Game review: RapJam Volume One (Super Nintendo)

in #gaming5 years ago

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I consider the 90's to be the definitive basketball decade. Michael Jordan was at his peak, the Dream Team dominated the Olympics and it was filled with memorable personalties with fun nicknames like The Mailman and Clyde The Glyde.

Rap music really came into the mainstream during the 90's as well. What was a pretty niche genre in the 80's really bloomed in the 90's.

So what would happen if you gave these two entities the "peanut butter cup" treatment and merged street basketball with popular rap artists of the mid-90's? You'd get the absurd title RapJam: Volume 1. Does this work at all or its it just a ridiculous gimmick tacked onto a low-effort basketball game?

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The game begins with some relatively bland intro screens, but are accompanied by some decent rap (I refuse to call it 'hip-hop') background music. At the title screen, you're given the options of tournament or challenge. From what I can tell, there isn't much difference between the two gameplay options.

After you've selected your game type, you get to pick your team. This is the meat and potatoes of this game. Its what I came here for, and I was not disappointed with the selections. You get to pick your team from the following rap artists:

  • Coolio
  • House of Pain
  • LL Cool J
  • Naughty By Nature
  • Onyx
  • Public Enemy
  • Queen Latifah
  • Warren G
  • Yo-Yo

The team selection screen has some nice illustrations of the artists you get to pick from. Especially Onyx, who just looks extremely constipated.

After picking your 'team' (which you can apparently drop any member of any of these rap groups into), you can assign from 1 to 3 players to your team. I played some one-on-one and some 3-on-3 and the latter was a bit too much chaos my my taste.

The game plays much like other 2D, side scrolling basketball games of the era like NBA Jam and Arch Rivals. This is street ball, so there's no worrying about traveling, out-of-bounds, 3-second violations or even fouls. You can shove other players to get the ball if you want to, which you pretty much need to.

While the game presents itself and plays like NBA Jam, its no NBA Jam. The gameplay is slow, sluggish and choppy which turns the game into an absolute chore to play. There seems to be very little strategy to this game other than press to the other end of the court, get under the basket and dunk. Three point shots only register 2 points! Passing routinely results in the other team picking off the ball. This is simply a terrible basketball game. While it inspires to be NBA Jam, it fails across the board.

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RapJam: Voluume One is, for the most part, a terrible-looking game. While some of the menu graphics and rap artist portraits are nicely done, the in-game graphics are frankly awful. The representation of the rapper you pick looks nothing like them -- I started as Flavor Flav and he looked like he was 7 feet tall. Later I tried Queen Latifah, who looked more like a petite Rosie Perez. They're poorly animated too, with janky and jittery movement that when paired with a low frame rate, it makes the game a chore to play. Something like Double Dribble on the NES is far more playable than this. Hell, Basketball on the 2600 has more fluid gameplay. The courts and backgrounds try to have some personality, but they're crudely drawn and unpleasant.

The music is a highlight of this title, but there's a big problem. It doesn't play during the damn game! You get some pretty nice tunes that play over the the menus, but once a game starts it gets strangely quiet. All you hear as you play is a handful of grunts, some applause when you do something good, the constant sound of the ball dribbling on concrete and the chain net paired with a bland 'yeah' sound from the crowd when you score. That is practically the extent of this game's sound effects. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that half of the sounds this game outputs is just the same dribble sound over and over again.

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When I was looking for something different (and probably bad) to play yesterday, I found myself holding RapJam: Volume One in one hand and Shaq-Fu in the other. Believe it or not, I think Shaq-Fu would have been a lot more fun.

This game just fails on nearly every possible level. While the music and goofy mashup concept is good, those are the only redeeming qualities of this game. It took another decade for the industry to properly merge hip-ho with sports in the cool Def Jam fighting/wrestling games.

This entire game rides on a gimmick and once you get beyond that, its frankly one of the worst sports games I've ever played. Avoid at all costs, unless you find it cheap and want an interesting conversation piece for your collection.

And in case you're wondering, there is no RapJam: Volume 2.

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Thanks for reading. As always, upvotes, resteems and comments are appreciated!

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