White Men Cant Jump
One of the worst games ever
By Dan LoosenAugust 2, 2004
I can sum up this game with three words --
worst game ever. Why? This game isn't that bad on controls, the graphics
are okay for the Jaguar's time period and the movie property is still
recognizable. So what went so horribly wrong with this game that I have
declared it as the worst game ever after first playing it? Even more
amazing, how could it had kept that title for over five years in which
I've subjected myself to monstrosities such as the Lynx version of
Pit Fighter, the painful Back to the Future III for the
Genesis, the horribly disappointing NEX X-Men title and the disgusting
Lynx Kung Food. What makes this game worse than those?
You might be surprised to find out that I think that this game has
decent control that once you get the hang of, you can really start
taking others to school. In fact, other than being a little slippery at
times, I think that the control for this game works very well. The
sound, while being completely generic is about all that is needed in
this game. The sound quips of the players going back and forth is okay,
but suffers from the fact that you'll hear the same one over and over.
Variety would have been nice, but then again we look at the time that
this game was made and you can let it slide. The graphics are great. The
players consist of detailed sprites and the backgrounds are rendered in
3D with texture mapping that the Jaguar manages to pull off. When the
action gets intense, the game's frame rate can slow to a crawl but this
wasn't anything horrible at the time that the game was released.
The gameplay is decent. You have to square off against a bunch of other
teams to raise enough money to get to the huge tournament and try to
take your two-player team to the top. If you win, you win money to help
get on your way to the tournament. If you lose, you lose money. It's a
great way to keep you playing and challenging better and better teams
and is quite innovative.
At this point, you're probably wondering why I am heaping such praise
onto a game that I considered the worst game ever. In fact, I've praised
the graphics, sounds, control and gameplay. What's so wrong with it? It
all comes down to two things: the story and the tournament.
The story has absolutely nothing to do with the movie and was detailed
above. Earn money. Get to big tournament. Can you win in the big
tournament? This isn't a bad story line necessarily, but the story takes
time to build up this great tournament. You can play the game for hours
to get enough cash to finally make it to the tournament, as I did. There
are 15 different teams in the game, so you figure that you'll be placed
into this insanely tough tournament where you will end up facing at
least 7 of those, and maybe even a mystery team or two, right? WRONG.
You play ONE GAME. One game! That's it! You win, you have just won the
huge tournament. You lose, it's all over. You go back to the streets to
try again. What the heck?
I remember spending so much time working on my game to finally make it
to this tournament, and just when I finally got into the game, it slaps
me in the face. I won the first game of the tournament by a large margin
and was ready for the next round. Suddenly, I get the "Congratulations!"
screen and I am trying to figure out if my Jaguar screwed up or if the
game has a glitch. Unfortunately, that's it. The game is over. This is
the most unsatisfying "ending" to a video game ever. It seems like Atari
wanted to make this into a really nice, deep game but decided that the
second half of the game didn't really have to exist. This completely
ruins the experience, and you have NO reason to ever play the game
again. Throw in the towel, this game is done.
That ending, and that ending alone ruins what could have been an
interesting challenger to the NBA Jam games that were popular at
the time. Instead, we end up with a game that is over as soon as we
start to like it. This game is actually worse than games that are bad
from start to finish because it had so much potential, but Atari decided
that they didn't need to spend a few days finishing it off and instead
rushed this horrible game to market. Don't get lured in by the graphics,
sound, control or initial thoughts of gameplay. Avoid this game like the
plague. It gets the overall rating of 5% only because it comes with a
packed in Team Tap that you can use for NBA Jam.
Game Data |
Scores
|
| Title |
White Men Cant Jump |
Graphics |
75% |
| Publisher |
Atari |
Sound/Music |
50% |
| Genre |
Sports |
Gameplay |
80% |
| System |
Jaguar |
Control |
65% |
|
|
Overall |
5% |
)
)
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