With E3 in full force this last week we had lots to cover and since Dragon’s Dogma is still in my disc drive, you know what that means: time for Retro Revisited! This is my favorite section because I just LOVE obscure games that sneak under the radar. Initially, I was going to be talking about the classic Michael Jordan: Chaos in the Windy City, but I wanted it to be a little more off-the-wall. So after a quick Google search of, “the worst basketball games of all time” I saw many candidates. No, I’m not going to be talking about Shaq Fu, we all know how bad that abomination was (If you’ve never heard of it, check it out. It was Gametrailer’s #4 Worst Game of All Time). I got something even better. This game is almost so bad it’s a masterpiece, but that was the developer’s intention all along. Are you ready? Released in 2008 as the unofficial sequel to Space Jam and the Sega Gensis’s Barkley Shut Up and Jam!, we have Tales of Game’s Presents Chef Boyardee’s Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden, Chapter 1 of the Hoopz Barkley SaGa. Phew, that’s a mouthful, and you can stop slamming your face into your keyboard now. While not an officially released game, that doesn’t mean that it’s not the most hilarious piece of gaming history I’ve ever seen. You can find the game online for the cheap price of FREE, but trust me, watching the trailer below will tell you everything you need know…
Okay, are you back? Yup, you just watched that and there’s no getting that five minutes back now. So in a nutshell, Charles Barkley was going to lose a big playoff game and in an attempt to turn the tides and also impress his son, Barkley performs the epic “chaos dunk” killing most attendees and outlawing basketball altogether. 12 years later, another chaos dunk is performed killing most of the population of Neo-New York and Barkley is blamed for it. Barkley is now being hunted by the B-Ball Removal Department, headed by Michael Jordan. So with the help of Balthios (the great grandson of LeBron James), a cybernetic Vince Carter, and Cyberdwarf (whose skin is made completely from basketballs), Barkley must rescue his son, Hoopz, who is apparently the Keanu Reaves of basketball. Tongue-in-cheek doesn’t even begin to describe the level of absurdity here. Have you ever licked a basketball covered in LSD? Because that is literally the only way this game would make any sense, and I feel that Tales of Game’s did just that when making this game. So, if you have been itching for an old-school Final Fantasy VI type game and love basketball (has that comparison ever been made before? Well it just did!) then this game is right up your alley. Just hope that you don’t run into Ghost Dad at the end of that alley…
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Barkley was the man :).
Yeah Barkley was top notch. Doesn’t get much better than the classic Bulls lineup.