Feel free to use this video of each event in the game I prepared earlier as a reference point.
Segazoom
This is a confusing thing to exist. The Venn diagram of minigame collection connoisseurs and sports aficionados surely has minimal overlap. The fact to take away from this, however, is that I sit squarely in that overlap. Sports Jam is one of those esoteric arcade efforts that I randomly stumbled on in an arcade in the old Skegness Butlins titty tent. I was instantly enamoured by its zany antics. Being a Naomi game, it was naturally racing towards the Dreamcast, and I grabbed it as soon as I could.
WOW Entertainment brings us this beauty, formerly Sega R&D Department 1, latterly combined with Overworks. As a whole, they were somewhat of a mixed bag. House Of The Dead 3 is an obvious classic, but otherwise, they output a lot of baseball and fishing. But that’s enough stalling, we must find out who will become the best sportist in the world! But first, some pretty water.
The concept is fairly simple. Sports Jam is pitched like a TV game show. In the Arcade Mode, Mr Sports Jam (Sports Jelly in America) challenges the player to beat 3 sports-based disciplines, then conquer a final found of your choice out of the previous 3 you’ve already defeated, difficulty ramped up. Short and sweet. Tight arcade experience. Nice. But there are actually 12 different events to choose from. All aboard the jam bus! It’s time for a guided tour through Original Mode, where you can choose to run the full gamut.
Get your high-tops on, we’re taking to the basketball court to drain three-pointers. The action is distilled to but two parts: aim and shoot. The reticle moves on its own but can be adjusted somewhat by the player, and will guarantee a basket whenever the reticle flashes. You don’t need to manually aim at all to get through the basic level of this one, but if you wanna fill that bar way past clear, you must become one with the jittery, mysterious aim points.
Everyone loves a Home Run Derby, right? I’ve only tried a real batting cage once. I made contact with maybe 1 in 10 balls, none going anywhere near a home run direction. Thankfully, this virtual representation is not nearly as difficult. The pitcher does their pitching thing, and the HUD provides you with several locations the pitch may be going. The proposed balls all swiftly move to the correct aim point, so you need to move your cursor there in time, hit A when the ball is at the appropriate striking point then without warning, mash like your life depends on it. Your score is a combination of how far you crush the ball and your directional accuracy – straight is king – so timing is essential to reach the upper echelons. There’s more nuance to the rhythm of perfection for this one, so you can hunt deeply for it if you so desire.
Now I don’t know if this is just because I love tennis and its video game output. As a result, I have become really quite proficient at it, but regardless this feels like one of the easiest options to get a guaranteed one credit clear in Arcade mode. It’s mostly just a slightly reductive take on the first Virtua Tennis. 2 targets will appear on the court in one of 6 positions. Your input for aiming is purely digital and will lock on to the target. They shuffle with each hit, until they become a glowing bonus target, granting you a tension-releasing forearm smash for grande puntos. With an aptitude for rally management, the only thing that will lose you a ball is a lapse in focus or mounting irritation at the announcer insistently mewling ‘RECEIVE, RECEIVE, WHAT A BEAUTIFUL RECEIVE’. He can receive deez nuts.
Time to test your tenacity on the short stuff. It’s you versus the undulation of this coin-littered green. Intuitive aiming and power mechanics allow you to read the break and the elevation and battle towards your goal. You will take your next shot from wherever you left it if you don’t get it in, so watch your weight to guarantee yourself a tap-in. There’s not a great deal of randomness in the greens you’re delivered, so if you feel like studying you may be able to get in the hole in quick-sharp time.
Enter corner flag left and pit yourself against simultaneously the easiest and most difficult corner kicks you’ve ever faced. There’s no one in the box with you and the deliveries are perfect, yet… the finicky positioning and timing required to strike the ball the first time are a constant bugbear. It’s possible to hit clean overhead kicks and powerful headers, but only if you can figure out the rather unguided mechanics involved. Instead, you will most likely end up trapping the ball to your feet, panicking as you see the value of the panels trickle drown, then strike the ball in a lukewarm manner which the goalkeeper predictably scoops up. In this game, it seems like being the Goalkeeper is easier. In the next one, not so much.
Ever had discs incessantly flung at you by a seemingly infinite amount of identical ice hockey players? Well, you have now. Don your shin pads, it’s time to carve ice. While there are only 3 ways for shots to reach you, switching from one side of your goal to another requires deft reflexes, and lobbed shots require awkward timing to block. Nonetheless, if you can dial in your inner metronome, you will defend your goal with authority. You just gotta believe.
This one could have been a full game, once upon a time, with some extras. Instead, we have this isolated incident of Ice Hockey Pong that is incredibly fun, especially with two humans. The premise is simple: Get the puck past your opponent. You have a small safety net of a few barriers that count down when impacted until disappearing on 0. Strategic application of a slap shot that requires both charging and buffering an animation affords you to force mistakes or capitalise on wide open spaces. Massively fun.
Another favourite here in SegaZoom towers is this par 3 nearest to pin contest. Pick up your 9 iron or 56-degree wedge, depending on your carry, set your power, adjust for the wind, fine-tune your spin and shout get in the hole like an obnoxious fan at Sawgrass. Real precision is required here; at least one shot deep within the orange segment or even into the red bit is necessary to clear the stage. Better get working on your approach play; shanks are deadly.
Ok, so you know Decathlon games, right? They always have a medium-distance run, yeah? There’s always that bit where you have to rhythmically tap to conserve energy before you go ham on the last lap? Well, this is that, but on a bike. Not much more to say, honestly. I find a good triple tap keeps the speed bar at the optimal position in the first lap, and then it’s time for your speed mash technique of choice, be it spoon, turbo button or convulsing fingers.
If you’ve ever seen football YouTubers, you know that penalties and free kicks are all they can do. A moving ball terrifies them. Lucky, then, that this is a dead ball specialist’s dream. Five Free Kicks with deliberately leaky human walls protecting their human balls for you to shape around and hit transparent point circles with a finessed curve. You choose your aim and spin in the traditional manner; that is to say, an arrow and a dot go back and forth and you stop them where you want them. Simple. Effective. Satisfying.
We’re at the final two, and it’s a double bill of American Football. First, we gotta kick the egg at the tuning fork. Step 1: run at the long jump launchpad that the kicker is hallucinating, stopped as near to the middle as possible. Step 2: Stop the egg cursor to shoot straight.
Step 3: Rejoice/Despair. You get 5 conversions. Make them count.
You may have been wondering how a sports minigame collection has no ‘just whack the shit out of the A button’ event? Well, you’ve jumped the gun. In this final game, you shoulder tackle a sandbag until it disintegrates, then sprint to the pass line to receive the ball before your opponent. While there could have been room for nuance here, who needs it? HIT THE A BUTTON FASTER, PEASANT!
And this concludes the weird journey of Sports Jam. A few things I’d like to highlight: The celebrations are alluring in their shambolism. They’re more wooden than Hayden Christensen musing about sand.
Our presenter, Mr Sports Jam, is terrifying. I understand they call them Shiny Floor shows in the entertainment industry, but surely that isn’t supposed to extend to the presenter? Other than those finer points, this is a Certified SegaZoom Banger. Give it the old sporting try.