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WHITE MEN CAN'T JUMP REVIEW - December 1993

Multi-player games, it would seem, are the way forward in the modern gaming world. Everyone you meet these days seems to be banging on about 16-player PC network hook-ups, or the modem attachments coming out for the next-gen CD consoles, or the four built-in joypad ports of the Ultra 64. Now, while I love Super Bomberman as much as the next person, this seems to me personally to be partly missing the point about why home video game machines were invented in the first place (to provide you with entertainment when there wasn't anyone else around to make some of your own with). But you can't buck the trend, so Atari have joined in by producing a four-way multi-tap adaptor for the Jag, and bundling it, in a seemingly philanthropic gesture, 'free' with this four-player film-license basketball game. Which is a fine idea, except the game is so terrible it risks discrediting the adaptor itself, solely by association. Oh no, not again.

White Men Can't Jump is a two-on-two basketball game of the sort seen in, as far as I can see, every single movie made in America since Citizen Kane, where the two teams attack the same basket. This is, essentially, quite a confusing thing to be doing in the first place, and it's made all the more so in this case by the low viewpoint, jerky movement, inconsistent control and hard-to-distinguish players - passing, in particular is so hard to pull off successfully that it's far better simply to use whoever's actually got the ball to score solo, which rather defeats the object of making the thing a four-player game. In fact, the best way to play in general seems to be to hammer on the 'punch' and 'jump' buttons at random when you're not in possession, then when you get the ball, run around aimlessly for a while until a gap appears that you can try a shot in. In one- or two-player mode (that is, when you're both controlling two players), any cleverer strategy is repeatedly scuppered by the Jaguar seemingly switching which player you're actually controlling on a whim, and although four-player mode eliminates this flaw (and improves the game as a whole significantly), it still struggles to overcome all the other ones.

The fast-moving, exciting atmosphere of two-on-two is also somewhat dissipated by the ponderous, incredibly quiet music and the repetitive overuse of the five or six half-hearted speech samples you seem to hear every three seconds. Any thrills that may conceivably have been generated by the movie tie-in aspect are lost with the non-appearance of any of the film's stars, and the final blow is struck by a colour scheme that paints a dull, gloomy, oppressive dark blue sky over every location, even the sun-kissed beachside court. White Men Can't Jump is a nice idea, but ultimately it's just another game that'll make non-Jaguar owners laugh at you in the street.

By Atari

 

 

HIGHS

* You get a multi-tap

* Play with three friends

 

LOWS

* They'll all hate you

* Five sprites = jerky graphics. Uh?

* Everyone else gets to play NBA Jam

 

IN SHORT...

The kind of game that got the Jag to the state it's in now.

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