Some games suck. That's just the way of life in the video game world. But sometimes, games that everyone thinks sucks get a bum rap, and looking back on them, we realize they don't suck as much as we thought they did. Consequently, there are other games that we once thought were awesome, but looking back, they weren't so great. And some games just suck no matter what.

If you haven't caught the hint by now, that's what I'm here to do in this brand new feature for all the boys and girls of Destructoid. Tonight, we take a look at our first victim - excuse me, first game, a basketball game developed by a familiar name back in the early 1990s, in the first edition of...



Basic Info

Bill Laimbeer's Combat Basketball
Developer/Publisher - Hudson
Console - Super Nintendo
Year - 1991



Who the hell is Bill Laimbeer?

Bill Laimbeer is one of my favorite basketball players ever, playing center for my favorite team - the Detroit Pistons - during the 1980s and early 1990s, including their first two NBA Championships. As a member of the "Bad Boys" squads during that period, Laimbeer was noted as the ringleader when it came to aggressive play, going as far to actually fight Larry Bird and Charles Barkley on separate occasions. That legacy of rough play is what most people familiar with Laimbeer will remember, and in no small part, his attitude was what those Piston "Bad Boy" teams - with other aggressive players like Rick Mahorn and a young Dennis Rodman - were built around.

He was also quite a prolific shooter, and alongside Kareem Abdul-Jabar, was one of the few big men during this time who was a consistently good shooter from the outside.




In a moment of total weakness - and probably bitter because he was better than the Knicks' Patrick Ewing - The Beastie Boys ripped into him in the song "Tough Guy," but since it was a shitty song and no one remembers it, it never happened.

In retirement, he first became a commentator for the Pistons and owned a company that made cardboard boxes, then became head coach of the WNBA's Detroit Shock and has won two championships with them. He's also reportedly rumored to be next in line for the Pistons head coaching job should the position open up.

The premise

In the year 2030, the NBA sucks, or due to licensing issues, the generic basketball league of the day sucks. Bill Laimbeer - looking very good for being 73 years old - takes over as commissioner and throws just about every rule out. Other than basic scoring rules and boundary rules, anything goes. Oddly enough, except for back court violations, which somehow remain.

The game




Ever play Speedball? Well, it's basically a clone of that.

Never played Speedball? Well the premise is kind of like that. You have two 5-player teams of cyborgs playing basketball. A guy comes out in what looks like Dr. Eggman's little floating machine and launches the ball up into the air for grabs. from that point on, it's just straight-up basketball... except with no fouls and items like homing buzzsaws, homing bombs and mines scattered on the floor. All you've got to do is outscore the opposition to win.

There are two main modes - a quick play mode that's basically as described above, and the best part of the game, league mode. There's also options to pick from, but other than selecting how long a game is and difficulty, they are of little consequence.

Now, in league mode, you start out in Division 3 and try to move all the way up to the top division with a team. It's here that you learn that each of your players has different attributes, but since you can't see who's who on the court... it really doesn't matter. You can also change player's positions and trade players if you so choose.

But that's not the best part. The best part is that you can name your team (and the other teams in Division 3) whatever you want. Any game that lets you name teams Robot Cocks, Bukkake Boys and Ass Force One is fine with me. BTW, I was Robot Cocks.

The controls

Noe here's where the title starts running into problems related to sucking. The controls aren't too good, and by that, you're basically just using the B button and D-pad. The D-pad controls movement in 8 directions, while the B button is used to pass, shoot, shove and jump for the ball. Sounds odd? Read on.

On offense, moving your player and pressing B causes them to pass the ball in the direction they're facing. Only when you come of a complete stop for about one second can you hold down B to shoot the ball, and if you're facing away from the hoop, holding down B will make your player rotate towards the hoop and then shoot. Did I mention the defense can shove you while you're doing this and cause you to lose the ball? It sucks. Also, the further away you are from the hoop, the less accurate your shooting, so three-pointers are hard to make in this game.

On defense, the B button commences shoving, which is a feature that you can abuse to shut the other team out. You can also use it to jump for balls in the air, but again, you can't be moving in any direction while you do so. Hudson really should've mapped the buttons out better and used all four of them rather than just one.

The ball does not automatically pass to the next player on the team, meaning you can just pass it right out of bounds and the other team gets it back. Back court violations can happen occasionally even when you haven't crossed the mid-court line. This gets a bit annoying, trust me.

The graphics and sound

Given the time of the game, the graphics are pretty average.You can at least make everything out, but there's nothing too special here.

There's apparently only one song played during games, and it just kind of loops about every 30 seconds. This leads me to believe the person in charge of music direction for this game was likely some random Hudson employee who was about to retire, so he wrote one song, packed his belongings up, and took a nice long vacation to Okinawa. Hudson realized this too late and just left it as is. That's honestly the only reason I can think of that there's not more background music in this game.

And voice acting? Hah. Unless you count the occasional grunt when you shove a player down, there is none. Were you really expecting any?

The conclusion

The controls blow. The graphics are average. But the fact that I got to name my team whatever the hell I wanted made me smile, and league mode isn't awful. It's certainly not the best, but it's not the worst either.

FINAL VERDICT: Moderate suckage. There's some level of fun to be had here if the controls don't frustrate you.