Sutobasu Yarou Show (SNES)

 Just like the last SNES game I covered, this is a licensed manga tie-in. But I think it might be notable as being the SNES game based on the  least popular manga. As far as I can tell (because there's very little information out there), Sutobasu Yarou Show was a manga by Kouji Kousaka in Monthly Shonen Jump, and lasted long enough to be collected into two volumes. It has no anime adaptation, and Kouji Kousaka doesn't have any other published works, as far as I can tell. How did this get a videogame tie-in?! The answer probably lies in its subject matter: Basketball. Takehiko Inoue's Slam Dunk, which ran in Weekly Shoenen Jump in the first half of the nineties, was a huge success, to the extent that it's credited for inspiring an upsurge in the sport's popularity throughout east Asia in that time. Presumably, both the manga nad the game of Sutobasu Yarou Show were intended to ride its coattails to a quick buck.

 

But anyway, this is a street basketball game, taking place on a court with only one basket, like previous subjects of this blog Jammit and Dunk Kids. Another trait it has in common with Jammit is that it's an incredibly annoying stickler for the rules. My first few attempts at playing it were severely hampered by my constantly getting fouls, for travelling, accidentally pushing an opponent,and more travelling. I don't know why sports games include the ability to accidentally trigger fouls like this, especially when it's in a way that wouldn't get you any advantage anyway. There's a jump button that seems to serve no purpose besides giving you a foul if you press it! Besides the fouls, there's some other rules in effect that are slightly annoying. For example, if your team is meant to be on the defence, but you get ahold of the ball after your opponents fumble it, you've got to pass to another player before you can try and score.

 

Other than those little annoyances, though, this is a fairly enjoyable game. Good enough for me to persevere through at least an hour of constant losses before getting my first victory, at least. I think a big part of the game's appeal is in its presentation. Being based on a manga gives it the advantage that every player on every team (and there are three to a team) is a named character with their own unique look. So there's various different body types, and every player has a unique face, and when you pass the ball between the different members of your team, they all feel noticably different as they move around. Furthermore, there's a bunch of different stages that add some visual variety, though they don't affect how the game actually plays.

 

It's also a nice surprise how diverse the characters are, too. Like, they aren't super diverse by modern standards, but while there's the usual one all-girl team, there's also a mixed gender team. And more than one team is made up of players of more than one ethnicity, too. It's not much, but it still seems like it's worthy of note to see in an early nineties sports game. Another surprise with regards to the presentation is the music: I'm no expert on the subject, but they've clearly put some effort into creating a soundtrack that comes as close as they can get to contemporaneous early nineties hip hop on the SNES. 

 

Sutobasu Yarou Show is a game that's slightly better than just okay, and it gets extra points for being unusually well-made, and for the curiosity of being based on a manga almost completely forgotten by history. Unlike a lot of games I've covered here in recent times, you should also be able to pick up a physical copy at a reasonable price too, which is nice. Finally, one of the teams in the game is named DRUGS, while the protagonist team in story mode is named JUMPS, and "JUMPS VERSUS DRUGS" sounds like it could be the name of some basketball-themed anti-drugs VHS tape to be shown in mid-nineties schools.