1. backyard basketball '01
this game is pretty funny.
well, it's actually really boring and not good, but it's funny if you set the game mode to CPU vs CPU. you can sit in a discord vc and really watch those fuckers go at it. i wonder if anyone's streamed that? like a saltybet style thing, but for backyard basketball '01.
anyway, i'd never played this game until it was free or 1 penny or whatever on steam in january. my experience with the franchise was limited - i knew it existed and maybe, i think, played one of them on the gba, or something?
it's bad! it's bad in a way that is completely unremarkable. stylistically it's boring. gameplayically it's boringer. nothing about this game is worthy of "bringing it back" except that they made enough of them that a lot of people ended up playing them. i guess that's what interests me, really. there was a time where you could make a sequel to your shit ass game and maybe even build an audience.
feels like these days it's kind of all-or-nothing. most companies aren't willing to take a risk, would rather make spider-man a core IP than gamble on something cool and unique and japanese, but even among the publishers who are more willing to release something experimental...i mean, do you think nintendo is going to be making arms 2 anytime soon? i have to assume when the first backyard sports game dropped, some people had to have been like "oh this is stupid, and this is boring, and i don't care about this." but it was still able to find an audience, enough of an audience that they're rebooting it or whatever? not really sure what that's about.
one thing i like is how many brown people they got in the game. diverse ass game.