applaud though. Nor should you.

The main flaws with WMCJ is that it's hard to control, hard to move, hard to tell what's going on, and downright annoying. When the game starts the court is a small dot in the distance. Then it slowly zooms in to reveal the four players and basketball action. Now it is important to note that the game is in progress even before the court as zoomed in. The computer could be making shots before you can even see anything. Luckily nobody has an easy time making shots. Wait, is that really a good thing?

Now I could probably write an entire page about the poor motion and controls. The game moves similar to a cartoon from the 1910s. The ball is about as easy to keep track of as a hockey puck on a blurry tv. One positive note about the experience is that the computer has just as much trouble controlling themselves as the human players do. At least it's fair.

Oh yeah, and there's a constant barrage of trash talk both spoken and written on the screen. It really is dumb and it really does happen about every 5 seconds. I guess I'm really supposed to talk about that more, but at least that provides us with some ironic laughs. Really that's about the best part of the game.

The point I was trying to make with this long blog entry is that I knew what I was getting myself into with this game. I had read many reviews of this one ahead of time. I've seen it pop up on just about every list of the worst video games ever made , and I already knew much of its flaws before I even played it. And yet, this was the game I rewarded myself with. I went and looked for this game, and when I found it I got a major sense of accomplishment. Why would anybody reward themselves with the worst of something? I guess it's just interesting to see the other side of the spectrum sometimes. It gives us a chance to see why we like the games we like. It also gives us a chance to act like experts on what works and what doesn't in video games. Really I'm not exactly sure why I'm so drawn to horrible games. All I know is that I'm still happy with my purchase. I'm also well aware that I'll probably have to buy the game again because I bought it without a box. I will do that without even once feeling guilty about it. So here's to the games that make us happy. Even if they are games that nobody should ever play.