The Super Aquatic Games Starring the Aquabats

"A button mashers underwater paradise"

OPENING STATEMENT
The concept for Super Aquatic Sports is an interesting one. You need to complete various events thought up by the developers. However, the whole interesting concept of Super Aquatic Sports can hardly save an otherwise sloppy and uninspired game. It’s only redeeming qualities are its short-lived, mindless fun, and the fact that it is one of the less common Super Nintendo games.

GAMEPLAY--2
And the gameplay section may well be where Super Aquatic Sports was hurt the most. All of Super Aquatic Sports’s ten games require constant pressing of at least one button. Your fingers will get tired faster than you ever believed possible. The point of the one hundred meter splash is to press ‘B’ and/or ‘A’ as fast as you can until your frog-like character crosses the finish line.

What I am trying to say here is that the gameplay in Super Aquatic Sports is shallower than a tide pool. It all consists of the same repeated button pressing in one of the games ‘The Bouncy Castle’ I just madly pressed buttons and ended up occasionally doing tricks.

GRAPHICS--8
Super Aquatic Sports’s graphics are most definitely the game’s high water mark. (Yes, I am going to subject you to stupid puns like that one the entire review.) Graphically, everything looks clean, crisp, and more colorful than a coral reef. The characters are all designed like a sea-related creature in real life. For instance, the Kipper looks a lot like a walrus. There are also characters that look like, or are, frogs, fish, starfish, clams, and penguins.

The levels in Super Aquatic Sports all seem to be derived from one of four main level designs. Then the developers made a few small changes to each level design, and presto! They called it a new level background. Now there is no excuse for shoddiness like that, and I hope that the developers get sand in their beds.

MUSIC--3
SOUND--4
Wow! Now that we are at it, let’s see how much the developers can plagiarize! The opening song is exactly like a Beethoven song, except that it is played using completely odd instruments and it has a more festive feel. Plus, they changed the ending of the song to make it feel more like a party, but instead the new ending sounds like a drowned rat. All of the songs are more festive than “Under the Sea.” They really reached the gaudy point of festiveness, so gaudy that even a mermaid who listened to the Artist Formerly Known as Prince (or at least I think that is his current name) would think it sounded horrible.

The ironic thing was that occasionally I felt like my speakers were under water, as occasionally there were some really odd effects in the music, such as graininess, skipping, and other effects that made the game sound un-shipworthy, were not intentioned. But in an odd game like Super Aquatic Sports, who knows if they were intended or not.

CONTROL--4
As I mentioned before in this review, I randomly pressed buttons, in a game that is not hardly a tournament fighting game, and good things happened. That is a sign that the control scheme is not going swimmingly. The developers were kind enough to give you two control schemes to select from. Of course neither of them are good, but at least we got a choice. On top of the bad controller configurations, your characters respond about two full seconds after you press the buttons, which can result in lots of bad timing, and other consequences.

FUN--2
Even though Super Aquatic Sports offers multiplayer capabilities in both the Practice Mode, which is known as Jane Ponda’s workout, and the Main Mode, the complete randomness, frustratingness, and repetitiveness make it not fun. Super Aquatic Sports would not be fun no matter how many modes, and other bells and whistles that were included.

The most fun games are ‘Feeding Time’ and ‘The Relay Race.’ The Relay Race Event is the only event in all of Super Aquatic Sports that requires any strategy whatsoever. There are a couple of puzzles that you need to solve in figuring out how to switch characters near the end. But those puzzles are not very difficult, so it is still only a little bit more fun than drowning.

CHALLENGE--MEDIUM TO HIGH
In Super Aquatic Sports there are only two difficulty levels: Tadpole, and Normal. Do not let the fact that Tadpole is supposed to be easier than pie. Both difficulty modes are tougher than opening a clam with your bare hands. Even on the Tadpole difficulty level, there are only two events in which I beat the lowest qualifying time. Plus, there seems to be nothing to qualify for anyway, so what is the point of having a qualifying time? It is little mysteries like that that make Super Aquatic Sports such a horrible game.

REPLAY VALUE--LOW
To be perfectly honest, after I first played through Super Aquatic Sports, the only reason I ever touched it again was to write this review. Then, since then, I actually have entered the Practice Mode, err, Jane Ponda’s Workout, and played the Relay Race Event occasionally. But, I have not touched another event beyond my favorite one. Chances are you may have a favorite event and you may actually play that event occasionally, but still I hardly played Super Aquatic Sports to rate it higher than low in the replay value category.

PROS
*Graphics are quite good.
*Relay Race Event offers a little bit of strategy.
*Kippers are the coolest characters ever.

CONS
*Gameplay is boring, monotonous, and just plain bad.
*Music tries to be cute, but it is not.
*Two second control lag after you press a button.

CLOSING STATEMENT
Super Aquatic Sports was one of those games that must have made Sega Genesis owners think that their system was so much better than the immortal Super Nintendo. Luckily for Nintendo, games like Super Aquatic Sports hardly make the system sink, but the day that Super Aquatic Sports was released for the Super Nintendo must have been darker than the deepest ocean depths in Nintendo history.

OVERALL--2

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 12/13/00, Updated 07/18/01