White Men Can't Jump

I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure white men can jump. Now that little issue is cleared up, here's White Men Can't Jump for the Atari Jaguar - a basketball game that shares a name with a film from the 1990s starring Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson...but has pretty much nothing else in common with it's namesake.

Other than basketball, naturally.

Wesley and Woody are nowhere to be seen, and no reference is even made to the movie, other than...erm...it's about basketball. Not normal, NBA style basketball though - street-style, 2 on 2 basketball, where teams play on one half of the court and score in the same hoop.

Also, there are no rules other than 'get the ball in the hoop,' so punching, pushing and generally being a thug are all actively encouraged. Think Road Rash, without the bikes. Or the racing. Or the fun. That's because White Men Can't Jump is a little bit...meh. The problem here is that the game just isn't much fun to play: initially it all looks like a confusing mess as the sprite-based players shamble around, knocking each over and repeating the same "ouch" and "oof" voice samples, but after a while it does start to make sense and you'll be body-checking the opposition with aplomb and scoring points with slam-dunks like a regular Micheal Jordan. The thing is, it gets very repetitive very quickly. And that's not good.

After a few games, you'll have seen pretty much all there is in WMCJ, and be reaching for Tempest 2000 again. There are several modes of play - a versus match and a tournament mode where you can place bets on the outcomes of matches in order to win cash and pay back a loan shark...but that's it. One of the most notable features of WMCJ is it's 4 player option, but this is only accessible if you have a Team Tap, 4 pads and 3 other players who actually want to play...and these days that's a rare combination of external variables. Aesthetically, the game looks OK - there's some fairly good animation and the 3D look of the courts is quite good, as is the sprite scaling and variation in the four different locations. Sound is also fairly decent, with (repetitive) sampled speech and catchy background music...but ultimately there isnt a lot to keep you playing once you've seen everything...which will take about 5 minutes.