Pro Race Driver

Pro Race Driver is the best racing video game ever made for any system, bar none. Forget Gran Turismo, Forza, NASCAR Thunder, or Flag to Flag. Forget F-Zero. And for god’s sake, forget Mario Kart.

Released in 2002 for Xbox and PlayStation 2, Pro Race Driver was the newest iteration in Codemasters' consistently stellar TOCA touring car game series. While maintaining the precision control and realism of previous TOCA iterations, Pro Race Driver adds a revolutionary story-line element. You control the principal character, steering him through increasingly prestigious auto-racing series, all the while building his driving competencies. You'll go from slumming it in NASCAR-esque stock cars to styling and profiling in esteemed car types like unto F1. On account of this RPG-styled progression, Pro Race Driver has sometimes been referred to as a "Car-PG."

You learn to love your main character. He's not just a faceless driver. His name is Ryan "Octane" McKane, and you are given the opportunity to make him all your own by editing his nickname before embarking on a campaign. The immediate temptation is to go perverse while keeping the rhyme scheme: your correspondent went with "Shit Stain"; your correspondent’s associate decided upon "Come Stain." Either way, the matter of how Mr. McKane earned a nickname so evocative makes for intriguing ludo-narrative possibilities.

These cosmetic considerations aside, the appeal of Pro Race Driver is that you are directing a real man with flaws and vulnerabilities that you encounter over the course of the many raceways. Yes, Ryan McKane can be shrill at times, but he's also persistent and exacting. You see this in the car and on the infield, and you also see this in his dating life. Indeed, one of the subplots has you courting racing groupies (is the term "race rats"?). As you learn more and more about Shit Stain McKane, the man, over the course of various races and relationships, you start to wipe away the flaws and polish up the propensities.

Also worth noting: the graphics are photo-realistic

Each championship series consist of around six races, approximately seven laps each. This is just the right length, not too long or too short. The controls are velvety and user-friendly, and the competition ultra-forgiving, so you'll move through the game breezily. Less time redoing all the racing leaves more time for relating with the ladies (at least in-game).

Given its variety of car-types, its innovative RPG-styled story mode, its realism, and its accessibility, Pro Race Driver is a must-own of the highest order. Beyond all this, it possesses a personality—an unvarnished humanity—that all other racing games lack. This gritty verisimilitude sets Pro Race Driver apart as the greatest of all time. Pro Race Driver outpaces present-day racing games and, best of all, few game sellers realize this—as such, it's easy to find for cheap.

Bushido Blade

Video games have been treated as ephemera more often than they have been treated as art. We use video games as entertainment, but then we are done with them, and then they are forgotten. Only a few video games have been contemplated as artworks.

Bushido Blade might be art, it might be history, and it might be something more. It is, conventionally speaking, a fighting game, centered upon realistic one-on-one weapons-based combat informed by the Bushido tradition. Bushido refers to the honor codes of the samurai, dating back to sixteenth-century CE Japan.

Bushido drew from many sources, including Zen Buddhism. As a Mahayana Buddhist tradition, Zen was an interpretation of the teachings of the ninth-century CE philosopher Nagarjuna. Nagarjuna articulated the doctrine of emptiness. This doctrine holds that everything and anything is empty of own-being. No conventional thing, from the human soul to the setting sun, has an essence independent from everything else. Everything, like any given video game, arises then passes away. Even emptiness is empty.

This realization about everything's emptiness is essential to enlightenment. Part of the Buddhist project then, was about clearing the mind of conventional thinking so as to make way for this insight. In the Zen school, insight can happen suddenly. For that reason, Zen masters tried to disrupt conventional thinking to spur conceptual breakthroughs. This could involve sharp, sudden vocalizations, or even unexpected blows from sticks—a technique sometimes referred to as "Zen kindness." Less dramatically, the focus on clearing the mind also informed an aesthetic of minimalism in Zen. This aesthetic is embodied by the Zen garden—rocks and shrubs surrounded by “rivers” of raked sand—and Japanese line drawings—trees and mountains done entirely in black and white save for the vivid red cherry blossoms.

Bushido Blade's graphics and gameplay appear to be informed by these Zen sensibilities. With just the two combatants and a sparse background, be it a hall or courtyard or cherry blossom grove, and sparing soundtrack making room for little more than the duelists’ footsteps, the game's artistic style is minimalistic. (Likely, the original PlayStation's limited graphical capabilities informed this backdrop.) On the gameplay side, Bushido Blade is not about button-mashing; indeed, "mashing" is a gerund rarely connected to art. Rather, duels typically end after two or three well-placed blows. Sometimes, a single blow will end a contest via instant death; victory or defeat, like enlightenment, can happen suddenly. This does not necessarily mean that duels end quickly—rather, the contestants may circle for quite some time before attempting an attack. This makes playing Bushido Blade a strangely contemplative experience—almost a meditation in itself.

Each duel, then, carries the possibility of insight. The duel is non-dual. The defeated duelist passes away. In the end, there is only one combatant. The combatant is no longer a combatant, however, as he has eliminated the adversary that constituted him. He fights again, and if he loses, he too is proven empty. If he beats the game, the game is over, and it, too, proves to be empty. The player turns off the game, and it is empty, like everything else. In its capacity for spurring this insight, Bushido Blade endures.

Emptiness is empty, said Nagarjuna. What does this mean? Many interpretations have been offered through the centuries, spawning many Mahayana schools. For our immediate purposes in this review, your correspondent suggests it means there is hope. Indeed, a game like Bushido Blade gets turned off, only to get turned on again and again. If everything is empty, then the concept of "ephemera" is also empty. Some things have the potential to live anew and to in that way endure. And so there is hope for some video games as art. Turn on Bushido Blade again and realize as much.

Until Dawn

In 2006, your correspondent got into an argument with a friend of a friend who claimed that video games were a better story-telling medium than movies. Your correspondent deemed this position audacious and preposterous, and argued against it as such. This was a no-brainer. Movies were made by directors and auteurs with aesthetic formations, with the goal of entertaining any given person who chose to watch could be entertained (whether that involved education, amusement or horror). Video games, by contrast, were less accessible, the domain of only the most manually adept, and rarely consisted of more than a series of rote tasks cobbled together by computer programmers. These comp sci types had, for the most part, cartoonish sensibilities and a limited pool of stereotypes around which they based their characters. Arty games like Ico were the rare exceptions. Nonetheless, my opponent, growing agitated now, kept citing Metal Gear Solid as evidence for the insurmountable literary merit of video games, claiming it was a "morality play." Your correspondent counter-cited the films of David Lynch, Quentin Tarantino, and Orson Welles. Blue Velvet blows Metal Gear Solid out of the water—Frank Booth trumps Solid Snake on all axes. To this day, your correspondent still holds that he won the argument, hands down.

If one were to have this argument again in the present, however, the winner isn't so cut and dried. Now an overwhelming number of popular movies are based on comic books and video games, and so they draw from the cartoonish sensibilities and limited pool of character stereotypes that used to be the province of video games. But things have changed in the video game development world as well. In 2010, developer Quantic Dream gave us Heavy Rain, a gripping movie-styled crime-drama whodunit where the player steers several principal characters through major decisions and out of various tight spots. Plot-holes aside, Heavy Rain was a masterpiece. Quantic Dream followed up with several titles of comparable style and quality, most notably 2014’s Detroit, a game that moved this innovative gameplay genre toward a science-fiction narrative space. In between, Supermassive Games released Until Dawn, a ghoulish grab-bag of terror tropes that turned out to be better than most horror movies.

Horror movies don't usually do it for your correspondent. Don't get him wrong: you correspondent has seen hundreds of horror movies and considers himself an aficionado of the genre. However, aside from The Ring, horror movies don't give your correspondent the faintest bit of horripilation. Watching a horror movie, then, is usually an exercise in disappointment or, at best, an appreciation of well-done gore effects.

Until Dawn gripped your correspondent by the throat. That grip is icy, and fittingly so, as the story is based around a gathering of nubile teens in a castle-like cabin in the woods on a mountain somewhere in Canada. Time and again your correspondent's heart palpitated, his throat went dry, and his eyes popped out of his head. As he proceeded through all the familiar horror movie set-pieces, he had a physiological reaction as if encountering them all for the first time. In having to manually carry out via the controller do-or-die tasks for characters he had (for the most part) grown to care about, your correspondent was totally engrossed. If the horror movie is measured by its capacity for evoking reaction, Until Dawn's frisson goes on and on, and so in this way it succeeds. Indeed, Until Dawn has reinvigorated and reclaimed the horror genre. It does this in large part by making so much of the genre its own: to be sure, the game has what we might call an "Omni-horror" aesthetic, mashing up slashers, monster movies, and supernatural scare-fests all into one. The movie synthesizes Saw, Friday the 13th, The Ring and perhaps even the newest Blair Witch in commendable fashion. All the while, it is shaped by the gamer's own internal horror-scape, as therapy sessions interspersed throughout (and hosted by the incomparably creepy Peter Stormare) help determine all the little devilish details, such as what kind of mask the killer will wear, and what kind of fate will befall the various characters. There are dozens of conceivable plot-developments and endings based on the player's choices and competencies, and so Until Dawn delivers almost innumerable horror thrills.

Peter Stormare as the more-than-a-little-off psychiatrist

Until Dawn, then, pushes forward the concept not only of a video game, but also of a horror movie. The game moves past the passive observation of a movie by permitting participation. Film, however, is not the only medium it outperforms. Until Dawn eschews the repetitive task management of your average video game (especially a Dead Rising, for instance) in favor of an ever-advancing story. And in its active, hot-medium participation, Until Dawn also outshines horror novels, not just because of the variety of conclusions it’s organic narrative style permits, but also because the continual joystick work is a more engaging interstitial activity than reading the tangents that fill up most books (many of which are just padded novellas). All told, the type of participation that Until Dawn affords proves to be oh-so crucial for the horror genre. Just how many horror movies (and books) have left you indifferent to the plight of the characters? In Until Dawn you have to care about the characters, because you are the guiding force impelling them onward. If movie games have been a triumphantly innovative sub-genre within video gaming, then horror games, apotheosized by Until Dawn, are the sub-sub-genre triumph.

Until Dawn didn't relinquish your correspondent from its grasp until his surviving characters made it out of the cabin. In his initial play-through, only two of the eight principal characters survived. Herein lies your correspondent's only conceivable criticism of the game. The two survivors made for a less than satisfying ending. On the one hand, the goal of having more or all of the characters survive makes for some replay value. On the other hand, the second play-through probably won't have the unwitting frisson that came with the first. Perhaps more crucially, it bothers your correspondent more than a little that there is an "ideal" way to play through the game in which all the principal characters survive. The question is worth considering: is it really a "horror" game if no one dies?

Video games paled against movies ten or fifteen years ago, but, in the hindsight synonymous with 2020, we have to re-evaluate this position. Your correspondent won the argument in 2006, but he might not hold the same position now, at least in certain genres. Until Dawn was better than a horror movie could ever be. Moreover, it was better than watching a Marvel movie, which can often feel like watching someone play a video game. As such, Until Dawn embodies the limitless potential for games as story-telling and story-experiencing mediums, and suggests that video gaming is a medium that should drive movies, rather than being driven by them.

Tecmo Super Bowl

In the January 1997 issue of GamePro, Tecmo ran an ad for the PS1 adaptation of Tecmo Super Bowl, the sequel to the company's most famous sports game. The ad spans two pages, the left presenting a drawing of an Oakland Raiders' ball-carrier emerging from the Tecmo Super Bowl jewel case, the right bearing the phrase "It's UN-BOWL-IEVABLE" atop four columns of text in 10-point font. The text is arranged under nine sub-headings. The ad is text-heavy, to put it plainly, and it reads like it was written by someone's CEO dad, who figured that explaining the appeals of the game very rationally, lucidly, sensibly, and at times laconically, all in a tone that is one part inter-office memo, one part life-lesson, would be the best way to sell Tecmo Super Bowl. The content of this advertorial-styled text is what will concern us here, as the game essentially reviews itself therein.

The text starts by promising that "Tecmo Super Bowl allows the user to trade any player, to any team, at any time. With this feature you have the ability to create your own Super Team. Just be careful when you're playing a friend. You had better make sure he [sic] didn't set you up. The only advice we can give is check your opponent's roster." The author(s) then goes on to the audio: "Tecmo Super Bowl's announcer gives true Play by Play [emphasis in original], not just an occasional phrase or two. If perhaps you think he's an idiot, you always have the option of turning him off." Then there is tournament mode, to which the author adds a dash of laconic levity: "Over the years Tecmo Super Bowl players have let us [the developers, presumably] know about the friendly competitions which sometimes take place. This version has a built in tournament mode for a total of 8 players playing one on one till one of the players wins the tournament. Chips and drinks are sadly not included." There are then four full sentences dedicated to the difficulty levels: "Knowing that some people haven't been playing Tecmo Super Bowl for years we've included 3 difficulty settings. Easy, Normal and Hard. Our football game gives you the ability to grow with the game. Internally we call this a screen save 'cause you don't have to throw a rock through the TV screen when you get frustrated with the game." Again, the writer—his or her hand presumably guided by someone in senior management who did not play video games, nor set foot in middle-class households—scrabbles to get the tone right, as is evident from the apostrophic shortening of "because." The wry wit returns for the description of instant replay: "If you want to analyze the last several seconds of play, simply pause the game and start the instant replay. In addition you can go frame by frame to fully analyze all of the action. Then again, you may not want to see the interception again, and again, and again, and again." By this point, having detailed the rather rudimentary feature of instant replay, which had been in football video games for approximately five years by this point, the advertorial seems just a bit condescending. The ad moves on to the game's statistical capabilities: "Tecmo's stats engine has always been unsurpassed. This year we've added the ability to keep the stats from any player in any position even if it's only for 1 play during the entire season. Here's your one and only chance to re-write the record book." Okay. And as for the play-calling capabilities: "From the game play menu, you now have access to the entire playbook for the immediate play. ...for [sic] more plays than you can possibly want, use, call, send-in, modify, change, and/or run as the case may be."

To this point, none of these features seem particularly revolutionary. Only when it comes to weather does the advertisement (if not the game itself) speak to something original: "Ordinary football games sometimes have weather conditions. So far as we know, Tecmo Super Bowl is the only game to actually change the weather during the game. So one minute it could be raining, and then it could start snowing, or then again stop or actually it's too variable to give you all the possible scenarios." From here the advertorial-cum-term paper moves into its conclusion, under the heading "MORE, MORE AND MORE": "We've tried to highlight some of the most important new features of Tecmo Super Bowl for the Sony PlayStation. Obviously, there are more features than we can possibly list. Tecmo Super Bowl is one of the most realistic and sophisticated football simulators ever created. Aside from all the technical improvements, think about the following: [...]." It is at this point that the advertorial switches its mode of persuasion from rhetorical to mathematical, providing this formula: "1 TECMO SUPER BOWL/1 SONY PLAYSTATION/1 Television + 2 OR MORE PLAYERS = GREAT FOOTBALL FUN."

For those rationalists among the gaming crew, this straightforward, detailed explanation might have us wetting our lips. But rationalism died out in advertising in the 1920s. Even if your game (or any product, really), lives up to the arguments and overall thesis you put forward in the advertisement, it will do little to sway a consumer. Since Edward Bernays introduced psychoanalytic principles to public relations and advertising, desire has been all the rage in selling products. In that sense, Tecmo's ad-staff and CEO were about seven decades behind the curve. They fare better when it comes to football video games, as they’re only a several years behind. Tecmo Super Bowl does not even live up to its description. Graphically, it’s a pixelated nightmare, even compared to contemporaneous offerings of Madden and Gameday. Moreover, the announcer is minimalistic. The only redeeming feature is the ability to trade any player to any team. Regardless, Tecmo Bowl for NES this is not, and reading the above description, you almost feel as if you don't have to play the game to know that. Rereading the ad in the context of Tecmo Super Bowl’s failings, it comes off more like an argument justifying the game’s existence, rather than attesting to any merit it might actually have. It is, in sum, not "GREAT FOOTBALL FUN", but more like MODERATE FOOTBALL FUN, at best. Tecmo Super Bowl, then, is one game that reads a lot better than it plays.

Soul Calibur IV

Soul Calibur IV is an unparalleled aesthetic accomplishment, and, over a decade after its release, it endures as a digital apotheosis of beauty. Perhaps it is shallow to begin a review with a discussion of graphics, but, true to the Soul Calibur series, the fourth iteration is a truly stunning game, and the depth of its bright and glossy visuals abidingly occasions amazement. So many different materials are rendered convincingly here, ranging from metals to leathers to textiles. Future iterations of the series have not drastically overhauled the graphical style, and with good cause, as SCIV is among the most aesthetically satisfying games ever made.

SCIV had—and has—perhaps the best create-a-character in all of video games, another feature so stellar that it has only been slightly tweaked for sequels. The editing suite provided on SCIV is nothing short of a triumph—what can't be created here? The textural and sartorial variety are so vast, it is difficult not to create a character with personality. You can realize virtually any classical warrior archetype: samurais, knights errant, ninjas, barbarians, cowboys, nurses, Nazi werewolves—they're all here, vividly imagined and waiting to be drawn out from the creation suite. Beyond that, you are able to equip your creation with a wealth of classical weaponry drawn from across historical periods and civilizations. It would take multiple master's degrees and PhDs in the humanities to know if it's all historically accurate—indeed, the majority of it is probably not. But placed in a tapestry as beautiful as that of SCIV, it all feels accurate. And if we've learned anything from history, it's that the inaccurate take is usually the most entertaining and awesome one.

You come to love your creations. Indeed, their top-class rendering and texturing gives them a strangely alluring character. The zaftig and/or callipygian female form is particularly well-rendered in SCIV. "Women have always been a visual mystery to men," Hollywood director Brian De Palma once offered. "They don't have to say anything—they just look." In SCIV, the women look, but they do so much more. They brandish battleaxes and wield bullwhips and kick ass and quip at par with their male counterparts. The characters are comely no matter what gendering you prefer, and so alongside your buxom bombshells, their breasts bound up firm in metal bodices, you also get square-jawed, stubble-chinned Adonises, their packages snugly girded. And the editing suite is not limited to just the two genders or just the one species.

Soul Calibur IV's gameplay is as lovely as the visuals. The controls are smooth enough that you can button mash and still have success, even feeling graceful while doing so. It all comes together, historically and aesthetically, in Soul Calibur IV, which stands as the best weapons-based versus fighter in the chronicles of video gaming, hands down.

But it goes beyond history. Soul Calibur games from II onward have included guest warriors, usually famous licensed characters from other franchises, the most notable being Link from Legend of Zelda. For Soul Calibur IV, Namco managed to land the most prestigious of all licenses: that of Star Wars. And so, the capacious Soul Calibur universe welcomes Yoda to the Xbox 360 version of IV, and Darth Vader to the PS3 offering thereof. For a small fee, owners of either system could download whichever of the two Jedis they did not get with their version of the game. The incorporation of the rival Jedis rendered Soul Calibur IV an absolute must-buy at the time of its release, and certainly, the collector who does not own the game would be remiss not to seek it out.

The question remains, then: if you are a retro gamer with both the Xbox 360 and the PS3, and you don't want to mess around with downloads for an outdated system, which version do you buy? The simplest response is that you buy both. But for the sake of argument, let's say you can only have one. So which is it?

The answer is PS3. Darth Vader, your correspondent submits, fits the Soul Calibur aesthetic impeccably, as he is multi-textured, with cloth cape, abdominal dials, and spit-shined headwear. Moreover, Vader helps SCIV fully realize its aspiration to present a trans-historical menagerie of warriors. Darth Vader is the future,* but he is also the past with his Samurai-inspired, glans-shaped helmet. Yoda, though he is formidable, will always feel like a bit of a novelty character on account of his diminutive stature and croupy, mangled elocution.

But this Star Wars debate is immaterial. Buy Soul Calibur IV and every other iteration of the series. Of course, for the truly discerning gamer, such an imperative is redundant.

NOTES:

* I realize it all happened "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away" but, nonetheless, Star Wars still looks futuristic from the perspective of our own time.

AEW Wrestling (Preview)

Any wrestling promotion worth its salt needs a video game, and the higher ups at All Elite Wrestling (AEW), the newborn potential competitor to the heretofore hegemonic WWE, seem to apprehend this. Evidently, no one understands this better than Kenny Omega, AEW's sine qua non who is widely renowned for his transcendent in-ring performances. Omega has not only flagged a good video game as a necessary part of AEW’s future, but he has also publicly stated that this hypothetical game should be built around the legendary AKI gameplay system.

This only further confirms Omega's aesthetic discernment. The AKI engine, with its grappling system based on weak and strong tie-ups, is widely regarded as the benchmark of videogame wrestling schemas. Though it relies on button-mashing, to some degree, and may not have the precision of Fire Pro Wrestling's timing-based system, the AKI mechanic is considerably easier to pick up and play. Flagship AKI N64 titles like WCW/NWO Revenge (1998) and WWF No Mercy (2000), as well as the Japan-only Virtual Pro Wrestling 2 (2000), are still being played at present, holding their own against—and even outperforming—contemporary wrestling video games. 

That said, the AKI engine has not appeared in full force in nearly two decades, the 2000 release WWF No Mercy representing the last true iteration of the schema. Modified versions of the AKI system appear in Def Jam Vendetta (2003), Ultimate Muscle: Legends vs. New Generation (2003), and (to some degree) WrestleMania XIX (2003), but these games were little consolation for diehards, who have been consistently clamoring for a proper AKI sequel throughout the entirety of the twenty-first century. Said diehards have even kept afloat a dedicated modding community, which has produced many a buggy bootleg classic, including WCW Feel the Bang.

The AKI engine would be a perfect fit for AEW, as the company has predicated itself upon pleasing precisely this kind of diehard fan. With that being said, the system is not too involved so as to alienate newcomers, and thereby strikes a crucial balance between the uninspired WWE 2K games and the hardcore, sprite-based Fire Pro. As this sort of happy medium (and high medium at that), the engine can also help AEW court non-wrestling fans who might otherwise dismiss "entertainment" of WWE’s ilk. The AKI engine's minimal learning curve made the games eminently playable, and actually brought people to wrestling. Even wrestling skeptics couldn't deny the appeal of four-player AKI battles royal. As such, an AKI game could be an effective means by which AEW can create positive associations with its product and expand its fan-base, generating enthusiasts wholly unsullied by WWE.

A number of difficulties stand in the way of AEW's AKI game, however. First off, there is the fact that AKI doesn't exist anymore. Rather, it has rebranded itself syn Sophia, and mostly just releases fashion games for portable systems. Secondly, were AEW to convince syn Sophia to resurrect its wrestling engine, it remains to be seen how a schema so closely tied to the N64’s controller and graphical style will translate to the current generation. Graphics were never the main appeal of AKI grappling games (they rarely are for good wrestling titles), and the animations, in their purest form, might not satisfy the ragdoll-obsessed visual sensibilities of current-generation gamers. That said, an AEW game could be done up retro-styled with N64-era visuals, and this would still make for a highly appealing download. 

No Mercy, Revenge and Virtual Pro 2 quintessentially encapsulated peak historical junctures for the WWF, WCW, and All-Japan promotions, respectively, saving for posterity little dispatches from an era when wrestling was achieving its full potential. Can an AKI-styled game help hoist AEW to the pinnacle of professional wrestling? The question will remain unanswered for a while, as an AEW game by any company is at minimum two years away. And if AEW cannot compete with the WWE's lackluster but nonetheless entrenched product, the promotion itself might not even be around in two years.

Rollerball

Rollerball is a pinball simulator released for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1988. It is not a video game adaptation of the 1975 film Rollerball directed by Norman Jewison. Had it been, Rollerball (1988) might have been better off—indeed, the game is a fairly bland virtual rendition of pinball, divorced from the smells and bells of the arcade that made pinball salvageable. Moreover, Rollerball the film would have translated deliciously to the video game format, as it depicts a futuristic sport for which the rules are indeterminate, if even existent. Irregardless, Rollerball manages to incorporate roller-skates, metal balls, and motorbikes, all on an ovular track. While the rules are unclear, the bloodshed is plainly obvious. Ultimately, the toll of the game is death to the opposition. The movie inspired numerous game designers, and several companies attempted to put forward similar futuristic imaginings of sport; among these titles are Speedball, Powerball, Rageball, and Deathrow. And while some of these games are great, no single one succeeded in capturing the sheer brutality and insanity of the movie that inspired them. It's still not too late for a virtual adaptation of Rollerball the movie—even a semi-competent rendering would far surpass a new and improved version of Rollerball, the pinball game for NES.

Team USA Basketball

The story of the Dream Team begins not in 1992 but in 1988. That year, at the Olympic Games in Seoul, South Korea, the United States men's basketball team suffered a disheartening defeat to the Soviet Union in the semi-finals and went on to settle for a bronze medal. It seemed unfair. Players from communist countries like the USSR were grizzled vets who had balled as teammates for years, yet maintained their amateur status due to dubious day-jobs they’d been assigned by their governments. For all intents and purposes, they were de facto professional basketball players. The USA squads, meanwhile, consisted of college players, legitimate amateurs who were thrown together every four years with very little opportunity to gel as a team. Even with that being the case, USA teams had only lost 2 games in all the years since basketball was incepted as an Olympic event in 1936 (the 1972 final marking their other defeat), but that wasn’t good enough for America, which of course demands total domination. Eventually, the FIBA, the basketball equivalent of soccer’s FIFA, came to see how unfair America was being treated, and permitted the United States to field a team of professionals for the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona.

This wasn't exactly fair, either. What resulted from this allowance was the Dream Team, a collection of eleven of the greatest basketball players of all-time...and Christian Laettner. The team featured Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, David Robinson, Larry Bird, Karl Malone, Clyde Drexler, Charles Barkley, and Magic Johnson, among others. To say they dominated would be both an understatement and redundant. They won all their games at the 1992 Olympics by blowouts, the closest decision coming in the gold medal final, in which they squeaked past Croatia by 32 points. It would also be a redundant understatement to say that so mighty an ensemble of luminaries was a marketing force of unlimited potential. To be sure, a worldwide tide of Dream Team tie-ins washed over the consuming classes in the summer of 1992.

Laettner, relegated to the back row (and frowning)

One of these tie-ins was Team USA Basketball for the Sega Genesis. Published by Electronic Arts, the game was patterned after EA's NBA Playoffs series, and is nearly identical to the earlier release Bulls vs Lakers and the NBA Playoffs save for changes vis-à-vis timekeeping and court dimensions to accord with international basketball rules. And though the USA basketball team of 1992 was undoubtedly the best ever, the same cannot be said for its eponymous game. Team USA Basketball is, on the whole, more like Christian Laettner, the Duke Blue Devils' mercurial standout who found his way onto the Dream Team as the singular college player. Laettner, like early EA basketball games, seemed promising at the time, but would age terribly and be largely forgotten. Plugging in Team USA Basketball for present-day play, one embarks upon an extremely slow-paced rendering of international hoops. Team USA Basketball can be called immersive insofar as it is like being immersed in molasses. Nor is it easy to pick up and play. Having selected the Dream Team and proceeding on medium difficulty, your correspondent lost convincingly to Team Canada, which shot 95% from the floor. Keep in mind, this was Canada pre-Steve Nash. When you shell out cash for the Dream Team, you expect total American dominance, or at least some blissful sliver of it. Even the most casual gamer should be able to win by ten or more when playing as the Dream Team, especially against Canada pre-Nash. That’s what the Dream Team was (and what America is) all about—casual domination—and Team USA Basketball fails to deliver it.

As awe-inspiring as the Dream Team may have been, it didn't make for a good on-court product, and neither does its tie-in video game. If you want to play as the Dream Team in style, check out NBA 2K13—it's got the 1992 and 2012 USA Olympic basketball teams, and the former has all the speed, ease, and domination you'd expect of Jordan, Pippen, and Robinson (if not Laettner). 

Blast Lacrosse

In 2001, lacrosse was at its absolute pinnacle—that is to say, it had reached the outer periphery of the mainstream sports world. The National Lacrosse League (NLL) was flourishing, going nine teams strong in major markets like Philadelphia, New York and Toronto, with no fewer than four more expansion teams slated for the 2002 season. The season was also expanded from 12 to 14 games. There was none bigger, though, than the 2001 NLL championship game, which drew the largest crowd in league history, with nearly 20,000 packing into Toronto's Air Canada Centre to see the hometown Rock lose to the Philadelphia Wings. Everything was clear sailing for the NLL in the spring of 2001, and, as is often the case when even the most tenuous commercial potential presents itself to the American marketplace, a video game was in order.

What God sees when He/She watches lacrosse.

This game was the NLL licensed Blast Lacrosse published by Acclaim Sports in 2001, which is actually something of a treasure. Gameplay proceeds from a top-down perspective, sort of like NHL 94, but on a green surface with players running instead of skating. In fact, as per NHL 94, Blast Lacrosse even has its own version of "The Move"—that is, being able to score consistently by proceeding out from the corner parallel to the goal-line and then depositing the pill into the cage. For a sports game, comparisons to NHL 94 usually bode well, and this proves to be the case for Blast Lacrosse. The game is for the most part fun, which is aided by the intractably arcadey approach. Big hits, for instance, send players flying up in the air and often leave them writhing on the floor, even after play has stopped and the rest of their team is lining up for the ensuing faceoff. There are no penalties, and, as per arcade sports fare like NBA Jam or NFL Blitz, consecutive scoring plays cause players to "heat up" and then go "on fire". All told, Blast Lacrosse doesn't take itself too seriously, which is perhaps most obvious when you hear the play-by-play announcer crooning "Goodnight Irene" multiple times in course of the same contest. The voice-work is provided by Scott Ferrall, who, with his croupy, half-wit quipping sounds sort of like he's semi-feral. It's worth repeating that he’s repetitive. Regardless, sound is hardly a problem compared to the graphics. The Blast Lacrosse character models are awful, pixel-faced triangles with lacrosse sticks.

The issues of presentation do not take away, however, from Blast Lacrosse, which, on the whole nicely commemorates the three or four months in 2001 when the NLL was reaching previously uncharted heights of popularity on after-hours ESPN 8. Now the NLL has sunk considerably in profile, if it ever had a profile, and has even resorted to putting teams in exotic locales like Saskatchewan, which your correspondent thinks is located somewhere in Jamaica. Regardless, Blast Lacrosse reminds us of a time when professional “Lax” (as the initiated call it) flirted with relevance. The game might just be the most exciting lacrosse experience available, more memorable than much of what takes place in NLL arenas past and present.

NHL Stanley Cup

If you'll indulge him, your correspondent will begin this review with an autobiographical sketch. The year was 1993. Your late-adolescent correspondent was in Wal-Mart (perhaps it was Wool-co at that point), and in the aisle leading to the electronics section, a promotional booth had been set up. The booth had a large TV screen and a Super Nintendo under the giant cardboard logo with the blown-up title and box-art of a game: NHL Stanley Cup. The store employee running the display booth called me over and suggested I take a turn what she described as the "best hockey video game," or something to that effect.

"But I already have NHL 94," your correspondent remarked, not as a crack-back but rather in that innocent, matter-of-fact way that incorrigibly earnest children have.

"Oh no," said the store-appointed spokes-lady. "NHL Stanley Cup is much better."

Your correspondent was unconvinced but not un-intrigued. The demo clips from NHL Stanley Cup that played on the giant screen drew the eye. The sprites were big, and, more jarringly, the game was played at ice-level in what appeared to be 3D. This was completely unlike NHL 94. But could it possibly be better?

In hopes of answering this question, your correspondent waited by the booth as the god-bless-her-she's-trying spokes-lady attempted to flag down another customer. Eventually, she commandeered an older boy—a taller boy—who was red-faced and trim, who looked like he might even play some hockey himself. Smilingly, he picked up the controller, and we started into a game.

Your correspondent and the older boy played through one period of arduous lumbering and puck-chasing. They each had a few good scoring chances in front of the net, but neither could put the puck home. The goalies were too good. The period ended scoreless.

The spokes-lady took the liberty of declaring the older boy the winner. She based this on the fact that he had had more shots on goal. Your correspondent drifted away the loser, but not exactly feeling like he had lost. He only felt like he wanted to play NHL 94.

In retrospect, your correspondent is not convinced that that compulsion to play NHL 94 was the sour grapes of a child who had been "defeated." It was more likely the nascent discrimination of a discerning gamer in the making. That said, one does not have to be particularly discerning to realize that NHL Stanley Cup is inferior to NHL 94. In retrospect, your correspondent feels a measure of pity for that Wal-Mart (or Wool-co) spokes-lady. She'd been saddled with the ultimate tough sell: pitting the mediocre NHL Stanley Cup against NHL 94, widely agreed to be the greatest sports game of ever released.

If judged by the cover, which formed the backdrop of the display booth in that aisle, NHL Stanley Cup promises exhilaration. In a scene that could have been taken from the 1993 Stanley Cup Finals, the cover drawing depicts a generic blond member of the Los Angeles Kings skating in on the Montreal Canadiens’ goalie. The subtext is that the latter is Patrick Roy, though it's not really Patrick Roy because NHL Stanley Cup did not have an NHLPA license. Sweat is beading on the brow of the Kings' attacker (too blond and handsome to be Gretzky) as he follows through with a snap-shot, which has already been kicked away by the twine-minder.

Unfortunately, this cover drawing is more exciting than anything that ever happens in NHL Stanley Cup itself. The game is based entirely around dump-and-chase, the boring style of hockey that became more commonplace in the NHL post-1993. In that sense, NHL Stanley Cup was ahead of its time, but not in a positive way. Indeed, it's full of the boring 1-0 and 2-1 games that defined pro hockey for the next decade. And as per that scoreless period played between your correspondent and the older, taller, red-faced boy, the game is irredeemably boring. The Mode 7, pseudo-3D graphics catch the eye at first, but they quickly grow tiresome and bewildering. 3D scaling may have worked for NCAA Final Four, on the grounds that changes of possession in basketball are generally tied to scoring plays, but it renders the game of hockey, where possession-changes are fluid and constant, almost unplayable. As such, the camera is constantly flipping around. NHL '94's top-down style is far superior in this regard; indeed, even with all the camera angles available on present-day systems, the rooftop view is simply how video game hockey has to be played.

But NHL Stanley Cup is not entirely forgettable. It bears repeating that the goalies are just too good, both defensively and on offense. Indeed, it is distressingly easy to score a goal as the goalie, and not just with the other team's net empty (as per the real-life Ron Hextall, the goalie who scored two empty-net goals). Rather, when your goalie has the puck, you can skate him out of the crease for an inordinate amount of time and space before drawing a whistle. If you get to the red line and then dump the puck, you can score on the other team with some consistency. It's easier, then, to score as the goalie than with the average attacker. If only your correspondent had known about the goalies’ scoring touch while he was playing against the older boy. Perhaps this is the real thesis of NHL Stanley Cup—that one day the goalies will rise and come unshackled from their creases, taking back the ice from their free-skating oppressors. Perhaps this is the reason why the pseudo-Patrick Roy on the cover of NHL Stanley Cup is making the save rather than giving up the goal. Its status as a radical, pro-goalie manifesto, then, is the one reason (and one reason only) NHL Stanley Cup remains noteworthy.

Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball

In 1992, Nintendo revolutionized a game. This did not happen with respect with video games, but rather involved a move in the sports world: namely, Nintendo's purchase of the Seattle Mariners. With this purchase, the Mariners became the first Major League Baseball team owned by foreign investors. Now the game that purported to be as American as apple-pie and gun violence had Japanese ownership woven into its fabric. So revolutionary was the move that not all major league owners were on board with it. In fact, the final vote among the owners to approve the sale went 25-1, with the Cleveland Indians ownership backing out. Should we surprised, though, that a team named after and marketed around a racial caricature would be xenophobic with respect to welcoming East Asian proprietors into America's pastime?

One person who was definitely not unenthused with the move was Hiroshi Yamauchi, the venerable then-president of Nintendo. In fact, the usually inscrutable Yamauchi was over the moon at the idea of being part-owner of an MLB team. So excited was he at the Makuharu Messe convention in Tokyo in 1992 that, during his keynote address in which he detailed future prospects for the Super NES, he spontaneously announced that he had not only bought the Mariners, but that Nintendo was in the process of making the greatest baseball video game ever made. This was news to the various development ingénues in attendance, including none other than Shigeru Miyamoto. The announcement also confused Tony Harman, Nintendo's director of development and acquisitions, a former college soccer star who had parlayed a baccalaureate of engineering and a master's degree in business into a job as game reviewer for Nintendo Power. Not the least of his difficulties was the fact he didn't speak Japanese. Sitting in the presence of Nintendo's virtuosos, Harman turned to Miyamoto and asked him to dispel some of his confusion by translating. With his limited English, Miyamoto explained that the baseball game Mr. Yamauchi had reference was not only not in development, but that none of the old masters, including Miyamoto himself, had even heard of the game. Over and above that, none of the development doyennes wanted to tell Yamauchi that there was no such game in development, as they would likely be the ones entrusted with rushing the game into production. Harman asked who would be overseeing this game. And then, if the account in Blake J. Harris's Console Wars is to be believed, Miyamoto turned to Harman and said, altogether jokingly, "you." This occasioned laughter from Nintendo’s mavens, but it spurred Harman into action. Harman was going to design the greatest baseball game ever made.

That quest led to the development of Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball, released for the SNES in 1994. The reins were taken up by Software Creations, a developer based in Manchester, England, a curious choice given that baseball is a cultural non-entity in Britain. The baseball game that resulted unmistakably shows its British—or at least non-American—influences. America's pastime as depicted in this game looks and plays like a funhouse simulacra of itself. Many a hitter has a massive upper-torso, all bicep and chest, with a bony lower half, making for an excessively cartoonish look that may have been an attempt to satire steroid fueled baseball of the 1990s (and beyond). More egregiously, pitches can be controlled after they are thrown, making pitching an excursion into magical realism. The pitcher-batter encounter, then, is essentially reduced to a showdown between a muscle-bound monstrosity of human growth hormone and a horsehide-hucking wizard. In this version of baseball, everything is turned up to eleven. Gum-chewing batters blow bubbles insouciantly. Strike out victims break bats over their knees, shouting churlish complaints to the umpire. Every fly-ball springs off the bat, soaring high over the vast green tundra of the outfield, from which every single throw returns to the infield without a bounce. Given its international origins, the game must inevitably be read as a commentary on America. Through the combined efforts of the Japanese inceptors and British developers, what has resulted is a counter-Orientalist—or better yet intra-Occidentalist—parody of baseball. It is definitely a vision of baseball inflected with Anglo-European sensibilities of the absurd. As a result, it makes baseball look absurd. Apparently, for Nintendo's Japanese development brass, the laughs just wouldn't stop.

Bizarre aesthetics aside, Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball is simple enough to pick up and play, and even the baseball neophyte—your average Britisher, perhaps—will be jacking warning-track blasts right from the very outset. The game is not, however, easy, and the computer is a more than formidable opponent who can readily put a crooked number on the scoreboard if your pitches are imprecisely maneuvered after they’ve left your hurler's hand. Be prepared: you will more than occasionally lose by double digits.

Nonetheless, there are ways in which Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball grows on you. All the MLB teams and logs are here, but the players are fictional, as the game does not have an MLBPA license. This is not entirely to the game's discredit, however, as the developers did not go with the usual generic renaming scheme as per other unlicensed sports titles. Rather, the developers provided each team with themed player names. Some of these are baseball related, as is the case for the New York Yankees, who have the sobriquets of famed Bronx Bombers, such as W. (Whitey ) Ford and T. (The) Bambino, as well as names of New York boroughs such as S. (Staten) Island. Other teams have names drawn from the world beyond baseball. The Colorado Rockies are all horror movie mainstays, including G. Romero, B. Lugosi and B. Karloff. Tom Savini takes the place of pitcher Bruce Ruffin; personally, your correspondent prefers a baseball game where practical effects genius Savini is pitching instead

Lux Interior trades his high heels for cleats

of Ruffin. Wouldn't that make for a more interesting major league? At least two teams are filled with the names of punk and rockabilly impresarios, including the Los Angeles Dodgers, which features members of The Dead Kennedys and The Cramps, among others. With the inclusion of an edit mode, the game allows the player to change these names, but why would you? Imagine the thrill of scratching out a hit with Cramps frontman Lux Interior, the man who, with jaw unhinged, performed the most profoundly surreal cover of the already psychotic Hasil Adkins classic "She Said." What other baseball game allows you to do that?

There is one player whose name cannot be changed, and that is, of course, cover-boy Ken Griffey Jr. of the Mariners, the only real baseball player in the game. Curiously enough, Griffey was not a lock to appear in the game, even after Nintendo had purchased the Mariners. Griffey was, in fact, in talks with Sega about appearing in a prospective baseball game for the Genesis right up until the verge of Nintendo's 1994 SNES release. We can only speculate as to what the effects would have been on the ongoing console wars had Griffey signed with Sega. Indeed, Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball would go on to sell well for the SNES, and the family-friendly, child-like "Junior" surely had much to do with that. A middling, cartoonish game of baseball by any other name would probably not have fared so well.

What resulted from Tony Harman's toil was certainly not the greatest baseball game ever made. Nintendo may have revolutionized baseball ownership, but Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball did not do the same for video game depictions of baseball. Nonetheless, the game is worth playing to experience a parallel universe ruled by comic-book physics and baseball players who are HGH-infused avatars of truly cool people: punk rockers, horror heroes and American presidents (see the Kansas City Royals). Now that is what revolutionary truly looks like.

Capcom Classics Collection

Compilation discs may evoke skepticism in the shrewd game-buyer, and with good cause. Such retrospectives are a dime a dozen and, in essence, rehashes, advertising a plurality of games from bygone eras, many of which are sheer rubbish. And with the Capcom Classics Collection (the first of two volumes for the PS2) there is indeed dross—top-down shooters like Vulgus, for instance, that have not aged favorably. But with that being said, the first of the Capcom Classics Collections is still eminently purchasable. In this essay, your correspondent will argue as much on account of Final Fight, Forgotten Worlds, and the plurality Street Fighter II iterations appearing on the disc.

We begin with the Street Fighters. Capcom Classics Collection (vol. 1) contains Street Fighter II: The World Warrior (1991) and its updates Street Fighter II: Champion Edition (1992), and Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting (1992). There is, as one would expect with the Street Fighter titles, only a hair's breadth difference between the games, particularly the latter two. And indeed, we’ve seen these versions re-released before. However, on this compilation, the PS2's analog stick is a blessing, ensuring that the games play with high fidelity vis-a-vis their arcade versions, and certainly much better than the SNES and Genesis console versions of the 1990s. This disc's Street Fighter II: The World Warrior, in fact, is a much better translation than the stiff and pixelated port that appears on the SNES Classic, the control of which suffers from the comparably rigid Super Nintendo D-Pad. As a bonus, beating all three Street Fighter II games on Capcom Classics Collection opens up a fourth, of sorts, entitled "Deluxe Versus Mode". This mode allows two human opponents to compete against each other with a sampling of characters from all three installments of Street Fighter II series included on the disc. Essentially, Deluxe Versus Mode allows for matchups of fighting styles and costumes that couldn't otherwise be done on any previous game, which should be enough to warrant a purchase for Street Fighter diehards.

The inclusion of 1989's Final Fight, the famed arcade and multiplatform beat-em-up, renders the Capcom Classics Collection even more buyable. The game is, fundamentally, a side-scrolling Street Fighter, allowing the gamer to choose from a street brawler (Cody), karate guy (Guy) or pro wrestler/civic politician (Haggar) and then embark upon a series of hundreds of mini one-on-one (or one-on-two or one-on-three) showdowns; indeed, the boss battles are more formalized fights in the Capcom style. In fact, the first takes place in a wrestling ring against the unfortunately named Sodom—soon-to-be Street Fighter Alpha Samurai—for a no-holds-barred weapons match. The next takes place in a cage against “Andore”, a none-too-subtle Andre the Giant clone. In short, Final Fight's sensibilities are as much pro-wrestling as they are Street Fighter. You can turn these showdowns into handicap matches by enlisting friends, as Final Fight is of course, in the style of the Double Dragon which it was cloning, best enjoyed as a multiplayer game. Certainly, teaming up with a  friend makes dispatching the waves of antagonists much easier. In terms of difficulty, Capcom was gracious enough to afford the player(s) infinite continues in this version, a luxury one did not have on the arcade and Super NES releases. With this merciful concession, now everyone is able to enjoy the game from start to finish—even the not-so-quick of thumb—and so proceeding through Final Fight becomes akin to watching a movie or playing a vinyl, albeit one with which players can actually interact. And while Final Fight may not have the artistry of even a mediocre movie or album, its conclusion is not altogether non-compelling. After button-mashing your way through six levels of cityscapes and subways infested with hoods, hookers and transgender delinquents, the eponymous finishing battle puts you up against a crime-boss named Belger, who weaves all about the screen in his motorized wheelchair, leggy blond in tow. If there had ever been a Final Fight movie, Belger would have been played by Sid Haig. In that way, among others, beating Final Fight is kind of like playing through a B-movie. And, true to the (mean) spirit of most B-movies, you'll feel a certain satisfaction when you reach the game's climax—kicking the wheelchair-bound villain out of a top-floor window.

The third reason for buying the Capcom Classics Collection is 1988's Forgotten Worlds, a game that, contra the modifier in its title, should not be disremembered. This side-scrolling shooter casts you (or you and a friend) into the role of airborne super-soldier with a punk rock haircut and a massive weapon. The screen scrolls slowly, and you can move anywhere on it, all the while shooting in 360 degrees. This feature was quite revolutionary for the time, and affords the player a sense of freedom not found in the majority of elderly games. Kudos to Capcom for delegating this ability to the right analog stick, making rotational shooting silky smooth. As you proceed through wave after wave of flying lizard men and other idiosyncratic baddies, you can collect "zenny" (Capcom's early in-house currency) to periodically purchase weapon upgrades from a shopkeep named Sylphie (whose name says it all, as the gamin blonde is certainly sylphlike.) What makes Forgotten Worlds so unforgettable is its hard-to-place aesthetic. The titular worlds consigned to oblivion seem to have been drawn with reference to the visual cultures of cyberpunk and orientalism, making for an art style that is a bricolage of sci-fi and fantasy, the latter both apocalyptic and intercultural. With the preponderance of Ancient Egyptian motifs, we might venture to label the visual style as "Scarab punk". The villains include dragons and mechanical arthropods, as well as an Egyptian-themed Galactus clone, and even an icicle man who looks like the original PlayStation mascot (and eventual PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale boss). The player will also face-off with a giant zombie head—not unlike Bub from Day of the Dead—half-submerged at screen's bottom. In short, the aesthetic is eclectic. And sonically speaking, the soundtrack crawls on tarantula legs, technocratic and febrile, tinny and tinctured with downbeat valor. In sum, Forgotten Worlds is an action-packed, incomparably surreal tour through an uncannily memorable fantasy hellscape.

On account of the Street Fighters, Final Fight, and Forgotten Worlds, Capcom Classics Collection is a solid purchase that won't be regretted. If the aforementioned games aren't enough to convince the reader, consider that the disc also contains Ghouls 'n Ghosts and Super Ghouls'n Ghosts, the inclusion of which would most certainly justify a purchase for those masochist fans who like their games ultra-hard. Also, the WWII shooters 1942 and 1943 are on there, too, if that's your mise-en-scene. In sum, if you've felt any inkling for any Capcom game at any point in time, there's probably something on the Capcom Classics Collection disc warranting a purchase.