The Game Gear Directory: (Mad-Man)

All these sports games, I must be a mad man.

Madden NFL ’95 (1995)

As I believe I have made clear previously, I don’t know the first thing about what we here in England call American Football, primarily because it is a crappy sport for idiots, whereas what you called “soccer” is beautiful and pure. Anyway, I’m a man of candour, and I must say that playing Madden NFL ’95 was the first time in my entire life that I ever felt, even briefly, that there was any kind of enjoyment to be had with the ol’ pigskin. I don’t understand a single word of the many beautifully presented screens of “plays” and most of the mechanics elude me, but the moment my team got out in front of me to block opposing players and I sailed through the newly formed gap in defence for a touchdown, I thought “hey, maybe this isn’t total dogshit after all”. I mean, I’m never going to love it, but this is very clearly a high-quality presentation through and through with superb visuals with a ton of effects, good crowd noise and sampled speech, and a whole host of options. Unfortunately it’s rather let down by sprite flicker and slowdown when many players are clustered together, such as when you’re close to the goal line and need the controls to function more than ever. Good version of a game I don’t understand, but that one technical issue is a doozy. ***

Madden 96 (1996)

Well, this is basically the exact same game again, though it actually feels oddly less polished and with even worse slowdown. The rules remain incomprehensible and the stop-start nature of the game is deeply tedious, but that’s problem with the sport itself rather than the game. It’s an altogether somewhat less slick package than before, oddly, rather like someone copied ’95 but got almost all the bits of it just ever so slightly wrong. There isn’t as much speech and the list of plays is almosty exactly the same in terms of interface. They even got rid of the cheerleaders on the pause screen, the bastards. If you must have a Madden, get last year’s. **

The Majors: Pro Baseball (1992)

Take me out to the ball game, da da da… actually, no, don’t take me out to the ball game, take me out to the movies or shopping or something. I’m sure there’s plenty of fun to be had watching baseball, but still. I guess I enjoyed watching The Majors: Pro Baseball, to an extent – the interstitial cutscene when a pitcher gets subbed out is really, really funny – but overall I actually did have some fun with this simple baseball sim. I Like with american football, I don’t know a good goddamn thing about the sport outside of its most basic rules, but this is a breezy and enjoyable (and quite arcadey) bit of gaming with a nice risk-reward about the way bases work – you can control multiple players on the field, which can get somewhat frantic as the ball begins making its way back towards the basemen. It’s all very functional and easily my favourite baseball title I’ve tried so far. Shit. I think I might… like baseball? ***

Man Overboard! (1994)

Codemasters! Now you’re talking. Well, sort of. This is a very thoughtful conversion of Amiga/DOS puzzle platformer Sink or Swim, which scales all the visuals down to a much smaller size to account for the Game Gear screen. That’s very good, and puts it a cut above a good deal of similar titles – looking at you, Krusty’s Fun House. Unfortunately, this hybrid of jumping around with a Lemmings style rescue mission doesn’t quite work, thanks to every stage being under time pressure that can feel unfair when you’ve got to figure out what the myriad switches do in each of the scrolling stages, making platforms appear and disapper, reversing the direction of conveyor belts, etc. It’s all a bit… fiddly, and I found the jumping controls unresponsive which led to what felt like unfair deaths. It’s not a bad game by any means, and it’s very well tailored to the Game Gear, but it’s a shame it’s not just… you know… better. ***

(Next: Mar-Me)